Jerome Friedman shared the Nobel Prize in Physics with his colleague Richard Taylor for experiments proving that protons, neutrons and the other elementary particles of the atom are made of even more fundamental building blocks, known as quarks. Friedman was born in Chicago, Illinois, the...

Ernest Gaines was born and raised on the same plantation where his ancestors once labored as slaves. For nearly a century, they had remained in the same corner of rural Louisiana, living in the same cabins as their forebears, worshipping in the same church, and working for the same family...

Born Jean Marie Untinen in Chicago, she was the second of five children of a housepainter. Today, Jean Auel is a story-writing phenomenon whose series of novels set in prehistoric Europe have sold nearly 50 million copies worldwide. A grandmother of nine, she put in 12 years of night...

For 40 years, Martin Perl plumbed the mysteries of matter. His experiments at the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center led to the discovery of the "tau lepton," a particle similar to an electron but vastly heavier, that plays a central role in one of the most fundamental questions in...

When the rest of the world was just waking up to the possibility of cell phones and the Internet, Tony Fadell was already creating the technology behind the smartphone. Author of more than 300 patents, he sold a microprocessor startup to Apple just as he was leaving college. He spent the...

The pioneering surgeon Dr. Joseph Murray received the 1990 Nobel Prize in Medicine for his accomplishments in transplant surgery, including the first transplant of a human kidney from a living donor, an event that opened the door to the entire field of transplantation surgery. He was first...

In recognition of Women's History Month, the Academy of Achievement presents a selection of extraordinary women who have defied expectations, broken boundaries, and made history around the world. They include courageous political leaders and human rights activists, recipients of the...

From 1995 to 1999, General Charles Krulak served as the Commandant of the United States Marine Corps. Born in Quantico, Virginia, he graduated from Phillips Exeter Academy and the U.S. Naval Academy. After his commissioning and graduation from The Basic School at Quantico, he commanded a...

Dr. William Daniel Phillips shared the 1997 Nobel Prize in Physics for his contributions to laser cooling, a technique to slow the movement of gaseous atoms in order to better study them. He was the valedictorian of his high school class in rural Pennsylvania, went on to graduate summa cum...

Roger Revelle (March 7, 1909 – July 15, 1991) was one of the first scientists to predict and study global warming and the movement of Earth's tectonic plates, and was also instrumental in the formation of the University of California, San Diego. One of the world's most articulate spokesmen...

The dynamic evolution of W.S. Merwin's verse -- allied with his accomplishments as translator, essayist and environmentalist -- have made him the most admired and imitated of American poets. He published his first volume of verse at age 24 and soon won acclaim for an impressive mastery of...

A pioneer of the private equity industry, George Roberts, co-founded Kohlberg Kravis Roberts and Co. For over 30 years, George Roberts, along with KKR co-founder Henry Kravis, has led the firm in its growth into a leading global alternative asset manager. After graduating from the...

From 1991 to 2001, Edward C. Stone, Jr. was Director of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL). Born in rural Iowa, he was inspired by the launch of Sputnik to pursue experiments in space. He joined the faculty of the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) in Pasadena, California...

Richard Taylor shared the 1990 Nobel Prize in Physics with his colleague Jerome Friedman for a series of experiments proving demonstrating that protons, neutrons, and the other elementary particles of the atom are in turn composed of smaller entities, known as quarks. Born in the town of...

Shelby Foote became known to millions of Americans when he appeared on the PBS documentary series, The Civil War, but he had long enjoyed a great reputation among readers as a novelist, and as the author of a three-volume narrative history of the Civil War, the fruit of 20 years toil and a...

Sam Donaldson first came to the attention of many Americans with his relentless questioning of Presidents Carter, Reagan and Clinton as the longtime White House correspondent for ABC News. Born in El Paso, Texas, he grew up just across the state line in Chamberino, New Mexico. His father...

Herbert A. Hauptman pioneered and developed a mathematical method that has changed the entire field of chemistry and opened a new era in research in determination of molecular structures of crystallized materials. He graduated from City College of New York and obtained a master's in...

A lifelong leader in academia and an esteemed scholar of constitutional law, Gerhard Casper was the ninth President of Stanford University, serving from 1992 to 2000. Casper was born in Hamburg, Germany, where he survived the wartime bombing of the city. He first visited the United States...

Leonard Lauder is a renowned businessman and philanthropist, the longtime Chairman and CEO of the Estée Lauder Corporation. He studied business at the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School and at Columbia University before serving as an officer in the United States Navy. In 1958, he...

The Big Bang theory proposes that the universe we know emerged from a uniformly hot and impenetrable mass of protons, electrons and radiation. But until recently, we knew very little of the first stages of the 13 billion year process in which our cosmos took shape. In 1974, a young...

The 1995 Miss America, Heather Whitestone lost her hearing, at 18 months of age. Doctors told her mother that a normal life for Heather was impossible. As a child, she learned to read lips and use a hearing aid. She spent six months re-learning to pronounce her own name. Assisted by...

Rosalynn Carter won the lasting affection of the American public as First Lady of the United States from 1977 to 1981. Born Eleanor Rosalynn Smith, she grew up in Plains, Georgia, where the Smith and Carter families were friends as well as neighbors. She began dating Jimmy Carter, the...

As a little girl in England, Meave Epps took a keen interest in the natural sciences, but the school she attended didn't teach science, because it wasn't thought necessary for girls. Even after obtaining a degree in marine zoology, she found few doors open to women in the sciences. Her...

Erma Bombeck (1927 - 1996) was an American humorist who achieved great popularity for her newspaper column that described suburban home life from the mid-1960s until the late 1990s. Bombeck also published 15 books, most of which became best-sellers. From 1965 to 1996, Erma Bombeck...

The father of the art furniture movement, Wendell Castle has been a sculptor, designer, and educator for more than four decades. An influential artist, his work has led to the development of handcrafted, modern, designer furniture as a major art form and his name is revered above all...

Josh Nesbit founded the nonprofit company Medic Mobile, which uses low-cost, mobile technology to create more efficient health care delivery systems in underdeveloped areas of the world. Nesbit also founded Hope Phones, a recycling campaign designed to engage millions of Americans in...

H. Wayne Huizenga is one of America's most successful entrepreneurs. He started driving a truck while still in high school and dropped out of college to join a family friend's trash-hauling business. Huizenga bought his own truck and worked his collection route from 2:30 am until noon,...

Jerome Karle, born Jerome Karfunkel, was awarded the 1985 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for developing revolutionary mathematical techniques through which X-ray crystallography can be used to deduce the three-dimensional structure of natural substances vital to the internal chemistry of the...

William Kittredge is a renowned novelist and master essayist of the American West. He grew up on his family's huge cattle ranch in Oregon and was a farmer until he was 35 years old. Weary of raising cattle, he gave in to a creative urge he knew none of his fellow Oregon ranchers would...

Stephen A. Wynn is the most successful casino developer in the world who is credited with spearheading the dramatic resurgence and expansion of the Las Vegas Strip by building the Golden Nugget, The Mirage, Treasure Island, Bellagio, Wynn and Encore resort hotels. Born Stephen Alan...

The leftist Italian Red Brigades Marxist terrorist group kidnapped General James L. Dozier in December 1981. Italian anti-terrorist forces rescued him after 42 days of captivity. General Dozier was the deputy Chief of Staff at NATO’s Southern European land forces headquarters at Verona,...

When Desmond Tutu became General Secretary of the South African Council of Churches, he used his pulpit to decry the apartheid system of racial segregation. The South African government revoked his passport to prevent him from traveling, but Bishop Tutu refused to be silenced. International...

Prior to his appointment as Director of the Central Intelligence Agency, David Petraeus was a four-star general in the United States Army who capped a brilliant career by leading the campaigns that turned the tide of battle in both Iraq and Afghanistan. In his 37 years in the Army,...

Billy Joe "Red" McCombs is the founder of the Red McCombs Automotive Group, the co-founder of Clear Channel Communications, a former owner of the San Antonio Spurs, Denver Nuggets, and Minnesota Vikings, and the namesake of the McCombs School of Business at the University of Texas at...

William Julius Wilson is an award-winning sociologist and one of only 22 University Professors at Harvard University (the highest professional distinction for a Harvard faculty member). He is Past President of the American Sociological Association. Wilson has received 44 honorary degrees...

Anthony Romero had led the American Civil Liberties Union for only four days when the attacks of September 11, 2001 presented civil libertarians with their greatest challenge in decades. Since then, Romero and the ACLU have waged a continuous struggle in the nation's courts to ensure that the...

John Hendricks was a university fundraiser when he first conceived the idea for a cable television channel devoted to documentaries and educational programming. Borrowing against his home, he gathered $25 million from 30 individual investors and unveiled the Discovery Channel in 1985....

Larry Ellison is the co-founder and Chief Executive Officer of Oracle Corporation, the world's leading enterprise software company. A billionaire many times over, Ellison is one of the world wealthiest individuals. In 2000, he was estimated to be the richest man in the world. He achieved...

Since 1994, the Honorable Stephen Breyer has been one of the nine Justices of the United States Supreme Court. An outstanding student and Eagle Scout from San Francisco, he graduated with honors from Stanford University and attended Oxford University as a Marshall Scholar. After earning...

As Administrator of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), Daniel Goldin led the troubled space agency through a remarkable recovery, from the initial failure of the Hubble Space telescope, through the successful manned mission to repair the telescope, to subsequent...

Stephen D. Hassenfeld (1941 - 1989) was the Chairman and CEO of the Hasbro toy company from 1980 until his untimely death at age 47. He assumed the Presidency of the troubled firm on the death of his father in 1974 and turned the company around by reviving languishing brands such as Mr....

Gordon Randolph Willey (1913 - 2002) was an American archaeologist famous for his fieldwork in South and Central America as well as the southeastern United States. Regarded as one of the leading figures in 20th-century archaeology, Willey had a profound influence on the development and...

Sumner Redstone (born Sumner Murray Rothstein) is a media magnate who owns and controls the National Amusements theater chain, and is the majority owner of CBS Corporation, Viacom, the MTV Network, BET, and the Paramount Pictures film studio. Redstone attended the Boston Latin School,...

Hans Dehmelt received the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1989 for his development of the ion trap technique, used for high precision measurement of the electron g-factor. Dehmelt was born in Germany. From his school days in Berlin, he was fascinated by radio technology. He began his university...

Hailed as "the flamboyant bad boy of post-modern architecture," Helmut Jahn emerged in the late 1960s as the most brilliant architect of his generation. Born in a farming village near Nuremberg, Germany, he graduated form the Technische Hochschule in Munich and then entered the Illinois...

The chemist Gertrude Elion (1918 -1999) was a trailblazer for women in American science, and the recipient of the 1998 Nobel Prize in Medicine. At an early age, her ambition to find new medicines led her to the study of chemistry, but when she graduated from college at age 19 in 1937, she...

Born Jean Marie Untinen in Chicago, she was the second of five children of a housepainter. Today, Jean Auel is a story-writing phenomenon whose series of novels set in prehistoric Europe have sold nearly 50 million copies worldwide. A grandmother of nine, she put in 12 years of night...

When President George H.W. Bush tapped Dr. Antonia Novello to be Surgeon General, she could hardly believe her ears. She was both the first woman and the first Latin American ever to serve as the nation's number one public health officer. She had come a long way from the little town...

Wallace Stegner (1909-1993) grew up on the border of Montana and the Canadian province of Saskatchewan, and his writing was deeply shaped by the life and landscape of the mountain West. His first novel, Remembering Laughter, was published in 1937 when he was 28, and he continued writing...

The Honorable Robert M. Gates capped a distinguished career of public service with his five year term as Secretary of Defense, an unprecedented tenure that spanned the administration of Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama. An Eagle Scout and honors student form Kansas, Robert Gates...