Famous People Born In Reading

Media mogul Chad Hurley is a co-founder and former CEO of the video-sharing websites, YouTube and MixBit. Interested in computers and electronic media since high school, he co-founded YouTube with Steve Chen and Jawed Karim in 2005. The following year, the trio sold YouTube to Google Inc. Hurley is also a part-owner of the NBA's Golden State Warriors.

Travis Knight is a film producer, director, and animator. He is best known for working as the lead animator for the stop-motion animation studio, Laika. In 2013, he won the Annie Award for his work in the film ParaNorman. Knight also directed Kubo and the Two Strings, which won the Best Animated Film award at the British Academy Film Awards.

Keith Haring was an American artist whose pop art contained sexual images, which he used to advocate for AIDS awareness and safe sex. In 1989, he set up the Keith Haring Foundation to provide imagery and funding to AIDS organizations. In 2019, 29 years after his death from AIDS-related complications, Haring was inducted into the National LGBTQ Wall of Honor.

Hildegard Peplau was an American nurse best remembered for creating the middle-range nursing theory, which helped revolutionize the scholarly work in the field of nursing. She was the first nurse to publish her nursing theory since Florence Nightingale. Hildegard Peplau's work paved the way for humane treatment of people with personality and behavior disorders.

American naturalist, ornithologist, and vertebrate zoologist Spencer Fullerton Baird was an expert on North American birds and mammals. Initially a professor of natural history, he was later associated with the Smithsonian Institution as a curator and assistant secretary. He was also instrumental in the establishment of the US Commission of Fish and Fisheries.