100 Notable alumni of
California Institute of Technology
Updated:
California Institute of Technology is 159th in the world, 72nd in North America, and 69th in the United States by aggregated alumni prominence. Below is the list of 100 notable alumni from California Institute of Technology sorted by their wiki pages popularity. The directory includes famous graduates and former students along with research and academic staff. 19 individuals affiliated with California Institute of Technology won Nobel Prizes for Peace, in Physics, Chemistry, and Physiology or Medicine.
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Howard Hughes
- Occupations
- film producerentrepreneurmilitary flight engineeraircraft pilotinventor
- Biography
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Howard Robard Hughes Jr. was an American aviator, aerospace engineer, business magnate, film producer, and investor. He was one of the richest and most influential people in the world during his lifetime. He first became prominent as a film producer, and then as an important figure in the aviation industry. Later in life, he became known for his eccentric behavior and reclusive lifestyle—oddities that were caused in part by his worsening obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD), chronic pain from a near-fatal plane crash, and increasing deafness.
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Richard Feynman
- Occupations
- university teacherscience communicatorphysicistquantum physicistwriter
- Biography
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Richard Phillips Feynman was an American theoretical physicist. He shared the 1965 Nobel Prize in Physics with Julian Schwinger and Shin'ichirō Tomonaga "for their fundamental work in quantum electrodynamics (QED), with deep-ploughing consequences for the physics of elementary particles". He is also known for his work in the path integral formulation of quantum mechanics, the theory of the physics of the superfluidity of supercooled liquid helium, and the parton model. Feynman developed a pictorial representation scheme for the mathematical expressions describing the behavior of subatomic particles, which later became known as Feynman diagrams and is widely used.
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Charlie Munger
- Occupations
- investor
- Biography
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Charles Thomas Munger was an American businessman, investor, attorney and philanthropist. He was the vice chairman of Berkshire Hathaway, the conglomerate controlled by Warren Buffett, from 1978 until his death in 2023. Buffett described Munger as his closest partner and right-hand man, and credited him with being the "architect" of modern Berkshire Hathaway's business philosophy.
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Linus Pauling
- Awards
- Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1954
- Nobel Peace Prize in 1962
- Born in
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United States - Years
- 1901-1994 (aged 93)
- Enrolled in California Institute of Technology
- In 1925 graduated with Doctor of Philosophy in mathematical physics and physical chemistry
- Occupations
- physicistuniversity teacherbiochemistcrystallographerpeace activist
- Biography
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Linus Carl Pauling FRS was an American chemist and peace activist. He published more than 1,200 papers and books, of which about 850 dealt with scientific topics. New Scientist called him one of the 20 greatest scientists of all time. For his scientific work, Pauling was awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1954. For his peace activism, he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1962. He is one of five people to have won more than one Nobel Prize. Of these, he is the only person to have been awarded two unshared Nobel Prizes, and one of two people to be awarded Nobel Prizes in different fields, the other being Marie Skłodowska-Curie.
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Frank Capra
- Occupations
- film directorwriterproducerfilm screenwriterscreenwriter
- Biography
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Frank Russell Capra was an Italian-born American film director, producer, and screenwriter who was the creative force behind several major award-winning films of the 1930s and 1940s. Born in Italy and raised in Los Angeles from the age of five, his rags-to-riches story has led film historians such as Ian Freer to consider him the "American Dream personified".
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Kip S. Thorne
- Enrolled in California Institute of Technology
- In 1962 graduated with Bachelor of Science
- Occupations
- university teacherwriterphysicistastrophysicistastronomer
- Biography
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Kip Stephen Thorne is an American astrophysicist and author. He shared the 2017 Nobel Prize in Physics with Rainer Weiss and Barry C. Barish "for decisive contributions to the LIGO detector and the observation of gravitational waves".
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Donald Knuth
- Enrolled in California Institute of Technology
- 1960-1963 graduated with Doctor of Philosophy in mathematics
- Occupations
- academicuniversity teachermathematicianengineerwriter
- Biography
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Donald Ervin Knuth is an American computer scientist and mathematician. He is a professor emeritus at Stanford University. He is the 1974 recipient of the ACM Turing Award, informally considered the Nobel Prize of computer science. Knuth has been called the "father of the analysis of algorithms".
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Ahmed Zewail
- Occupations
- inventorphysicistchemistuniversity teacher
- Biography
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Ahmed Hassan Zewail was an Egyptian and American chemist, known as the "father of femtochemistry". He was awarded the 1999 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for his work on femtochemistry and became the first Egyptian and Arab to win a Nobel Prize in a scientific field, and also the first African to win a Nobel Prize in Chemistry. He was a professor of chemistry and physics at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech), where he was the first Caltech faculty member to be named the Linus Pauling Chair of Chemical Physics and served as the director of the Physical Biology Center for Ultrafast Science and Technology.
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Frank Oppenheimer
- Enrolled in California Institute of Technology
- Graduated with Doctor of Philosophy
- Occupations
- physicistteacherhusbandry workernuclear physicist
- Biography
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Frank Friedman Oppenheimer was an American particle physicist, cattle rancher, professor of physics at the University of Colorado, and the founder of the Exploratorium in San Francisco.
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Benoit Mandelbrot
- Enrolled in California Institute of Technology
- 1947-1949 graduated with Master of Science in aeronautics
- Occupations
- economistscientistuniversity teachermathematicianwriter
- Biography
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Benoit B. Mandelbrot was a Polish-born French-American mathematician and polymath with broad interests in the practical sciences, especially regarding what he labeled as "the art of roughness" of physical phenomena and "the uncontrolled element in life". He referred to himself as a "fractalist" and is recognized for his contribution to the field of fractal geometry, which included coining the word "fractal", as well as developing a theory of "roughness and self-similarity" in nature.
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Qian Xuesen
- Enrolled in California Institute of Technology
- 1936-1939 graduated with Doctor of Philosophy
- Occupations
- university teacherengineerastronautical engineer
- Biography
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Qian Xuesen was a Chinese aerospace engineer and cyberneticist who made significant contributions to the field of aerodynamics and established engineering cybernetics. He achieved recognition as one of America's leading experts in rockets and high-speed flight theory prior to his deportation to China in 1955.
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Gordon Moore
- Enrolled in California Institute of Technology
- Graduated with Doctor of Philosophy
- Occupations
- philanthropistphysicistentrepreneurengineerchemist
- Biography
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Gordon Earle Moore was an American businessman, scientist, engineer, and the co-founder and emeritus chairman of Intel Corporation. He proposed Moore's law which makes the observation that the number of transistors in an integrated circuit (IC) doubles about every two years.
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William Shockley
- Enrolled in California Institute of Technology
- In 1932 graduated with Bachelor of Science
- Occupations
- university teacherinventorphysicist
- Biography
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William Bradford Shockley was an American solid-state physicist. He was the manager of a research group at Bell Labs that included John Bardeen and Walter Brattain. The three scientists were jointly awarded the 1956 Nobel Prize in Physics "for their researches on semiconductors and their discovery of the transistor effect."
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Frank Borman
- Enrolled in California Institute of Technology
- Graduated with Master of Science
- Occupations
- test pilotmilitary flight engineerautobiographeraircraft pilotastronaut
- Biography
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Frank Frederick Borman II was an American United States Air Force (USAF) colonel, aeronautical engineer, NASA astronaut, test pilot, and businessman. He was the commander of Apollo 8, the first mission to fly around the Moon, and together with crewmates Jim Lovell and William Anders, became the first of 24 humans to do so, for which he was awarded the Congressional Space Medal of Honor.
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Thomas Hunt Morgan
- Awards
- Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1933
- Born in
- United States
- Years
- 1866-1945 (aged 79)
- Occupations
- biologistevolutionary biologistphysiologistuniversity teacherzoologist
- Biography
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Thomas Hunt Morgan was an American evolutionary biologist, geneticist, embryologist, and science author who won the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1933 for discoveries elucidating the role that the chromosome plays in heredity.
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Harrison Schmitt
- Occupations
- scientistuniversity teacherpoliticiangeologistastronaut
- Biography
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Harrison Hagan "Jack" Schmitt is an American geologist, former NASA astronaut, university professor, and former U.S. senator from New Mexico. He is the most recent living person—and only person without a background in military aviation—to have walked on the Moon.
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John McCarthy
- Enrolled in California Institute of Technology
- In 1948 graduated with Bachelor of Science in mathematics
- Occupations
- university teacherartificial intelligence researchercomputer scientistmathematicianengineer
- Biography
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John McCarthy was an American computer scientist and cognitive scientist. He was one of the founders of the discipline of artificial intelligence, and part of just a small group of artificial intelligence researchers in the 1950s and 1960s. He co-authored the proposal for the Dartmouth workshop which coined the term "artificial intelligence" (AI), led the development of the symbolic programming language family Lisp and had a large influence in the language ALGOL, popularized time-sharing, and created garbage collection.
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Hal Finney
- Enrolled in California Institute of Technology
- In 1979 graduated with Bachelor of Science in engineering
- Occupations
- computer scientistprogrammercryptographer
- Biography
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Harold Thomas Finney II was an American software developer. In his early career, he was credited as lead developer on several console games. He later worked for PGP Corporation. He was an early Bitcoin contributor, and received the first Bitcoin transaction from the currency's creator Satoshi Nakamoto.
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David Bohm
- Occupations
- physicistphilosopheruniversity teachernuclear physicist
- Biography
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David Joseph Bohm FRS was an American scientist who has been described as one of the most significant theoretical physicists of the 20th century and who contributed unorthodox ideas to quantum theory, neuropsychology and the philosophy of mind. Among his many contributions to physics is his causal and deterministic interpretation of quantum theory known as De Broglie–Bohm theory.
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Stephen Wolfram
- Occupations
- university teacherpodcasterphysicistopinion journalistmathematician
- Biography
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Stephen Wolfram is a British-American computer scientist, physicist, and businessman. He is known for his work in computer algebra and theoretical physics. In 2012, he was named a fellow of the American Mathematical Society.
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Murray Gell-Mann
- Occupations
- theoretical physicistphysicistnon-fiction writer
- Biography
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Murray Gell-Mann was an American theoretical physicist who played a preeminent role in the development of the theory of elementary particles. Gell-Mann introduced the concept of quarks as the fundamental building blocks of the strongly interacting particles, and the renormalization group as a foundational element of quantum field theory and statistical mechanics. Murray Gell-Mann received the 1969 Nobel Prize in Physics for his contributions and discoveries concerning the classification of elementary particles and their interactions.
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Fei-Fei Li
- Enrolled in California Institute of Technology
- Studied in 2000-2001
- 2001-2005 graduated with Doctor of Philosophy
- Occupations
- computer scientistscientistuniversity teacher
- Biography
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Fei-Fei Li is a Chinese-born American computer scientist best known for establishing ImageNet, the dataset that enabled rapid advances in computer vision in the 2010s. She is a professor of computer science at Stanford University, with research expertise in artificial intelligence, machine learning, deep learning, computer vision, and cognitive neuroscience.
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John C. Lilly
- Occupations
- psychiatristpsychotherapistcetologistpseudoscientistneuroscientist
- Biography
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John Cunningham Lilly was an American physician, neuroscientist, psychoanalyst, psychonaut, philosopher, writer, and inventor. He was a member of a group of counterculture thinkers that included Timothy Leary, Ram Dass, and Werner Erhard, all frequent visitors to the Lilly home. He often stirred controversy, especially among mainstream scientists.
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Harry Turtledove
- Occupations
- historianscience fiction writernovelistwriter
- Biography
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Harry Norman Turtledove is an American historian and author who is best known for his work in the genres of alternate history, historical fiction, fantasy, science fiction, and mystery fiction. He lives in Southern California.
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Satish Dhawan
- Occupations
- military flight engineer
- Biography
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Satish Dhawan was an Indian mathematician and aerospace engineer. He served as the chairman of ISRO from 1972 to 1984 and is often regarded as the father of experimental fluid dynamics research in India.
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Sidney Gottlieb
- Occupations
- biochemistchemist
- Biography
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Sidney Gottlieb was an American chemist and spymaster who headed the Central Intelligence Agency's 1950s and 1960s assassination attempts and mind-control program, known as Project MKUltra.
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Erdal İnönü
- Occupations
- physicistdiplomatuniversity teacherpolitician
- Biography
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Erdal İnönü was a Turkish theoretical physicist and politician who served as the interim prime minister of Turkey between 16 May and 25 June 1993. He also served as the deputy prime minister of Turkey from 1991 to 1993 and as the minister of foreign affairs from March to October 1995. He served as the leader of the Social Democracy Party (SODEP) from 1983 to 1985 and later the Social Democratic Populist Party (SHP) from 1986 to 1993. He was the son of the second president of Turkey, İsmet İnönü.
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Sabeer Bhatia
- Occupations
- entrepreneurbusinessperson
- Biography
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Sabeer Bhatia is an Indian-American entrepreneur who co-founded the first free web-based email service, Hotmail.com (now Outlook.com) in 1996. In 2021 he co-founded ShowReel with Javed Yunus. ShowReel initially hosted short videos for job seekers and founders. It has since turned into an AI-based entrepreneurship course.
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Frances Arnold
- Occupations
- engineerinventorbiochemistuniversity teacher
- Biography
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Frances Hamilton Arnold is an American chemical engineer and Nobel Laureate. She is the Linus Pauling Professor of Chemical Engineering, Bioengineering and Biochemistry at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech). In 2018, she was awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for pioneering the use of directed evolution to engineer enzymes.
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Robert A. Millikan
- Occupations
- physicistuniversity teacher
- Biography
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Robert Andrews Millikan was an American experimental physicist who received the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1923 "for his work on the elementary charge of electricity and on the photoelectric effect."
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Rob Pike
- Occupations
- computer scientistengineerprogrammerwriter
- Biography
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Robert Pike is a Canadian programmer and author. He is best known for his work on the Go programming language while working at Google and the Plan 9 operating system while working at Bell Labs, where he was a member of the Unix team.
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Eugene Merle Shoemaker
- Enrolled in California Institute of Technology
- In 1947 graduated with bachelor's degree
- Occupations
- geologistastronomer
- Biography
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Eugene Merle Shoemaker was an American geologist. He co-discovered Comet Shoemaker–Levy 9 with his wife Carolyn S. Shoemaker and David H. Levy. This comet hit Jupiter in July 1994: the impact was televised around the world. Shoemaker also studied terrestrial craters, such as Barringer Meteor Crater in Arizona, and along with Edward Chao provided the first conclusive evidence of its origin as an impact crater. He was also the first director of the United States Geological Survey's Astrogeology Research Program.
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Adam D'Angelo
- Occupations
- businessperson
- Biography
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Adam D'Angelo is an American internet entrepreneur. He is best known as the co-founder and CEO of Quora, based in Mountain View, California, and as the first chief technology officer of Facebook (now Meta).
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Andrea M. Ghez
- Enrolled in California Institute of Technology
- In 1992 graduated with Doctor of Philosophy
- Occupations
- mathematicianastronomerscientistuniversity teacher
- Biography
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Andrea Mia Ghez is an American astrophysicist. She shared the 2020 Nobel Prize in Physics with Reinhard Genzel "for the discovery of a supermassive compact object at the centre of our galaxy". This object is generally recognized to be a black hole.
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Herman Kahn
- Occupations
- futuristmathematicianlobbyist
- Biography
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Herman Kahn was an American physicist and a founding member of the Hudson Institute, regarded as one of the preeminent futurists of the latter part of the twentieth century. He originally came to prominence as a military strategist and systems theorist while employed at the RAND Corporation. He analyzed the likely consequences of nuclear war and recommended ways to improve survivability during the Cold War. Kahn posited the idea of a "winnable" nuclear exchange in his 1960 book On Thermonuclear War, for which he was one of the historical inspirations for the title character of Stanley Kubrick's classic black comedy film satire Dr. Strangelove. In his commentary for Fail Safe, director Sidney Lumet remarked that the Professor Groeteschele character is also based on Herman Kahn. Kahn's theories contributed to the development of the nuclear strategy of the United States.
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David Brin
- Occupations
- novelistscience fiction writerphysicistastrophysicistscreenwriter
- Biography
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Glen David Brin is an American science fiction author. He has won the Hugo, Locus, Campbell and Nebula Awards. His novel The Postman was adapted into a 1997 feature film starring Kevin Costner.
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Pierre Clostermann
- Occupations
- writerFrench resistance fightermilitary personnelengineeraircraft pilot
- Biography
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Pierre-Henri Clostermann DSO, DFC & Bar was a World War II French ace fighter pilot.
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John Clauser
- Enrolled in California Institute of Technology
- In 1964 graduated with Bachelor of Science in physics
- Occupations
- physicist
- Biography
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John Francis Clauser is an American theoretical and experimental physicist known for contributions to the foundations of quantum mechanics, in particular the Clauser–Horne–Shimony–Holt inequality. Clauser was awarded the 2022 Nobel Prize in Physics, jointly with Alain Aspect and Anton Zeilinger "for experiments with entangled photons, establishing the violation of Bell inequalities and pioneering quantum information science". In 2023, he declared himself as a climate change denier.
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David Ho
- Occupations
- physicianvirologist
- Biography
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David Da-i Ho is a Taiwanese-American physician-scientist and virologist known for his contributions in HIV/AIDS research. He pioneered the use of combination anti-retroviral therapy instead of single therapy in the treatment of HIV infection which transformed HIV from an absolute terminal disease into a chronic disease.
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Robert C. Merton
- Occupations
- university teachereconomist
- Biography
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Robert Cox Merton is an American economist, Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences laureate, and professor at the MIT Sloan School of Management. He is best known for his pioneering contributions to continuous-time finance, particularly the first continuous-time option pricing model, the Black–Scholes–Merton model.
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Ivan Sutherland
- Occupations
- university teachercomputer scientistengineerinventorprogrammer
- Biography
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Ivan Edward Sutherland is an American computer scientist and Internet pioneer, widely regarded as a pioneer of computer graphics. His early work in computer graphics as well as his teaching with David C. Evans in that subject at the University of Utah in the 1970s was pioneering in the field. Sutherland, Evans, and their students from that era developed several foundations of modern computer graphics. He received the 1988 ACM Turing Award for the invention of the Sketchpad, an early predecessor to the sort of graphical user interface that has become ubiquitous in personal computers, and his contributions to computer graphics. He is a member of the National Academy of Engineering, as well as the National Academy of Sciences among many other major awards. In 2012, he was awarded the Kyoto Prize in Advanced Technology for "pioneering achievements in the development of computer graphics and interactive interfaces".
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Robert L. Behnken
- Enrolled in California Institute of Technology
- In 1997 graduated with Doctor of Philosophy
- Occupations
- military officerengineerastronaut
- Biography
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Robert Louis Behnken is an American engineer, a former NASA astronaut, and former Chief of the Astronaut Office.
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Charles Francis Richter
- Occupations
- geologistmathematicianseismologist
- Biography
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Charles Francis Richter was an American seismologist and physicist. He is the namesake and one of the creators of the Richter scale, which, until the development of the moment magnitude scale in 1979, was widely used to quantify the size of earthquakes. Inspired by Kiyoo Wadati's 1928 paper on shallow and deep earthquakes, Richter first used the scale in 1935 after developing it in collaboration with Beno Gutenberg; both worked at the California Institute of Technology.
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L. Sprague de Camp
- Occupations
- literary criticjournalistmilitary officerwriterhistorian
- Biography
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Lyon Sprague de Camp was an American author of science fiction, fantasy and non-fiction literature. In a career spanning 60 years, he wrote over 100 books, including biographies of other fantasy authors. He was a major figure in science fiction in the 1930s and 1940s.
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Robert Wilson
- Enrolled in California Institute of Technology
- 1957-1962 graduated with Doctor of Philosophy
- Occupations
- researcherastronomerphysicist
- Biography
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Robert Woodrow Wilson is an American astronomer who shared the 1978 Nobel Prize in Physics with Arno Penzias "for their discovery of cosmic microwave background radiation".
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Vernon L. Smith
- Occupations
- university teachereconomist
- Biography
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Vernon Lomax Smith is an American economist who is currently a professor of economics and law at Chapman University. He was formerly the McLellan/Regent's Professor of Economics at the University of Arizona, a professor of economics and law at George Mason University, and a board member of the Mercatus Center. Along with Daniel Kahneman, Smith won the 2002 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences for his contributions to behavioral economics and his work in the field of experimental economics, which helped establish "laboratory experiments as a tool in empirical economic analysis, especially in the study of alternative market mechanisms."
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Roger Sperry
- Awards
- Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1981
- Born in
- United States
- Years
- 1913-1994 (aged 81)
- Occupations
- university teacherneurologistpsychologistphysiologistphysician
- Biography
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Roger Wolcott Sperry was an American neuropsychologist, neurobiologist, cognitive neuroscientist, and Nobel laureate who, together with David H. Hubel and Torsten Nils Wiesel, won the 1981 Nobel Prize in Medicine for his work with split-brain research. A Review of General Psychology survey, published in 2002, ranked Sperry as the 44th most cited psychologist of the 20th century.
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Charles Hard Townes
- Occupations
- inventorphysicistuniversity teachernuclear physicist
- Biography
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Charles Hard Townes was an American physicist. Townes worked on the theory and application of the maser, for which he obtained the fundamental patent, and other work in quantum electronics associated with both maser and laser devices. He shared the 1964 Nobel Prize in Physics with Nikolay Basov and Alexander Prokhorov. Townes was an adviser to the United States Government, meeting every US president from Harry S. Truman (1945) to Bill Clinton (1999).
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Peter Shor
- Occupations
- computer scientistmathematicianuniversity teacher
- Biography
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Peter Williston Shor is an American theoretical computer scientist known for his work on quantum computation, in particular for devising Shor's algorithm, a quantum algorithm for factoring exponentially faster than the best currently-known algorithm running on a classical computer. He has been a professor of applied mathematics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) since 2003.
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Ardem Patapoutian
- Occupations
- neuroscientistmolecular biologist
- Biography
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Ardem Patapoutian is a Lebanese-American molecular biologist, neuroscientist, and Nobel Prize laureate of Armenian descent. He is known for his work in characterizing the PIEZO1, PIEZO2, and TRPM8 receptors that detect pressure, menthol, and temperature. Patapoutian is a neuroscience professor and Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigator at Scripps Research in La Jolla, California. In 2021, he won the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine jointly with David Julius.
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Carl David Anderson
- Occupations
- physicistuniversity teacher
- Biography
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Carl David Anderson was an American experimental physicist who shared the 1936 Nobel Prize in Physics with Victor Hess for his discovery of the positron, which confirmed the existence of antimatter.
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Moshe Arens
- Occupations
- entrepreneurdiplomatscientistmilitary flight engineeropinion journalist
- Biography
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Moshe Arens was an Israeli aeronautical engineer, researcher, diplomat, and Likud politician. A member of the Knesset between 1973 and 1992 and again from 1999 until 2003, he served as Minister of Defense three times and once as Minister of Foreign Affairs. Arens also served as the Israeli ambassador to the U.S. and was a professor at the Technion in Haifa.
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John S. Chen
- Occupations
- businesspersonchief executive officer
- Biography
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John S. Chen is a Hong Kong-American businessman who served as executive chairman and chief executive officer of BlackBerry Ltd. Previously, he served as the chief executive officer and president of Sybase, a software vendor specializing in data management, analytics and mobility technology.
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Seth Neddermeyer
- Occupations
- scientistuniversity teacherphysicistresearchernuclear physicist
- Biography
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Seth Henry Neddermeyer was an American physicist who co-discovered the muon, and later championed the implosion-type nuclear weapon while working on the Manhattan Project at the Los Alamos Laboratory during World War II.
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Barry C. Barish
- Occupations
- astrophysicistphysicistuniversity teacherexperimental physicist
- Biography
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Barry Clark Barish is an American experimental physicist and Nobel Laureate. He is a Linde Professor of Physics, emeritus at California Institute of Technology and a leading expert on gravitational waves.
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Arthur B. McDonald
- Enrolled in California Institute of Technology
- Studied in 1965-1969
- Occupations
- astrophysicistuniversity teacherphysicist
- Biography
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Arthur Bruce McDonald CC OOnt ONS FRS FRSC P.Eng is a Canadian astrophysicist. McDonald is the director of the Sudbury Neutrino Observatory Collaboration and held the Gordon and Patricia Gray Chair in Particle Astrophysics at Queen's University in Kingston, Ontario from 2006 to 2013. He was awarded the 2015 Nobel Prize in Physics jointly with Japanese physicist Takaaki Kajita.
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Konstantin Batygin
- Enrolled in California Institute of Technology
- 2008-2010 graduated with master's degree
- Occupations
- astronomeruniversity teacherastrophysicistplanetary scientistscience communicator
- Biography
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Konstantin Batygin is an American astronomer and Professor of Planetary Sciences at Caltech.
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Max Delbrück
- Occupations
- physicistbiophysicistuniversity teachervirologistmolecular biologist
- Biography
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Max Ludwig Henning Delbrück was a German–American biophysicist who participated in launching the molecular biology research program in the late 1930s. He stimulated physical scientists' interest into biology, especially as to basic research to physically explain genes, mysterious at the time. Formed in 1945 and led by Delbrück along with Salvador Luria and Alfred Hershey, the Phage Group made substantial headway unraveling important aspects of genetics. The three shared the 1969 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine "for their discoveries concerning the replication mechanism and the genetic structure of viruses". He was the first physicist to predict what is now called Delbrück scattering.
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Todd Strasser
- Occupations
- novelistscience fiction writerwriterjournalistchildren's writer
- Biography
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Todd Strasser is an American writer of more than 140 young-adult and middle grade novels and many short stories and works of non-fiction, some written under the pen names Morton Rhue and T.S. Rue.
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Stanislav Smirnov
- Occupations
- university teacherresearchermathematician
- Biography
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Stanislav Konstantinovich Smirnov is a Russian mathematician currently working as a professor at the University of Geneva. He was awarded the Fields Medal in 2010. His research involves complex analysis, dynamical systems and probability theory.
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Mark Adler
- Occupations
- computer scientistmathematicianphysicist
- Biography
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Mark Adler is an American software engineer. He is best known for his work in the field of data compression as the author of the Adler-32 checksum function, and a co-author, together with Jean-loup Gailly, of the zlib compression library and gzip. He has contributed to Info-ZIP, and has participated in developing the Portable Network Graphics (PNG) image format. Adler was also the Spirit Cruise Mission Manager for the Mars Exploration Rover mission.
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Michael S. Gazzaniga
- Occupations
- writeruniversity teacherneuroscientistpsychologistneurologist
- Biography
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Michael Saunders Gazzaniga is an American cognitive neuroscientist and professor emeritus of psychology at the University of California, Santa Barbara. He is the founder and retired director of the SAGE Center for the Study of the Mind at UCSB (2006–2023).
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Serge Lang
- Enrolled in California Institute of Technology
- Studied in 1946
- Occupations
- mathematicianuniversity teacher
- Biography
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Serge Lang was a French-American mathematician and activist who taught at Yale University for most of his career. He is known for his work in number theory and for his mathematics textbooks, including the influential Algebra. He received the Frank Nelson Cole Prize in 1960 and was a member of the Bourbaki group.
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Eugene Parker
- Enrolled in California Institute of Technology
- In 1951 graduated with Doctor of Philosophy
- Occupations
- astrophysicistastronomerphysicistuniversity teacher
- Biography
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Eugene Newman Parker was an American solar and plasma physicist, often called the "father" and "founder" of heliophysics. In 1958, he proposed the existence of the solar wind and predicted that the magnetic field in the outer Solar System would be in the shape of a Parker spiral—predictions initially rejected by reviewers and scientific community, but quickly confirmed by the Mariner 2 spacecraft in 1962. Multiple phenomena in solar and plasma physics bear his name, including the Parker instability, Parker equation, Sweet–Parker model of magnetic reconnection, Parker limit on magnetic monopoles, and Parker theorem. In 1988, he proposed that nanoflares could explain the coronal heating problem, a theory that remains a leading candidate.
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Martin Karplus
- Enrolled in California Institute of Technology
- 1950-1953 graduated with Doctor of Philosophy in chemistry
- Occupations
- theoretical chemistuniversity teacherbiophysicistchemistscientist
- Biography
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Martin Karplus was an Austrian and American theoretical chemist. He was the Theodore William Richards Professor of Chemistry at Harvard University. He was also the director of the Biophysical Chemistry Laboratory, a joint laboratory between the French National Center for Scientific Research and the University of Strasbourg, France. Karplus received the 2013 Nobel Prize in Chemistry, together with Michael Levitt and Arieh Warshel, for "the development of multiscale models for complex chemical systems".
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Steven E. Koonin
- Occupations
- university teacherpoliticianphysicist
- Biography
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Steven Elliot Koonin is an American theoretical physicist, environmental scientist, and former director of the Center for Urban Science and Progress at New York University. He is also a professor in the Department of Civil and Urban Engineering at NYU's Tandon School of Engineering. From 2004 to 2009, Koonin was employed by BP as the oil and gas company’s Chief Scientist. From 2009 to 2011, he was Under Secretary for Science, Department of Energy, in the Obama administration. He later published Unsettled: What Climate Science Tells Us, What It Doesn't, and Why It Matters, for which he was widely condemned for promoting climate denial and labeled a climate change skeptic. In 2024, he became the Edward Teller Fellow at Stanford University's Hoover Institution. In 2025, he was member of the United States Department of Energy's Climate Working Group -formed by five researchers who reject the scientific consensus on climate change- and coauthor the U.S. Department of Energy draft report, A Critical Review of Impacts of Greenhouse Gas Emissions on the U.S. Climate that asserted that the danger from greenhouse gas emissions was exaggerated.
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Amy Mainzer
- Occupations
- astrophysicistastronomer
- Biography
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Amy Mainzer is an American astronomer, specializing in astrophysical instrumentation and infrared astronomy. She was the deputy project scientist for the Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer and is the principal investigator for its NEOWISE extension to study minor planets and for the future Near Earth Object Surveyor space telescope mission.
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Robin Hanson
- Years
- 1959-.. (age 67)
- Enrolled in California Institute of Technology
- In 1997 graduated with Doctor of Philosophy
- Occupations
- university teachereconomistsocial scientist
- Biography
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Robin Dale Hanson is an American economist and author. He is associate professor of economics at George Mason University and a former research associate at the Future of Humanity Institute of Oxford University. Hanson is known for his work on idea futures and markets, and he was involved in the creation of the Foresight Institute's Foresight Exchange and DARPA's FutureMAP project. He invented market scoring rules like LMSR (Logarithmic Market Scoring Rule) used by prediction markets such as Consensus Point (where Hanson is Chief Scientist), and has conducted research on signalling. He also proposed the Great Filter hypothesis.
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Michael Rosbash
- Occupations
- geneticistuniversity teacher
- Biography
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Michael Morris Rosbash is an American geneticist and chronobiologist. Rosbash is a professor and researcher at Brandeis University and investigator at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. Rosbash's research group cloned the Drosophila period gene in 1984 and proposed the Transcription Translation Negative Feedback Loop for circadian clocks in 1990. In 1998, they discovered the cycle gene, clock gene, and cryptochrome photoreceptor in Drosophila through the use of forward genetics, by first identifying the phenotype of a mutant and then determining the genetics behind the mutation. Rosbash was elected to the National Academy of Sciences in 2003. Along with Michael W. Young and Jeffrey C. Hall, he was awarded the 2017 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine "for their discoveries of molecular mechanisms controlling the circadian rhythm".
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Garrett Reisman
- Enrolled in California Institute of Technology
- In 1997 graduated with Doctor of Philosophy
- Occupations
- engineerentrepreneurastronaut
- Biography
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Garrett Erin Reisman is an American engineer and former NASA astronaut. He was a backup crew member for Expedition 15 and joined Expedition 16 aboard the International Space Station for a short time before becoming a member of Expedition 17. He returned to Earth on June 14, 2008 on board STS-124 on Space Shuttle Discovery. He was a member of the STS-132 mission that traveled to the International Space Station aboard Space Shuttle Atlantis from May 14 to 26, 2010. He is a consultant at SpaceX and a Professor of Astronautics Practice at the University of Southern California's Viterbi School of Engineering.
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Robert H. Grubbs
- Occupations
- university teacherchemistautobiographer
- Biography
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Robert Howard Grubbs ForMemRS was an American chemist and the Victor and Elizabeth Atkins Professor of Chemistry at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, California. He was a co-recipient of the 2005 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for his work on olefin metathesis.
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Po-Shen Loh
- Occupations
- mathematician
- Biography
-
Po-Shen Loh is an American mathematician specializing in combinatorics. Loh teaches at Carnegie Mellon University, and from 2014 to 2023 served as the national coach of the United States' International Mathematical Olympiad team. He is the founder of educational websites Expii and Live, and lead developer of contact-tracing app NOVID.
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Bernard Carr
- Years
- 1949-.. (age 77)
- Occupations
- physicist
- Biography
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Bernard J. Carr is a British professor of mathematics and astronomy at Queen Mary University of London.
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Joseph Polchinski
- Occupations
- university teachertheoretical physicistphysicist
- Biography
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Joseph Gerard Polchinski Jr. was an American theoretical physicist and string theorist.
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David J. C. MacKay
- Occupations
- university teacherphysicistcomputer scientistmathematicianprofessor
- Biography
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Sir David John Cameron MacKay was a British physicist, mathematician, and academic. He was the Regius Professor of Engineering in the Department of Engineering at the University of Cambridge and from 2009 to 2014 was Chief Scientific Advisor to the UK Department of Energy and Climate Change (DECC). MacKay wrote the book Sustainable Energy – Without the Hot Air.
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Robert Tarjan
- Occupations
- computer scientistmathematicianuniversity teacher
- Biography
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Robert Endre Tarjan is an American computer scientist and mathematician. He is the discoverer of several graph theory algorithms, including his strongly connected components algorithm, and co-inventor of both splay trees and Fibonacci heaps. Tarjan is currently the James S. McDonnell Distinguished University Professor of Computer Science at Princeton University. He and John Hopcroft won the 1986 ACM Turing Award.
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Cleve Moler
- Occupations
- university teachercomputer scientistmathematicianengineerprogrammer
- Biography
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Cleve Barry Moler is an American mathematician and computer programmer specializing in numerical analysis. In the mid to late 1970s, he was one of the authors of LINPACK and EISPACK, Fortran libraries for numerical computing. He created MATLAB, a numerical computing package, to give his students at the University of New Mexico easy access to these libraries without writing Fortran. In 1984, he co-founded MathWorks with Jack Little to commercialize this program.
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Arati Prabhakar
- Occupations
- physicistengineer
- Biography
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Arati Prabhakar is an American engineer and public official. From October 3, 2022 to January 20, 2025, she served as the 12th director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy and the Science and Technology Advisor to the President, which is called Science Advisor to the President. in other administrations. She also served in the President's cabinet.
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Eric Betzig
- Occupations
- physicistchemist
- Biography
-
Robert Eric Betzig is an American physicist who works as a professor of physics and professor of molecular and cell biology at the University of California, Berkeley. He is also a senior fellow at the Janelia Farm Research Campus in Ashburn, Virginia.
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Jay Obernolte
- Enrolled in California Institute of Technology
- In 1992 graduated with Bachelor of Science
- Occupations
- entrepreneurpolitician
- Biography
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Jay Phillip Obernolte is an American politician and businessman serving as the U.S. representative for California's 23rd district since 2021, when it was numbered as the 8th district. A Republican, he was previously a member of the California State Assembly representing the 33rd district. Before serving in the Assembly, Obernolte served on the city council and was the mayor of Big Bear Lake, California. He is the owner, president, and technical director of FarSight Studios, an American video game developer.
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Rudolf Mössbauer
- Occupations
- university teachernuclear physicistphysicist
- Biography
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Rudolf Ludwig Mössbauer was a German physicist who shared the 1961 Nobel Prize in Physics with Robert Hofstadter for his discovery of the Mössbauer effect, which is the basis for Mössbauer spectroscopy.
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Aza Raskin
- Occupations
- computer scientistentrepreneur
- Biography
-
Aza Raskin is the co-founder of the Center for Humane Technology and of the Earth Species Project. He is also a writer, entrepreneur, inventor, and interface designer. He is the son of Jef Raskin, a human–computer interface expert known for the Macintosh project at Apple.
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Nergis Mavalvala
- Occupations
- astrophysicistquantum physicistphysicist
- Biography
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Nergis Mavalvala is a Pakistani-American astrophysicist. She is the Curtis and Kathleen Marble Professor of Astrophysics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), where she is also the dean of the university's school of science. She was previously the Associate Head of the university's Department of Physics. Mavalvala is best known for her work on the detection of gravitational waves in the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO) project, and for the exploration and experimental demonstration of macroscopic quantum effects such as squeezing in optomechanics. She was awarded a MacArthur Fellowship in 2010.
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Edwin McMillan
- Occupations
- physicistuniversity teacher
- Biography
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Edwin Mattison McMillan was an American physicist credited with being the first to produce a transuranium element, neptunium. For this, he shared the 1951 Nobel Prize in Chemistry with Glenn Seaborg.
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George Beadle
- Awards
- Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1958
- Born in
- United States
- Years
- 1903-1989 (aged 86)
- Occupations
- geneticistuniversity teacher
- Biography
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George Wells Beadle was an American geneticist. In 1958 he shared one-half of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine with Edward Tatum for their discovery of the role of genes in regulating biochemical events within cells. He served as the 7th president of the University of Chicago from 1961 to 1968.
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George M. Whitesides
- Occupations
- university teacherchemist
- Biography
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George McClelland Whitesides is an American chemist and professor of chemistry at Harvard University. He is best known for his work in the areas of nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy, organometallic chemistry, molecular self-assembly, soft lithography, microfabrication, microfluidics, and nanotechnology. A prolific author and patent holder who has received many awards, he received the highest Hirsch index rating of all living chemists in 2011.
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Don Page
- Occupations
- physicist
- Biography
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Don Nelson Page FRSC is an American-born Canadian theoretical physicist at the University of Alberta, Canada.
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Alan Lightman
- Occupations
- novelistwriterphysicistastrophysicistscience fiction writer
- Biography
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Alan Paige Lightman is an American physicist, writer, and social entrepreneur. He has served on the faculties of Harvard University and Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and is currently a professor of the practice of the humanities at MIT.
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William Alfred Fowler
- Occupations
- astronomeruniversity teacherphysicistastrophysicistnuclear physicist
- Biography
-
William Alfred Fowler was an American astrophysicist. He shared the 1983 Nobel Prize in Physics "for his theoretical and experimental studies of the nuclear reactions of importance in the formation of the chemical elements in the universe." He is known for his theoretical and experimental research into nuclear reactions within stars and the energy elements produced in the process. With Margaret and Geoffrey Burbidge and Fred Hoyle, he authored the influential BFH paper, Synthesis of the Elements in Stars.
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George Zweig
- Occupations
- neuroscientistneurobiologistphysicist
- Biography
-
George Zweig is an American physicist of Russian-Jewish origin. He was trained as a particle physicist under Richard Feynman. He introduced, independently of Murray Gell-Mann, the quark model (although he named it "aces"). He later turned his attention to neurobiology. He has worked as a research scientist at Los Alamos National Laboratory and Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and in the financial services industry.
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Pete McCloskey
- Occupations
- lawyermilitary officernon-fiction writerpolitician
- Biography
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Paul Norton "Pete" McCloskey Jr. was an American politician who represented San Mateo County, California, as a Republican in the U.S. House of Representatives from 1967 to 1983.
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Barton Zwiebach
- Occupations
- physicistuniversity teacher
- Biography
-
Barton Zwiebach is a Peruvian string theorist and professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
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Rudolph A. Marcus
- Occupations
- university teacherchemist
- Biography
-
Rudolph Arthur Marcus is a Canadian-born American chemist who received the 1992 Nobel Prize in Chemistry "for his contributions to the theory of electron transfer reactions in chemical systems". Marcus theory, named after him, provides a thermodynamic and kinetic framework for describing one electron outer-sphere electron transfer. He is a professor at Caltech, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore and a member of the International Academy of Quantum Molecular Science.
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Carolyn Porco
- Enrolled in California Institute of Technology
- In 1983 graduated with Doctor of Philosophy in planetary science
- Occupations
- astronomerphotographerplanetary scientist
- Biography
-
Carolyn C. Porco is an American planetary scientist who explores the outer Solar System, beginning with her imaging work on the Voyager missions to Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune in the 1980s. She led the imaging science team on the Cassini mission in orbit around Saturn. She is an expert on planetary rings and the Saturnian moon, Enceladus.
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Alexei Filippenko
- Occupations
- astrophysicistastronomerphysicistuniversity teacher
- Biography
-
Alexei Vladimir "Alex" Filippenko is an American astrophysicist and professor of astronomy at the University of California, Berkeley. Filippenko graduated from Dos Pueblos High School in Goleta, California. He received a Bachelor of Arts in physics from the University of California, Santa Barbara in 1979 and a Ph.D. in astronomy from the California Institute of Technology in 1984, where he was a Hertz Foundation Fellow. He was a postdoctoral Miller Fellow at Berkeley from 1984 to 1986 and was appointed to Berkeley's faculty in 1986. In 1996 and 2005, he was a Miller Research Professor, and he is currently a Senior Miller Fellow. His research focuses on supernovae and active galaxies at optical, ultraviolet, and near-infrared wavelengths, as well as on black holes, gamma-ray bursts, and the expansion of the Universe.
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Huck Seed
- Occupations
- poker player
- Biography
-
Huckleberry ''Huck'' Seed is an American professional poker player best known for winning the Main Event of the 1996 World Series of Poker.
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Trinh Xuan Thuan
- Occupations
- astrophysicistwriteruniversity teacher
- Biography
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Trịnh Xuân Thuận is a Vietnamese-American astrophysicist.
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Howard Temin
- Occupations
- virologistuniversity teachergeneticistbiochemistphysician
- Biography
-
Howard Martin Temin was an American geneticist and virologist. He discovered reverse transcriptase in the 1970s at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, for which he shared the 1975 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine with Renato Dulbecco and David Baltimore.
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Virgil Griffith
- Enrolled in California Institute of Technology
- 2007-2014 graduated with Doctor of Philosophy in philosophy
- Occupations
- computer scientistprogrammer
- Biography
-
Virgil Griffith is an American programmer. He worked extensively on the Ethereum cryptocurrency platform, designed the Tor2web proxy along with Aaron Swartz, and created the Wikipedia indexing tool WikiScanner. He has published papers on artificial life and integrated information theory. Griffith was arrested in 2019 and in 2021 pleaded guilty to conspiring to violate U.S. laws relating to money laundering using cryptocurrency and sanctions related to North Korea. On April 12, 2022, Griffith was sentenced to 63 months imprisonment for assisting North Korea with evading sanctions.
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Luke Chia-Liu Yuan
- Occupations
- physicist
- Biography
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Luke Chia-Liu Yuan was a Chinese-American physicist. He was the husband of the famous physicist Chien-Shiung Wu, who disproved the conservation of parity.
