Elinor Ostrom, First Woman to Win the Nobel Prize in Economics
Elinor Ostrom won the 2009 Nobel Prize in Economics for her against-the-grain studies of how self-imposed regulation of common resources can be more efficient...
Auguste Escoffier, Innovative Chef and Inventor of the Chef’s Hat
Modern cuisine owes many of its practices to the great French chef Auguste Escoffier: he changed public dining in hotels and restaurants worldwide by...
Paul McCartney, Legendary Musician and Songwriter
Paul, the “cute” Beatle, attained international fame as one of the Fab Four at the age of 21. He launched a second and a...
Allen Ginsberg, Beat Poet
Allen Ginsberg helped launch a literary revolution in the United States during the mid-20th century. As a central figure in the Beat generation, Ginsberg’s...
Thurgood Marshall, Civil Rights Lawyer and Supreme Court Justice
Before Thurgood Marshall became the first African-American justice of the Supreme Court, he was also the most successful person to argue cases before the...
Noah Webster, Educator and Dictionary Writer
Noah Webster was a pioneering thinker devoted to books and learning. After the American Revolution, he set out to help the United States develop...
William Shakespeare, Playwright, Poet and Actor
“He was not for an age but for all time,” said Ben Jonson in the dedication to William Shakespeare’s 1623 First Folio. It may...
Elizabeth Blackwell, First Female Physician in America
When Elizabeth Blackwell was born in 1821, there were no formally trained female physicians in the Western world. But Blackwell graduated first in her...
Leo Szilard, Physicist and Contributor to the Manhattan Project
Leo Szilard, the Hungarian Jewish physicist, molecular biologist and inventor, worked on the Manhattan Project but expressed himself as a “scientist of conscience,” using...
Jack Welch, Former CEO of General Electric
Jack Welch was CEO of General Electric for 20 years, beginning his tenure in the midst of 1981’s tough economic conditions and leading the...
