Often described as the "best actress of her generation," Meryl Streep is acclaimed for her versatility. After debuting in the 1970s, she built a solid reputation by portraying challenging roles in dramatic films. In a career spanning over half a century, she has received numerous awards, including three Academy Awards and eight Golden Globe Awards.
Dr. Seuss was an American children's author, illustrator, and political cartoonist. He is credited with writing some of the most famous children's books ever, including The Cat in the Hat. His works were translated into over 20 languages and sold more than 600 million copies by the time of his death. Many of his creations were adapted into animated cartoons.
Robert Frost was an American poet. An influential poet, Frost was honored with four Pulitzer Prizes for Poetry, the only poet to receive four such awards. One of America's public literary figures, Robert Frost received the Congressional Gold Medal in 1960. His works influenced other poets like Robert Francis, James Wright, Edward Thomas, Richard Wilbur, and Seamus Heaney.
TV personality, musician, and author, Fred Rogers, is best remembered for hosting the preschool TV series, Mister Rogers' Neighborhood, which ran for over 30 years, from 1968 to 2001. His work was widely lauded and he was honored with the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2002. Besides his TV career, he was also an ordained Presbyterian minister.
Actress, comedian, and writer Mindy Kaling first gained international fame with her work in the NBC sitcom, The Office, for which she was nominated for several Primetime Emmy Awards. She earned a bachelor's degree in playwriting before beginning her career. As the child of immigrants from India, she is one of the few Indian-American women active in the industry.
David Harbour is a successful actor popular for playing important roles in superhero films, such as Suicide Squad and Hellboy. Despite struggling with bipolar disorder and alcohol addiction in his 20s, David Harbour fought against all odds to become a well-established actor in the American film industry.
Born to Goan Christians in Bombay, Dinesh D'Souza later moved to the U.S. for higher studies. The Indian-American right-wing filmmaker and writer is known for his anti-Obama documentary 2016: Obama's America. Convicted of illegal campaign contribution, he was later pardoned by Trump. He was also associated with an adultery scandal.
Rachel Dratch is an American actress, writer, and comedian. She established herself as a comedian after appearing on Saturday Night Live (SNL), where she played several recurring characters from 1999 to 2006. A multi-talented individual, Rachel Dratch released her autobiographical audiobook titled Girl Walks Into a Bar in 2012.
Bing Russell was an American actor whose career spanned nearly 40 years. Perhaps Bing Russell's biggest contribution to the American entertainment industry is his son Kurt Russell. Also a baseball enthusiast, Russell owned the Portland Mavericks, a professional baseball team, which was featured in a 2014 documentary titled The Battered Bastards of Baseball.
Actor Robert Ryan was also a prominent civil rights activist. In his initial days, he was also a heavyweight boxing champion, and later also served in the US Marine Corps. He soared to fame with his roles of cops or bullies in films such as The Woman on the Beach and Crossfire.
Lawyer and politician Kirsten Gillibrand is a member of the Democratic Party. Since 2009, she has served as the junior United States Senator from New York. An alumnus of the UCLA School of Law, she practiced law for a few years before entering politics. She is known for speaking against sexual harassment.
Henry Paulson is an American financier, banker, and political figure. He is best known for his service as the US Secretary of the Treasury from 10 July 2006 to 20 January 2009. A respected banker, Henry Paulson was the CEO and Chairman of Goldman Sachs prior to his role in the US Department of the Treasury.
Neal Katyal is an American academic and lawyer. Born to immigrant parents from India, Katyal has argued the most number of Supreme Court cases for any minority lawyer in American history. He was honored with the Edmund Randolph Award by the US Justice Department. He was also named in Legal Times' 90 Greatest Lawyers over the Last 30 Years list.
American banker Timothy Geithner is a former United States Secretary of the Treasury. He has also served as the president of the global private equity firm Warburg Pincus and been the president of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. He also lectures as a visiting faculty at Yale.
Born to rich Catholic parents, John Lilly spent his childhood treating science as a hobby. While studying medicine, he performed gruelling medical experiments on himself. He later invented isolating floatation tanks, studied bottlenose dolphins, and researched on psychedelic drug-induced near-death experiences. He also explored yoga and human consciousness.
C. Everett Koop was a pediatric surgeon and public health administrator who served as the 13th Surgeon General of the United States under President Ronald Reagan. Previously, he had been a vice admiral in the Public Health Service Commissioned Corps. He was well-known for his support of the rights of children with disabilities and his work with AIDS patients.
Economist and University of California, Berkeley professor Robert Reich has also been the U.S. secretary of labor. His rare bone disorder made him a victim of bullies in childhood, but he later won the Rhodes Scholarship to Oxford. His bestselling book Saving Capitalism was made into a Netflix documentary.
Robert Ripley was a cartoonist and an amateur anthropologist best known for creating the newspaper panel series Ripley's Believe It or Not! The series was later adapted for radio and TV. He lost his father when he was young and began working as a cartoonist at the age of 16. Over the years, he became extremely successful and wealthy.
Leon Black is an American investor who co-founded the popular investment management firm, Apollo Global Management. He is also known for his association with the Museum of Modern Art in New York City where he served as the chairman from 2018 to 2021. An art collector, Leon Black owns an impressive collection of artworks by artists like Raphael and Picasso.
Alexi Pappas is a Greek-American runner, actor, writer, and filmmaker. In 2016, she set the national record for 10,000m at the Rio Olympics where she represented Greece. As a filmmaker, Alexi Pappas is credited with bankrolling and writing Olympic Dreams, the first fictional film to be shot in an Olympic village.
US meteorologist and mathematician Edward Norton Lorenz is remembered for proposing concepts such as the chaos theory/deterministic chaos and the butterfly effect. He also laid down the Lorenz 96 model. The Kyoto Prize winner was associated with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology throughout his research career.
Canadian athlete Earl Thomson, or Tommy Thomson, scripted history as the first non-American to win a 110m hurdles Olympic gold medal. In his early days, he excelled in high jump and discus throw, too. He later coached the US Naval Academy team and also co-designed a safer hurdle.