- Theodore Roosevelt
Theodore Roosevelt, Jr., also known as T.R. and to the public (but never to friends and intimates) as Teddy, was the twenty-sixth President of the United States, and a leader of the Republican Party and of the Progressive Movement, as well as being the youngest President in United States history, at age 42. He served in many roles including Governor of New York, historian, naturalist, explorer, author, and soldier. - Franklin D. Roosevelt
Franklin Delano Roosevelt (January 30, 1882 - April 12, 1945), often referred to by his initials FDR, was the thirty-second President of the United States. Elected to four terms in office, he served from 1933 to 1945, and is the only U.S. president to have served more than two terms. A central figure of the 20th century during a time of worldwide economic crisis and world war, … - John Jay
John Jay was an American politician, statesman, revolutionary, diplomat, and jurist. Considered one of the "founding fathers" of the United States, Jay served in the Continental Congress, and was elected President of that body in 1778. During and after the American Revolution, he was a minister (ambassador) to Spain and France, helping to fashion American foreign policy and to secure favorable peace terms from the British and French. - John Jay
John Jay (1817-94) was an American lawyer and diplomat, son of William Jay and a grandson of Chief Justice John Jay. He was born in New York City, graduated at Columbia College in 1836, and was admitted to the bar three years later. He early became intensely interested in the antislavery movement, and while still in college (1834) was president of the New York Young Men's Antislavery Society. He was active in the Free Soil Party movement, … - Allen Ginsberg
Irwin Allen Ginsberg (June 3, 1926 - April 5 1997) was an American poet. Ginsberg is best known for "Howl" (1956), a long poem about the self-destruction of his friends of the Beat Generation and what he saw as the destructive forces of materialism and conformity in United States at the time. - Milton Friedman
Milton Friedman (July 31 1912 - November 16 2006) was an American Nobel Laureate economist and public intellectual. An advocate of laissez-faire capitalism, Friedman made major contributions to the fields of macroeconomics, microeconomics, economic history and statistics. In 1976, he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Economics for his achievements in the fields of consumption analysis, … - Alicia Keys
Alicia Keys (born Alicia J. Augello-Cook on January 25 1980) is an American R&B and soul singer, songwriter, pianist, record producer, actress, philanthropist, and author who has won numerous awards, including nine Grammy Awards, eleven Billboard Music Awards, and three American Music Awards. - Hunter S. Thompson
Hunter Stockton Thompson was an American journalist and author. He is credited as the creator of Gonzo journalism, a style of reporting in which the reporters involve themselves in the action to such a degree that they become the central figure of the story itself. - Langston Hughes
Langston Hughes (February 1, 1902 - May 22, 1967) was an American poet, novelist, playwright, short story writer, and columnist. Hughes is best known for his work during the Harlem Renaissance. - Dewitt Clinton
DeWitt Clinton (March 2, 1769 Napanoch, New York - February 11, 1828 Albany, New York) was an early American politician who served as United States Senator and Governor of New York. In this last capacity he was largely responsible for the construction of the Erie Canal. - Jack Kerouac
Jack Kerouac (pronounced) (March 12 1922 - October 21 1969) was an American novelist, writer, poet, and artist. He is perhaps the best known of a group of writers and friends who came to be known as the Beat Generation, a term he himself created. Kerouac enjoyed some degree of popular appeal but little critical acclaim during his lifetime. Today, however, he is considered an important and influential author. - Alfred A. Knopf
Alfred A. Knopf (September 12, 1892 - August 11, 1984) was a leading American publisher of the 20th century, founder of Alfred A. Knopf, Inc.. His contemporaries included the likes of Bennett Cerf and Donald Klopfer, and (of the previous generation) Frank Nelson Doubleday, J. Henry Harper and Henry Holt. Knopf paid special attention to the quality of printing, binding, and design in his books, and earned a reputation as a purist in both content and presentation. - Isaac Asimov
Dr. Isaac Asimov (c. January 2, 1920- April 6, 1992, was a Russian-born American Jewish author and biochemist, a highly successful and exceptionally prolific writer best known for his works of science fiction and for his popular science books. Asimov's most famous work is the Foundation Series, which was part of one of his two major series, the Galactic Empire Series, later merged with his other famous story arc, the Robot series. - Alexander Hamilton
Alexander Hamilton was an Army officer, lawyer, Founding Father, American politician, leading statesman, financier and political theorist. One of America's foremost constitutional lawyers, he was a leader in calling the U.S. Constitutional Convention in 1787; he was one of the two chief authors of the "Federalist Papers", the most important interpretation of the United States Constitution. Hamilton served chiefly as aide-de-camp to General George Washington, … - Robert Silverberg
Robert Silverberg (born January 15, 1935) is a prolific American author, best known for writing science fiction. He is a multiple winner of both the Hugo and Nebula Awards. - Alexander Haig
Alexander Meigs Haig, Jr. (born December 2, 1924) is a former Four-Star General in the U.S. Army who served as the U.S. Secretary of State under President Ronald Reagan and White House Chief of Staff under Presidents Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford. In 1973 Haig served as Vice Chief of Staff of the Army, the number two ranking officer in the Army. From 1974-79, Haig served as the Supreme Allied Commander Europe (SACEUR), … - Lionel Trilling
Lionel Trilling (July 4, 1905 - November 5, 1975) was an American literary critic, author, and teacher. Trilling was one of the group known as "The New York Intellectuals" and was viewed as one of the great literary critics of his time. He is probably most famous to the general public for his introduction to a 1952 reissue of George Orwell's book, "Homage to Catalonia". He was also a regular contributor to the "Partisan Review". - Leon M. Lederman
Leon Max Lederman (born July 15, 1922 in New York) is an American experimental physicist who was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1988 for his work on neutrinos. He is Director Emeritus of Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory (Fermilab) in Batavia, Illinois. He founded the Illinois Mathematics and Science Academy, in Aurora, Illinois in 1986, and has served in the capacity of Resident Scholar since 1998. - Stephen Jay Gould
Stephen Jay Gould (September 10, 1941 - May 20, 2002) was an American paleontologist, evolutionary biologist, and historian of science. He was also one of the most influential and widely-read writers of popular science of his generation, leading many commentators to call him "America's unofficial evolutionist laureate". Gould spent most of his career teaching at Harvard University and working at the American Museum of Natural History in New York. - Whittaker Chambers
Jay Vivian (David Whittaker) Chambers was an American writer, editor, Communist party member and spy for the Soviet Union who defected and became an outspoken opponent of communism. He is best known for his testimony about the perjury and espionage of Alger Hiss. - Gouverneur Morris
Gouverneur Morris (January 31, 1752 - November 6, 1816) was an American statesman who represented Pennsylvania in the Constitutional Convention of 1787 and was an author of large sections of the Constitution of the United States. He is widely credited as the author of that document's Preamble: "We the People of the United States, in order to form a more perfect Union...". Morris is regarded as a visionary of the idea of being "American". - Frank Lautenberg
Frank Raleigh Lautenberg (born January 23, 1924) is a businessman and Democratic Party politician. Now the senior United States Senator from New Jersey, he is in his second stint in office, first serving from 1983 to 2001, and again since 2003. - Lou Gehrig
Henry Louis ("Lou") Gehrig, born Ludwig Heinrich Gehrig, was an American baseball player in the first half of the twentieth century. He set several Major League and American League records and was voted the greatest first baseman of all time by the Baseball Writers' Association. His record for most career grand slam home runs (23) still stands today. - Alan Greenspan
Alan Greenspan (born March 6, 1926) is an American economist and was Chairman of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve of the United States from 1987 to 2006. Following his retirement as Fed chairman, he accepted an honorary (unpaid) position at HM Treasury in the United Kingdom. First appointed Fed chairman by President Ronald Reagan in August 1987, he was reappointed at successive four-year intervals until retiring on January 31, 2006, … - Benjamin N. Cardozo
Benjamin Nathan Cardozo (May 24, 1870-July 9, 1938) is considered one of the greatest American jurists, and is remembered not only for his landmark decisions on negligence but also his modesty, philosophy, and writing style, which is considered remarkable for its prose and vividness. Critics, however, decry his opinions as exercises in verbosity which fail to set forth usable, guiding legal principles. - Madeleine Korbel Albright
Madeleine Albright (1937 - ) was born in Prague, Czechoslovakia. As the Nazis invaded that country before World War II, Albright and her family fled and eventually settled in the U.S. She graduated from Wellesley College in Massachusetts, and she later received master's and doctorate degrees from Columbia University in New York. By the late 1970s, she was working in the White House for President Jimmy Carter 's national security team. - Thomas J. Watson
Thomas John Watson, Sr. (February 17, 1874 - June 19, 1956) was the president of International Business Machines (IBM), who oversaw that company's growth into an international force from the 1920s to the 1950s. Watson developed IBM's effective management style and turned it into one of the most effective selling organizations yet seen, based largely around punched card tabulating machines. - Ruth Benedict
Ruth Benedict was an American anthropologist. She was born in New York City, and attended Vassar College, graduating in 1909. She entered graduate studies at Columbia University in 1919, studying under Franz Boas, receiving her PhD and joining the faculty in 1923. Margaret Mead, with whom she may have shared a romantic relationship, and Marvin Opler were among her students and colleagues. - Pat Buchanan
Patrick Joseph Buchanan (born November 2, 1938) is an American politician, author, syndicated columnist, and broadcaster. He ran in the 2000 presidential election on the Reform Party ticket. He also sought the Republican presidential nomination in 1992 and 1996. Buchanan was a senior advisor to three American presidents, Nixon, Ford and Reagan, and was an original host on CNN's "Crossfire". - Joseph Campbell
Joseph John Campbell was an American mythology professor, writer, and orator best known for his work in the fields of comparative mythology and comparative religion. - Thomas Merton
Thomas Merton was one of the most influential Catholic authors of the 20th century. A Trappist monk of the Abbey of Our Lady of Gethsemani, in the American state of Kentucky, Merton was an acclaimed Catholic spiritual writer, poet, author and social activist. Merton wrote over 60 books, scores of essays and reviews, and is the ongoing subject of many biographies. Merton was also a proponent of inter-religious dialog, … - Richard Rodgers
Richard Charles Rodgers (June 28 1902 - December 30 1979) was one of the great composers of musical theater, best known for his song writing partnerships with Lorenz Hart and Oscar Hammerstein II. He wrote more than 900 published songs, and forty Broadway musicals. Many of his compositions continue to have a broad appeal and have had a significant impact on the development of popular music. - Mark van Doren
Mark Van Doren (June 13, 1894 - December 10, 1972) was a Pulitzer Prize-winning poet and critic. He was born in the town of Hope in Vermilion County, Illinois. The son of the county's doctor, he was raised on his family's farm in eastern Illinois. He was the younger brother of the academic Carl Van Doren. Mark Van Doren earned a B.A. from the University of Illinois in 1914 and a Ph.D. from Columbia University in 1920. - Eric Foner
Starting October 1, 2001 , Eric Foner will moderate a month-long open discussion on teaching about Reconstruction on the HISTORY MATTERS Web site provided below. From the HISTORY MATTERS home page select "Coming in October: Eric Foner on Reconstruction." To subscribe, choose "Join or leave list." Professor Foner will answer questions and lead a discussion on teaching about Reconstruction. - Ruth Bader Ginsburg
Ruth Joan Bader Ginsburg (born March 15 1933, Brooklyn, New York) is an Associate Justice on the U.S. Supreme Court. Prior to joining the Court, she was a professor at Rutgers University School of Law, Newark School of Law and Columbia Law School, a litigator for the American Civil Liberties Union, and a federal judge on the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. During much of her life, she has been active in the women's rights movement, … - Murray Rothbard
Murray Newton Rothbard was a highly influential American economist, historian and natural law theorist belonging to the Austrian School of Economics who helped define modern libertarianism. Rothbard took the Austrian School's emphasis on spontaneous order and condemnation of central planning to an individualist anarchist conclusion, which he termed "anarcho-capitalism." He was son of David and Rae Rothbard. - Roone Arledge
Roone Arledge (July 8, 1931 - December 5, 2002) was an American sports broadcasting pioneer who was chairman of ABC News from 1977 until his death, and a key part of the company's rise to competition with the two other main broadcasting stations, NBC and CBS, in the '60s, '70s, and '80s. - Seth Low
Seth Low (January 18, 1850 - September 17, 1916), born in Brooklyn, New York, was an American educator and political figure who served as the mayor of Brooklyn, as President of Columbia University, as diplomatic representative of the United States, and as Mayor of New York City. - Julian Schwinger
Julian Seymour Schwinger (February 12, 1918 -- July 16, 1994) was an American theoretical physicist. He formulated the theory of renormalization and posited a phenomenon of electron-positron pairs known as the Schwinger effect. He was jointly awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1965 for his work on quantum electrodynamics (QED), along with Richard Feynman and Shinichiro Tomonaga - Steven Weinberg
Steven Weinberg (born May 3, 1933) is an American physicist. He was awarded the 1979 Nobel Prize in Physics (with colleagues Abdus Salam and Sheldon Glashow) for combining electromagnetism and the weak force into the electroweak force.
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