Sagittarius Engineers

Edwin Howard Armstrong was an American inventor and electrical engineer. He is credited with developing the superheterodyne receiver system as well as the frequency modulation (FM) radio. During his illustrious career, Armstrong received several awards including the IEEE Medal of Honor, Franklin Medal, and Edison Medal. He was inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame in 1980.

American engineer Robert Noyce, who co-invented the integrated circuit, later gained the nickname the Mayor of Silicon Valley. The co-founder of Intel and Fairchild Semiconductor, Noyce is also said to have given Silicon Valley its name with his invention that included a silicon microchip. He was also a swimming champion.

Computer programmer and entrepreneur Shawn Fanning revolutionized the world of information technology by developing a program that let users share MP3 copies of music from their personal computers with others on the internet. His invention led to the formation of Napster and got him featured on the cover of Time.

Eugene Stoner is largely remembered for developing the ArmaLite AR-15 rifle, which was a forerunner of the M16 rifle used by the American military. Though he didn’t have any formal education beyond high school, Stoner, like his Russian counterpart, Mikhail T. Kalashnikov, revolutionized the arms industry with his inventions.

Ross Brawn is a British Formula One technical director and managing director. A former Formula One team principal, Brawn is widely regarded as the mastermind behind Michael Schumacher's record seven World Drivers' Championship titles. Also known for his charity work, Brawn came up with the Brawn Lifeboat Challenge in order to raise money for a new lifeboat for River Thames.

While he had been an Armani Junior model at 6, Pietro Boselli later earned a mechanical engineering degree, completed his PhD, and taught math. After a student posted a photo of him on Facebook and it went viral, Boselli became a sensation, gaining fame as the world's hottest math teacher.

Retired US Air Force officer and NASA astronaut Guion Bluford scripted history as the 2nd African-origin person and the 1st African-American to go into space. A trained fighter pilot, he also flew over 100 combat missions in the Vietnam War. The STS-8 Orbiter Challenger crew member later worked in IT and engineering services.

American television personality Michael Teutul started working at his family company Orange County Iron Works at age 14. He worked as assistant general manager of Orange County Choppers, founded by his father Paul Teutul Sr., but was eventually forced out. Michael is known for his features in TV shows like American Chopper and American Chopper: Senior vs. Junior.   

Engineer William Mahone wasn’t just a railway tycoon associated with the Norfolk–Petersburg Railroad but was also part of the Confederate Army. He was one of the major leaders of Virginia’s Readjusters, a coalition of African-Americans and financially backward whites. The US senator later sided with the Republican Party.

The grandson of Porsche founder Ferdinand Porsche, Ferdinand Alexander Porsche, nicknamed Butzi, was surprisingly dismissed from his industrial design course due to his supposed incompetence. He ended up designing the legendary sports car Porsche 901, later known as the Porsche 911. He also established the Porsche Design Studio.

Best known as Cutler from the series Being Human, Andrew Gower also impressed his fans with his performance as “Bonnie Prince” Charles Edward Stuart in Outlander. A prominent stage actor, too, he has been part of many Oxford School of Drama productions. He has also experimented with a music career.

Kai-Fu Lee is a computer scientist, writer, and businessman. One of the Chinese internet sector's most important figures, Lee is credited with creating a website called Wǒxuéwǎng, which aims at helping young people achieve in their respective careers. Also popular on social media, Lee is one of China's most-followed micro-bloggers; he has more than 50 million followers on Sina Weibo.

John Ambrose Fleming was an English electrical engineer and physicist. He is known for inventing the first thermionic valve or vacuum tube and designing the radio transmitter with which the first transatlantic radio transmission was made. Along with  Douglas Dewar and Bernard Acworth, he helped establish the Evolution Protest Movement. Fleming was also a noted photographer and artist. 

The founder of the Armstrong Whitworth manufacturing company, William George Armstrong, also known as Baron Armstrong, redefined the design of guns and also invented the high-pressure hydraulic mechanism. Initially a lawyer, he later quit his practice to devote more time to engineering. He was also knighted for his feats.

Royal Engineers army officer John Chard was one of the 11 men to receive the Victoria Cross for defeating a Zulu army of 4,000 warriors at the battle of Rorke's Drift, with a British army of 135. His handwritten account of the war was later auctioned off for £175,000.

Federico Faggin is an Italian-American engineer, physicist, inventor, and entrepreneur. He designed the first commercial microprocessor, the Intel 4004. He is also the creator of the self-aligned MOS (metal–oxide–semiconductor) silicon-gate technology (SGT). As an entrepreneur, he co-founded Zilog, a company dedicated to microprocessors. He is the recipient of the 2009 National Medal of Technology and Innovation. 

José Napoleón Duarte was the president of El Salvador during the tumultuous years of the Salvadoran Civil War and had witnessed mass killings of civilians by the army. Though he was supported by the U.S., he failed to remove poverty from his country and ended up being ousted by ARENA.

Marie Bashir created history when she became the first female governor of New South Wales. A doctor, too, she was initially associated with children’s hospitals and later focused on psychiatry. She also worked for the mentally ill and homeless people from the Aboriginal community of Australia.

Mechanical engineer Joseph Whitworth is best remembered for devising the British Standard Whitworth system for screw threads. He contributed a lot to the development of Owens College, introduced a scholarship, and left most of his fortunes to the people of Manchester. He was also made a baronet of the U.K.

Lars Onsager was a Norwegian-born American theoretical physicist and physical chemist. He is best remembered for his research at the Brown University which produced the Onsager reciprocal relations. This set of equations which he first published in 1929 earned Lars Onsager the 1968 Nobel Prize in Chemistry.

Satyendra Dubey was an Indian Engineering Service officer who headed the National Highways Authority of India (NHAI) where he was the project director. Dubey was murdered at the age of 30 for exposing corruption in NHAI project. His murder instigated several protests and Dubey was honored with several awards, including the Whistleblower of the Year award from Index on Censorship.

Hungarian-American engineer Peter Carl Goldmark contributed to many pathbreaking inventions, of which the most notable was the commercial color TV and the LP record. Known for his stint with Columbia Records, he also developed a scanning system used by the US to relay photos from the Moon to the Earth.

Gustaf Dalén was an industrialist, engineer, and inventor. The AGA cooker and the Dalén light are among his most prominent inventions. He was a long-term CEO of the AGA company. He received over 100 patents during his lifetime. He received the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1912 for his invention of a special kind of automatic regulator.