Floyd Abrams * Considered one of the leading experts on First Amendment law, he is a familiar figure in Supreme Court arguments on constitutional law. He is the William J. Brennan Jr. Visiting Professor at the Graduate School of Journalism at Columbia University, and argued for The New York Times and Judith Miller in the CIA leak grand jury investigation. Abrams joined Cahill Gordon & Reindel in 1963 and became a partner in 1970. Born July 9, 1936.
Madeleine Jana Korbel Albright * Born Marie Jana Korbelová in Czechoslovakia on May 15, 1937, she is the first woman to become the United States Secretary of State, serving in the administration of President Bill Clinton. Fluent in English, French, Russian and Czech, she currently serves as a professor of international relations at Georgetown University’s Walsh School of Foreign Service and as a director on the board of the Council on Foreign Relations. In May 2012, she was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by President Barack Obama.
Alan Alda * Born as Alphonso Joseph D’Abruzzo on January 28, 1936 in New York City and won distinction as an actor, director, screenwriter and author. Best known for his starring roles as Hawkeye Pierce in the TV series M*A*S*H and Arnold Vinick in The West Wing, and supporting role in The Aviator, for which he was nominated for an Academy Award. Currently a Visiting Professor at the State University of New York at Stony Brook School of Journalism and a member of the advisory board of The Center for Communicating Science and the Future of Life Institute.
Herbert A. Allen Jr. * Born in 1940. His father was a member of the Allen & Company investment firm that had been founded by his uncle, Charles. Allen Jr. joined the family firm after graduating from Williams College and in 1966, at age 27, was made president. In 1973, Allen & Company purchased a controlling interest in Columbia Pictures, later sold to Coca-Cola for $750 million in cash and stock. In 1982 Allen & Company launched the exclusive Sun Valley Conference that attracts leading media executives to Idaho each year. Allen Jr. ceded control of the firm to his son, Herbert Allen III, in 2002. Allen Jr. is listed by Forbes as one of the world’s richest individuals in 2015 with a net worth of $1.5 billion.
Isabel Allende * Born in Lima, Peru, in 1942, she is one of today’s most important voices of South American literature. She moved to Chile at age 3 with her mother and two brothers, and there spent her childhood in her maternal grandparents’ home, but traveled frequently because of her step-father’s diplomatic career. As an adult, she returned to Chile, where she married, had two children and worked as a journalist until 1973. After the military coup of Pinochet she moved to Venezuela and later to the United States, and now lives in San Rafael, California, with her second husband. Her books are translated in many languages. She writes mostly narrative, but has also written short stories for children, humor books and theater plays. Among her books: “The House of the Spirits” (adapted into a movie in 1993), “Of Love and Shadows” (similarly adapted in 1994)), “Eva Luna,” “The Infinite Plain,” “Paula” (a book of memories written after the illness and death of her daughter), and a trilogy of books for young adults, “The City of the Beasts,” “Kingdom of the Golden Dragon” and “Forest of the Pygmies.”
Heywood “Woody” Allen * Born as Allan Stewart Konigsberg on December 1, 1935, he has been an American actor, writer, director, comedian and playwright for more than 50 years. He began as a comedy writer in the 1950s and later began performing as a stand-up comedian, developing the persona of an insecure, intellectual, fretful nebbish, which he maintains is quite different from his real-life personality. Among his best-known films are Annie Hall, Manhattan, Hannah and Her Sisters and Midnight in Paris. Allen has been nominated 24 times and won four Academy Awards: three for Best Original Screenplay and one for Best Director (Annie Hall). It has recently been announced that he will write and direct his first TV series for Amazon Studios. In 2004, Comedy Central ranked him fourth on a list of the 100 greatest stand-up comedians, while a UK survey ranked him as the third greatest comedian.
Dame Julia Elizabeth “Julie” Andrews, DBE * Born October 1. 1935, she is an English film and stage actress, singer, author, theatre director and dancer. As a child actress and singer she appeared on the West End in 1948, and made her Broadway debut in The Boy Friend in 1954. She appeared on television with the title role in Cinderella in 1957, and rose to prominence in musicals such as My Fair Lady (1957) and Camelot (1960). Andrews made her feature film debut in Mary Poppins (1964), for which she won the Academy Award for Best Actress. She then starred in The Sound of Music (1965), playing Maria, and won the Golden Globe Award for Best Actress in a Musical. Between 1964 and 1986 she starred in The Americanization of Emily, Hawaii, Torn Curtain, Thoroughly Modern Millie , Star!, The Tamarind Seed , 10 , Victor Victoria , That’s Life! , and Duet for One. Andrews was made a Dame by Queen Elizabeth II for services to the performing arts in 2000 and in 2002 was ranked #59 in the BBC’s poll of the 100 Greatest Britons. Her other awards include a BAFTA, five Golden Globes, three Grammys, two Emmys, the Screen Actors Guild Lifetime Achievement Award, the Kennedy Center Honors Award, and the Disney Legend Award. She is an author of children’s books, and has published her autobiography, Home: A Memoir of My Early Years.
Margaret Eleanor Atwood * Born November 18, 1939, she is a Canadian poet, novelist, literary critic, essayist and environmental activist. She is a winner of the Arthur C. Clarke Award and Prince of Asturias Award for Literature, has been shortlisted for the Booker Prize five times, winning once, and has been a finalist for the Governor General’s Award several times, winning twice. In 2001, she was inducted into Canada’s Walk of Fame. She is also a founder of the Writers’ Trust of Canada, a non-profit literary organization that seeks to encourage Canada’s writing community. Among innumerable contributions to Canadian literature, she was a founding trustee of the Griffin Poetry Prize. While she is best known for her work as a novelist, she has also published 15 books of poetry. Many of her poems have been inspired by myths and fairy tales, which have been interests from an early age. Atwood has published short stories in Tamarack Review, Alphabet, Harper’s, CBC Anthology, Ms., Saturday Night, and many other magazines. She has also published four collections of stories and three collections of unclassifiable short prose works. Atwood is also the inventor and developer of the LongPen and associated technologies that facilitate the remote robotic writing of documents, and is the co-founder and a director of Syngrafii Inc. (formerly Unotchit Inc.), a company that she began in 2004 to develop, produce and distribute the LongPen technology.
Henrietta Mantooth Bagley * Born December 7, 1924, her career began as a journalist and has progressed to painting and short stories (see story and interview in 70 + Life at the Top).
Russell Baker * Born August 14, 1925, he is an American writer, essayist, journalist and biographer known for his satirical commentary and self-critical prose. Baker wrote the nationally syndicated Observer column for The New York Times from 1962 to 1998, for which he won a Pulitzer Prize. He wrote or edited 17 books including his 1982 Pulitzer Prize winning autobiography, Growing Up. He wrote a sequel to his autobiography in 1989, called The Good Times. During his long career, he was a regular contributor to national periodicals such as The New York Times Magazine, Sports Illustrated, The Saturday Evening Post and McCalls. Baker hosted the PBS Masterpiece Theatre from 1992 to 2004.
Daniel Barenboim * Born November 15, 1942. He is an Argentine pianist and conductor, currently general music director of La Scala in Milan, the Berlin State Opera, and the Staatskapelle Berlin; he previously served as music director of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra and the Orchestre de Paris. Barenboim is also known for his work with the West-Eastern Divan Orchestra, a Seville-based orchestra of young Arab and Israeli musicians. Barenboim has received many awards and prizes, including an honorary Knight Commander of the Order of the British Empire and France’s Légion d’honneur, along with seven Grammy awards for his work and discography. A polyglot, he is fluent in the Spanish, English, French, Italian, German, and Hebrew languages.
Florence Knoll Bassett * Leading American architect and furniture designer who studied under Mies van der Rohe and Eliel Saarinen. Born in Saginaw MI on May 24, 1917, as Florence Schust, she is known familiarly as “Shu.” She also worked with leaders of the Bauhaus movement, including Walter Gropius, Marcel Breuer, and the American modernist, Wallace K. Harrison. Her first marriage was to Hans Knoll, with whom she was associated in that leading design firm, and after his death married banker Harry Bassett. Among her leading commissions was the interior design of Saarinen’s only skyscraper, the CBS Building in New York City.
Carl Bernstein * Born February 14, 1944. A Pulitzer Prize winner in partnership with Robert Woodward at The Washington Post, the team is credited with the majority of the news reporting on the Watergate scandal that led to the eventual resignation of President Richard Nixon. He is also the author or co-author of six books: All The President’s Men, Final Days and The Secret Man, with Bob Woodward; His Holiness: John Paul II and the History of Our Time, with Marco Politi; Loyalties; and A Woman In Charge: The Life of Hillary Rodham Clinton. Additionally, he is currently a Visiting Presidential Professor at Stony Brook University.
Joe Biden * Born Joseph Robinette “Joe” Biden Jr. on November 20, 1942, he is now the 47th and current Vice President of the United States, jointly elected twice with President Barack Obama and in office since 2009. A member of the Democratic Party, he served as a Senator from Delaware from 1973 until 2009. Biden was a long-time member and former chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee. His advocacy helped bring about U.S. military assistance and intervention during the Bosnian War. He opposed the Gulf War in 1991. He voted in favor of the Iraq War Resolution in 2002, but later proposed resolutions to alter U.S. strategy there. He has also served as chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee. Throughout his career, Biden’s political style has combined appeal to middle and working class voters with a penchant for unfiltered remarks.
Michael Rubens Bloomberg * Born February 14, 1942, he is an American business magnate, politician and philanthropist. He served as the 108th mayor of New York City, holding office for three consecutive terms. With a net worth of $36.5 billion, he is estimated to be the 10th richest person in the United States and the 13th wealthiest in the world. He is the founder, CEO and 88 percent owner of Bloomberg L.P., the global financial data and media company that bears his name and is notable for its Bloomberg Terminal, which is widely used by investment professionals around the world. Bloomberg began his career at the securities brokerage Salomon Brothers before forming his company in 1981 and spending the next 20 years as its chairman and CEO. He also served as chairman of the board of trustees at his alma mater Johns Hopkins University from 1996 to 2002. A Democrat before seeking elective office, Bloomberg switched his party registration in 2001 to run for mayor as a Republican. Bloomberg won a second term in 2005 and left the Republican Party two years later. He was elected to his third term in 2009 as an independent candidate on the Republican ballot line. He was frequently mentioned as a possible candidate for the U.S. presidential elections in 2008 and 2012, and for New York governor in 2010. He declined to seek either office, instead opting to continue serving as mayor of New York. On January 1, 2014, Bill de Blasio succeeded Bloomberg, who returned to Bloomberg L.P. and re-assumed the position of CEO at the end of 2014.
Judy Blume * Born Judith Sussman on February 12, 1938, her novels for children and young adults have exceeded sales of 80 million and translated into 32 languages. Blume’s novels for teenagers were among the first to tackle racism (Iggie’s House), menstruation (Are You There God* It’s Me, Margaret), divorce (It’s Not the End of the World, Just As Long As We’re Together), bullying (Blubber), masturbation again (Deenie: Then Again, Maybe I Won’t) and teen sex (Forever). Blume has used these subjects to generate discussion, but they have also been the source of controversy regarding age-appropriate reading. A lifelong and avid reader, Blume first began writing when her children were attending preschool, and published her first book, The One in the Middle Is the Green Kangaroo, in 1969. The decade that followed proved to be her most prolific, with 13 more books being published. After publishing novels for young children and teens, Blume tackled another genre—adult reality and death. Her novels Wifey (1978) and Smart Women (1983) and Summer Sisters (1998) shot to the top of The New York Times best-seller list. Blume has won more than 90 literary awards, including three lifetime achievement awards in the U.S. and in 1996 the American Library Association Margaret A. Edwards Award for “significant and lasting contribution to young adult literature.” Throughout Blume’s career, she has made efforts to advocate for organizations that support intellectual freedom, having found herself at the center of an organized book-banning campaign. This led to her joining the National Coalition Against Censorship.
John C. Bogle * John Clifton “Jack” Bogle, born May 8, 1929, is the founder and retired CEO of but still active in The Vanguard Group, which he founded in 1974. It grew to be the second-largest mutual fund in the world. Bogle founded the Vanguard 500 Index Fund in 1975 as the first index mutual fund available to the general public. His 1999 book, Common Sense on Mutual Funds: New Imperatives for the Intelligent Investor, was a bestseller and is considered an investment classic. His net worth has been estimated at $80 million. His advice to fretful investors: shut your eyes and let indexes do the work.
Pierre Boulez * Born March 26, 1925, in Montbrison, Loire, France, he early demonstrated aptitude in both music and mathematics. He pursued the latter at Lyon before pursuing music at the Paris Conservatoire. The first fruits of his work were his cantatas Le visage nuptial and Le soleil des eaux for female voices and orchestra, both composed in the late 1940s and revised several times since, as well as the Second Piano Sonata of 1948, a well-received 32-minute work that Boulez composed at the age of 23. Boulez quickly became one of the philosophical leaders of the post-WWII movement in the arts towards greater abstraction and experimentation.
Eva T.H. Brann * Born to a Jewish family in Berlin in (birth date to come, she immigrated to the United States in 1941and received her B.A. from Brooklyn College in 1950, her M.A. in classics from Yale in 1951 and her Ph.D. in archaeology from Yale in 1956. She also holds an Honorary Doctorate from Middlebury College. Brann is a former dean (1990–1997) and the longest-serving tutor (1957–present) at St. John’s College, Annapolis. In her early years at St. John’s, she was very close to Jacob Klein, a Russian-American and interpreter of Plato, who worked extensively on the nature and historical origin of modern symbolic mathematics. After his death, Brann increasingly assumed his role as the defining figure of St. John’s, the St. John’s program, and the continuing dialogue with the Great Books represented by the program. She is a 2005 recipient of the National Humanities Medal.
Zbigniew Kazimierz Brezezinski * Born March 28, 1928, he is an American political scientist, geostrategist and statesman who served as a counselor to Lyndon B. Johnson from 1966–1968 and held the position of National Security Adviser to Jimmy Carter from 1977 to 1981. Brzezinski belongs to the realist school of international relations, standing in the geopolitical tradition of Halford Mackinder and Nicholas J. Spykman. Major foreign policy events during his watch included the normalization of relations with the People’s Republic of China, signing of the second Strategic Arms Limitation Treaty (SALT II), brokering the Camp David Accords, the transition of Iran from an important U.S. client state to an anti-Western Islamic Republic, encouraging dissidents in Eastern Europe and emphasizing human rights in order to undermine the influence of the Soviet Union,] the financing of the Mujahideen in Afghanistan in response to the Soviet deployment of forces there and the arming of these rebels to counter the Soviet invasion, and the signing of the Torrijos-Carter Treaties relinquishing U.S. control of the Panama Canal after 1999. Brzezinski is currently Robert E. Osgood Professor of American Foreign Policy at Johns Hopkins University’s School of Advanced International Studies, a scholar at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, and a member of various boards and councils.
Tom Brokaw * Born February 6, 1940, he began an illustrious television career in local stations in Iowa and Nebraska and in 1966 joined NBC reporting from California. He was promoted to White House correspondent in 1973 at the time of the Watergate scandal. In 1976 he became host of The Today Show (with co-host Jane Pauley and after six years took over the anchor chair of the NBC Nightly News. By the end of his tenure in 2004 was regarded as the most popular news personality in the United States. After leaving as anchor, to be succeeded by Brian Williams, Brokaw has been a Nightly News special correspondent and political analyst for NBC. He moderated the second presidential debate between Barack Obama and John McCain and works on documentaries for the Discovery and History Channels. Brokaw is the author of The Greatest Generation, among other well-received books. He was diagnosed with multiple myeloma in 2013, a cancer affecting blood cells in the bone marrow, and is now in remission. He continued to work for NBC throughout his treatments and has written a book, A Lucky Life Interrupted: A Memoir of Hope, about his personal journey after begin diagnosed with cancer. His honors include the Presidential Medal of Freedom as well as Emmy and Peabody Awards.
Mel Brooks * Born as Melvin James “Mel” Kaminsky on June 28, 1926, he is an American film director, screenwriter, comedian, actor, producer, composer and songwriter, best known as a creator of broad film farces and comic parodies. He began his career as a comic and a writer for the early TV variety show Your Show of Shows. He became well known as part of the comedy duo — The 2000 Year Old Man — with Carl Reiner. He became one of the most successful film directors of the 1970s, with many of his films among the top 10 money makers of the year that they were released. Among his best known were The Producers (also a smash hit on Broadway), Blazing Saddles and Young Frankenstein. He was married to the actress Anne Bancroft from 1964 until her death in 2005.
Warren Edward Buffett * Born August 30, 1930, he is an American business magnate, investor and philanthropist – considered the most successful investor of the 20th century. Buffett is the chairman, CEO and largest shareholder of Berkshire Hathaway, and consistently ranked among the world’s wealthiest and most influential people. Buffett, who lives there, is variously described as the wizard, oracle or sage of Omaha. He is noted for his adherence to value investing and for his personal frugality despite his immense wealth. He is, however, a notable philanthropist, having pledged to give away 99 percent of his fortune, primarily via the Gates Foundation.
Carol Creighton Burnett * Born April 26, 1933, she is an American actress, comedian, singer and writer known best for her 11-year run with The Carol Burnett Show on CBS. She has achieved success on stage, television, and film in varying genres including dramatic and comedy roles. She performed in nightclubs in New York City and had a breakout success on Broadway in 1959 in Once Upon a Mattress, for which she received a Tony Award nomination. She made her television debut on The Garry Moore Show and won her first of many Emmy Awards in 1962. She also appeared in specials with Julie Andrews, Dolly Parton, Beverly Sills and others. Burnett returned to the Broadway stage in 1995 in Moon Over Buffalo, for which she was again nominated for a Tony.
George Herbert Walker Bush * Born June 12, 1924, he served as the 41st President of the United States from 1989 to 1993. A Republican, he had previously served as the 43rd Vice President from 1981 to 1989, and as a congressman, an ambassador and director of the Central Intelligence Agency. He is the oldest living former President and Vice President, and also the last living former President who is a veteran of World War II. Bush is often referred to as “Bush 41” to distinguish him from his son, former President George W. Bush, “Bush 43.” Bush was the son of Senator Prescott Bush. Following the attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941, Bush postponed college, enlisted in the U.S. Navy on his 18th birthday, and became the youngest aviator in the U.S. Navy. After the war he attended Yale University. Graduating in 1948, he moved his family to West Texas and entered the oil business, becoming a millionaire by the age of 40. He became involved in politics soon after founding his own oil company, serving as a member of the House of Representatives. Failing to win the Republican nomination for President in 1980, he was chosen by party nominee Ronald Reagan to be his running mate. In 1988, Bush ran a successful campaign to succeed Reagan as President. He lost the 1992 presidential election to Democrat Bill Clinton.
George Walker Bush * Born July 6, 1946, he served as the 43rd President of the United States from 2001 to 2009 and 46th governor of Texas from 1995 to 2000. The eldest son of Barbara and George H. W. Bush, he was born in New Haven, Connecticut. After graduating from Yale University in 1968 and Harvard Business School in 1975, he worked in oil businesses. He married Laura Welch in 1977 and ran unsuccessfully for the House of Representatives shortly thereafter. He later co-owned the Texas Rangers baseball team before defeating Ann Richards in the 1994 Texas gubernatorial election. He was elected President in 2000 after a close and controversial election against Al Gore, becoming the fourth president to be elected while receiving fewer popular votes nationwide than an opponent. He is the second President to have been the son of a former president, the first having been John Quincy Adams. He is also the brother of Jeb Bush, a former governor of Florida and a failed candidate for the Republican presidential nomination in the 2016 presidential election. Eight months into Bush’s first term as president, the September 11 terrorist attacks occurred and he responded with what became known as the Bush Doctrine, launching a “War on Terror,” an international military campaign that included wars in Afghanistan (2001) and Iraq (2003). He also promoted policies on the economy, health care, education, social security reform, and amending the Constitution to prohibit same-sex marriage, while signing into law broad tax cuts, the Patriot Act, the No Child Left Behind Act, the Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act, Medicare prescription drug benefits for seniors, and funding for the AIDS relief program known as PEPFAR. Bush successfully ran for re-election against Democratic Senator John Kerry in 2004, in another relatively close election. He then received increasingly heated criticism from across the political spectrum[for his handling of the Iraq War, Hurricane Katrina and other challenges. Nationally, Bush was both one of the most popular and unpopular Presidents in history, having received the highest recorded presidential approval ratings in the wake of the September 11 attacks, as well as one of the lowest approval ratings during the 2008 financial crisis. Bush left office in 2009 and is currently a public speaker; he has written a memoir, Decision Points, and his presidential library was opened in 2013. The Bush presidency has been ranked among the worst in surveys of presidential scholars published in the late 2000s and 2010s.
James Earl “Jimmy” Carter Jr. * Born October 1, 1924, he served as the 39th President of the United States from 1987 to 1981. He was awarded the 2002 Nobel Peace Prize. Raised in rural Georgia, Carter was a peanut farmer who served two terms as a Georgia State Senator, from 1963 to 1967, and one as the Governor of Georgia, from 1971 to 1975. He was elected President in 1976, defeating incumbent president Gerald Ford in a relatively close election, running as an outsider who promised truth in government in the wake of the Watergate scandal. He established a national energy policy that included conservation, price control, and new technology. In foreign affairs, Carter pursued the Camp David Accords, the Panama Canal Treaties, the second round of Strategic Arms Limitation Talks (SALT II), and returned the Panama Canal Zone to Panama. By 1980, Carter’s popularity had eroded. He lost the general election to Republican candidate Ronald Reagan. Carter has been highly active after leaving the White House. He set up the Carter Center in 1982, as his base for advancing human rights. He has traveled extensively to conduct peace negotiations, observe elections, and advance disease prevention and eradication in developing nations. Carter is a key figure in the Habitat for Humanity project, and also remains particularly critical of Israel’s role in the Israeli–Palestinian conflict.
Richard Alva “Dick” Cavett * Born November 19, 1936, he is an American former television talk show host known for his conversational style and in-depth discussions. Cavett appeared regularly on nationally broadcast television in the United States in five consecutive decades, the 1960s through the 2000s. In recent years, Cavett has written a column for the online New York Times and hosted replays of his classic TV interviews on the Turner Classic Movies channel.
Anne Beau Cox Chambers * Born December 1, 1919, she is reputed to be the 28th richest person in the United States and 53rd richest person in the world; her net worth was estimated by Forbes at $16.1 billion in September 2014. An American media proprietor, her fortune is built largely on a stake in Cox Enterprises, a privately held media empire that includes newspapers, television, radio, cable television, and other businesses. She is the daughter of James M. Cox, a newspaper publisher and 1920 Democratic Presidential nominee, and his second wife, Margaretta Parker Blair.
Richard Bruce “Dick” Cheney * Born January 30, 1941, he was the 46th Vice President of the United States from 2001 to 2009, under President George W. Bush. He was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives in 1978, representing Wyoming’s at-large congressional district from 1979 to 1989, and served briefly as House Minority Whip. Cheney was selected to be the Secretary of Defense during the Presidency of George H. W. Bush, holding the position from 1989 to 1993. Out of office during the Clinton administration, Cheney was the chairman and CEO of Halliburton Company from 1995 to 2000. Cheney played a leading behind-the-scenes role in the Bush Administration’s response to the September 11 attacks and coordination of the War on Terror. He was an early proponent of the Iraq War and defender of the administration’s record on terrorism. In 2011, Cheney published his memoir In My Time: A Personal and Political Memoir, written with daughter Liz Cheney. He has been cited as the most powerful Vice President in American history.
Avram Noam Chomsky * Born December 7, 1928, he is an American linguist, philosopher, cognitive scientist, logician, political commentator, social justice activist and anarcho-syndicalist advocate. Sometimes described as the “father of modern linguistics,” Chomsky is also a major figure in analytic philosophy. Most of his career has been spent at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), where he is currently Professor Emeritus, and has authored over 100 books. In 1967 he gained public attention for his vocal opposition to U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War, in part through his essay The Responsibility of Intellectuals, and came to be associated with the New Left while being arrested on multiple occasions for his anti-war activism. Chomsky continues to be well known as a political activist and a leading critic of U.S. foreign policy, neoliberal capitalism, and the mainstream news media. Ideologically, he aligns himself with anarcho-syndicalism and libertarian socialism. He was voted the “world’s top public intellectual” in a 2005 poll.
Eric Patrick Clapton * Born in England on March 30, 1945, he has become one of the most important and influential guitarists of all time — ranked second (to Jimi Hendrix) in Rolling Stone magazine’s list of the “100 Greatest Guitarists of All Time.” He has been awarded the Order of the British Empire with the rank of commander (CBE), and is also the recipient of 18 Grammy Awards. Clapton is also known for his rock and blues singing and songwriting, and is the only three-time inductee to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. In mid-1960s he left the Yardbirds to play blues with John Mayall & the Bluesbreakers, and Immediately after that formed the power trio Cream with drummer Ginger Baker and bassist Jack Bruce, in which Clapton played sustained blues improvisations and “arty, blues-based psychedelic pop.” For most of the 1970s, Clapton’s output bore the influence of the mellow style of JJ Cale and the reggae of Bob Marley. His version of Marley’s I Shot the Sheriff helped reggae reach a mass market. Two of his most popular recordings were Layla, recorded with Derek and the Dominos, and Robert Johnson’s Crossroads, recorded with Cream. Clapton’s four-year-old son fell from a 53rd storey window in New York in 1991, prompting the song Tears in Heaven. In 1998, a recovering alcoholic and drug addict, he founded the Crossroads Centre on Antigua, a medical facility for recovering substance abusers. Clapton has played in many concerts to benefit world disaster victims and charities.
Grace Coddington * Born April 20, 1941, on the island of Anglesey, Wales, she is a former model and the creative director at large of Vogue magazine, known for the creation of large, complex and dramatic photoshoots. A Guardian profile wrote that she “has produced some of fashion’s most memorable imagery. Her pictures might be jolly and decadent or moody and mysterious.” Her interest in fashion began in her teens, when she would anxiously await the arrival of a current issue of Vogue magazine, which was at least three months outdated. As a teen, she was said to be “pale-skinned, convent-educated and never went anywhere on her holidays.” As Coddington lived miles away from any designer shops, Vogue was her only connection to the fashion world. She says that she loves “the whole sort of chic thing (“Italianate culture”) [about Vogue] that was so entirely out of context compared to the lifestyle that [she] led.”
Francis Ford Coppola * Born April 7, 1939, he is an American film director, producer, screenwriter and a leader of the New Hollywood wave of filmmaking. He won his first Academy Award in 1970 for Best Original Screenplay as co-writer, with Edmund H. North, of Patton. His directorial prominence was cemented with the release in 1972 of The Godfather, a film that revolutionized movie-making in the gangster genre, earning praise from both critics and the public before winning three Academy Awards—including his second Oscar (Best Adapted Screenplay, with Mario Puzo), Best Picture, and his first nomination for Best Director. He followed with The Godfather Part II in 1974, which became the first sequel to win the Academy Award for Best Picture. Highly regarded by critics, it brought him three more Academy Awards: Best Adapted Screenplay, Best Director and Best Picture, and made him the second director, after Billy Wilder, to be honored three times for the same film. The Conversation, which he directed, produced and wrote, was released that same year, winning the Palme d’Or at the 1974 Cannes Film Festival. He next directed 1979’s Apocalypse Now. Notorious for its over-long and strenuous production, the film was nonetheless critically acclaimed for its vivid and stark depiction of the Vietnam War, winning his second Palme d’Or at the 1979 Cannes Film Festival.
David Van Cortlandt Crosby * Born August 14, 1941, he has established a great reputation among the front ranks of contemporary American guitarists, singers and songwriters. In addition to his solo career, he was a founding member of three bands: The Byrds, Crosby, Stills & Nash (occasionally joined by Neil Young) and CPR (Crosby, Pevar & Raymond — the last named is Crosby’s son). He has written or co-written many hit songs including the title track Déjà Vu for Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young’s 1970 debut. He is known for jazz influence on his songwriting and has twich been inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. His love of sailing inspired much of his popular music. Crosby has been depicted as emblematic of the counterculture, serving prison time in the 80s for drugs and weapons offenses. Among his more recent concerts was one to support the Occupy Wall Street movement.
Clive Jay Davis * Born April 4, 1932, he is an American record producer and music industry executive, having won five Grammy Awards and entered as a non-performer into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. From 1967 to 1973 Davis was the president of then CBS-owned Columbia Records, and subsequently founded Arista Records and J Records on his own. From 2002 until April 2008, Davis was the chairman and CEO of the RCA Music Group (which came to include RCA Records, J Records and Arista), and chairman and CEO of BMG North America. He is now the chief creative officer of Sony Music Entertainment. Davis has played a significant part in the careers of TLC, Aretha Franklin, Rod Stewart, Alicia Keys, Barry Manilow, Christina Aguilera, Carlos Santana, Kelly Clarkson, Leona Lewis and Jennifer Hudson, and is credited with bringing Whitney Houston to prominence. He is an alumnus of New York University, where the Clive Davis Institute of Recorded Music bears his name in the Tisch School of the Arts.
Clinton Richard Dawkins * Born March 26, 1941, he is an English ethologist, an evolutionary biologist and writer and an emeritus fellow of New College, Oxford. He was the University of Oxford’s Professor for Public Understanding of Science from 1995 until 2008. Dawkins came to prominence with his 1976 book The Selfish Gene, which popularized the gene-centered view of evolution and introduced the term meme. Dawkins is an atheist, a patron of the British Humanist Association, and a supporter of the Brights movement. He is well known for his criticism of creationism and intelligent design.
Doris Day * Born Doris Mary Ann Kappelhoff on April 3, 1924, she is an American actress, singer and animal rights activist. Her career began as a big band singer in 1939 and her popularity began to rise after her first hit, Sentimental Journey, in 1945. After leaving Les Brown & His Band of Renown to embark on a solo career, Day started her -lasting partnership with Columbia Records, her only label from 1947 to 1967, which included more than 650 recordings, making Day one of the most popular and acclaimed singers of the 20th century. She will be forever remembered for her rendition of Que Sera, Sera (“Whatever Will Be, Will Be,” written by Jay Livingston and Ray Evans), which became her signature song when she moved to television with The Doris Day Show from 1968 to 1973. Her movie career had begun in 1948 when she was cast in Romance on the High Seas. She appeared in 39 films and was ranked as the biggest box-office star (the only woman appearing on that list in the era) for four years (1960, 1962, 1963 and 1964) and would become the top-ranking female box-office star of all time. Day received an Academy Award nomination for her performance in Pillow Talk, won three Henrietta Awards (World Film Favorite), the Los Angeles Film Critics Association’s Career Achievement Award and in 1989 the Cecil B. DeMille Award for lifetime achievement in motion pictures. She made her last film in 1968. A winner of the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award and a Legend Award from the Society of Singers. In 2011, she released her 29th studio album, My Heart, which debuted at No. 9 on the UK Top 40 charts. As of January 2014, Day is the oldest living artist to score a UK Top 10 with an album featuring new material. Her strong commitment to animal welfare began in 1971, when she co-founded “Actors and Others for Animals.” She started her own Doris Day Animal Foundation in the late 1970s, and, later the Doris Day Animal League. In 2004, she received the Presidential Medal of Freedom from President George W. Bush in recognition of her distinguished service to the country.
Dame Judith Olivia “Judi” Dench * Born December 9, 1934, she is an English actress and author who made her professional debut in 1957 with the Old Vic Company. Over the following few years she performed in several of Shakespeare’s plays, establishing herself as one of the most significant British theatre performers, working for the National Theatre Company and the Royal Shakespeare Theatre . She achieved television success in the series A Fine Romance from 1981 until 1984, and in 1992 got a starring role in the television romantic comedy series As Time Goes By. Her film appearances were infrequent until she was cast as M in Golden Eye, a role she continued to play in James Bond films. She received her first Oscar nomination for her role as Queen Victoria in Mrs. Brown, and the following year won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress for Shakespeare in Love. She is a seven-time Oscar nominee.
Robert De Niro * Born August 17, 1943, he is an American actor and film producer who has starred in over 90 films. Cast as the young Vito Corleone in The Godfather Part II, he won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor. His long collaboration with director Martin Scorsese earned him another Oscar for Raging Bull. Additionally, De Niro has earned four Golden Globe nominations for Best Actor.
Abel Joseph “Jack” Diamond * A Canadian architect born in South Africa (November 8, 1932) and educated at Oxford and the University of Pennsylvania, he became the founding director of the master of architecture program at the University of Toronto, and in 1970 established Diamond Schmitt Architects. An international firm, its buildings of note include the Jerusalem City Hall In Israel, the Harlan Center of the Arts in Washington D.C., the Manisky Theater New Opera in Russia’s St. Petersburg, a resort in progress on the Black Sea in Bulgaria, as well as the Opera House in Toronto. He has been designated as an Officer of the Order of Canada.
Joan Didion * Born December 5, 1934, she is an American author best known for her novels and her facility with so-called New Journalism, which seeks to communicate facts through narrative storytelling and literary techniques. This style is also described as creative nonfiction, intimate journalism, or literary nonfiction. Her novels and essays are noted for exploring the disintegration of American morals and cultural chaos, where the overriding theme is individual and social fragmentation. A sense of anxiety or dread permeates much of her work. Didion graduated from the University of California, Berkeley, in 1956 with a Bachelor of Arts in English. During her senior year, she won first place in an essay contest sponsored by Vogue, with the prize a job at the magazine. For two years at Vogue, Didion worked her way up from promotional copywriter to associate feature editor. While there, she wrote her first novel, Run, River, which was published in 1963. She returned to California with her new husband, writer John Gregory Dunne, and in 1968 published Slouching Towards Bethlehem, her first work of nonfiction, a collection of magazine pieces about her experiences in California. In 1979 she published The White Album, another collection of magazine pieces. A Book of Common Prayer was published in 1977. She also published Democracy in 1984, which narrates the story of a long but unrequited love affair between a wealthy heiress and an older man, a CIA officer, against the background of the Cold War and the Vietnam conflict. Her many subsequent works include Miami, After Henry and The Last Thing He Wanted, a romantic thriller. Didion has received a great deal of recognition for The Year of Magical Thinking, which was awarded the National Book Award for Nonfiction in 2005. Documenting the grief she experienced following the sudden death of her husband, the book has been said to be a “masterpiece of two genres: memoir and investigative journalism.” In 2007 she received the National Book Foundation’s annual Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters as well as the Evelyn F. Burkey Award from the Writers Guild of America. In 2009, Didion was awarded an honorary Doctor of Letters degree by Harvard, and Yale conferred another honorary degree in 2011. In 2013 she received the National Medal of Arts and Humanities, presented by President Barack Obama.
Barry Charles Diller * Born February 2, 1942, he is a creative executive and entrepreneur who first excelled in television and has since made a major mark on the internet. He is chairman and senior executive of IAC/InterActiveCorp and Expedia Inc. After a start at the William Morris Agency, he soon went to ABC, where he pioneered the made-for-television movie. Recruited by Hollywood, he became chairman and CEO of Paramount Pictures, where he served for 10 years, creating such films as Saturday Night Fever, Grease, Raiders of the Lost Ark and Terms of Endearment, along with TV series including Laverne & Shirley, Taxi and Cheers. At Fox Inc. from 1984 to 1992 he created not only the fourth American TV network but such hits as The Simpsons. On his own, Diller made a number of home shopping and station acquisitions that led to creation of IAC, which now includes over 150 sites including Match.com, Ask.com, The Daily Beast and Vimeo, and has spawned independent ventures including Expedia, HSN and LiveNation (formerly Ticketmaster). IAC’s new headquarters in New York’s Chelsea neighborhood were designed by leading architect Frank Gehry (see 70 + bio).
Samuel Andrew Donaldson Jr. * Born March 11, 1934, he is an American reporter and news anchor, best known for his interactions with Presidents as ABC’s White House correspondent and later as co-anchor of that network’s Prime Time and This Week. Among his honors are four Emmys, three Peabodys, the Edward R. Murrow award and the Paul White award.
Robert Selden Duvall * This American actor and director (born January 5, 1931) has been nominated for seven Academy Awards (winning for his performance in Tender Mercies), six Golden Globes (winning four), and received the National Medal of Arts in 2005. He has starred in some of the most acclaimed and popular films and television series of all time, including The Twilight Zone, To Kill a Mockingbird, THX 1138, Colors, The Godfather (Parts I and II), M*A*S*H, Network, True Grit, The Conversation, Apocalypse Now, Falling Down, The Natural, Lonesome Dove and Get Low. Duvall began appearing in theater during the late 1950s, moving into television and film roles during the early 1960s, playing Boo Radley in To Kill a Mockingbird (1962) and appearing in Captain Newman, M.D. (1963). He landed many of his most famous roles during the early 1970s, such as Major Frank Burns in M*A*S*H (1970) and the lead in THX 1138 (1971), as well as Horton Foote’s adaptation of William Faulkner’s Tomorrow (1972), which was developed at the Actor’s Studio and is Duvall’s personal favorite.
Bob Dylan * Born as Robert Allen Zimmerman on May 24, 1941, is an American singer-songwriter, artist and writer who has been influential in popular music and culture for more than five decades. Much of his most celebrated work dates from the 1960s, when his songs chronicled social unrest, although Dylan repudiated suggestions from journalists that he was a spokesman for his generation. Nevertheless, early songs such as “Blowin’ in the Wind” and “The Times They Are a-Changin'” became anthems for the American civil rights and anti-war movements. After he left his initial base in the American folk music revival, his six-minute single “Like a Rolling Stone” altered the range of popular music in 1965. His mid-1960s recordings, backed by rock musicians, reached the top of the United States music charts while also attracting denunciation and criticism from others in the folk movement. Initially inspired by the performances of Little Richard and the songwriting of Woody Guthrie, Robert Johnson, and Hank Williams, Dylan has amplified and personalized musical genres. Dylan performs with guitar, keyboards, and harmonica. Backed by a changing lineup of musicians, he has toured steadily since the late 1980s on what has been dubbed the Never Ending Tour. His accomplishments as a recording artist and performer have been central to his career, but songwriting is considered his greatest contribution. Dylan has sold more than 100 million records, making him one of the best-selling artists of all time. He has also received numerous awards including eleven Grammy Awards, a Golden Globe Award, and an Academy Award. Dylan has been inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, Minnesota Music Hall of Fame, Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame, and Songwriters Hall of Fame. The Pulitzer Prize jury in 2008 awarded him a special citation for “his profound impact on popular music and American culture, marked by lyrical compositions of extraordinary poetic power.”
Mia Farrow * Born in Los Angeles as Maria de Lourdes Villiers Farrow on February 9, 1945, the daughter of director John Farrow and actress Maureen O’ Sullivan, and known professionally simply as Mia Farrow, she has been far from simple in her career as an American actress, activist and former fashion model. She first gained notice for her role as Allison MacKenzie in the television soap opera Peyton Place, and gained further recognition for her subsequent short-lived marriage to Frank Sinatra (and later and longer to Andre Previn). An early film role, as Rosemary in Roman Polanski’s Rosemary’s Baby (1968), saw her nominated for a BAFTA and a Golden Globe for Best Actress. She went on to appear in films such as John and Mary (1969), Follow Me! (1972), The Great Gatsby (1974) and Death on the Nile (1978). Farrow was in a relationship with actor-director Woody Allen from 1980 to 1992 and appeared in 12 of his 13 films over that period, including Zelig, Broadway Danny Rose, The Purple Rose of Cairo, Hannah and Her Sisters, Radio Days, Crimes and Misdemeanors, Alice and Husbands and Wives. She has appeared in more than 50 films and won numerous awards, including a Golden Globe, and received seven additional Golden Globe nominations, three BAFTA nominations and a best actress award at the San Sebastian International Film Festival. Farrow is known for her extensive work as a UNICEF Goodwill Ambassador and is involved in humanitarian activities in Darfur, Chad and the Central African Republic. In 2008, Time magazine named her one of the most influential people in the world.
Joseph A. Flaherty Jr.* Born December 25, 1930, he became one of the world leading broadcast technologists, largely during his tenure as head of CBS Inc.’s engineering operations. He similarly played a leading role in international spectrum negotiations in Geneva. He is considered by many “The Father of HDTV” for his decades-long role in advancing that technology in the U. S. and worldwide. Among his other engineering breakthroughs was ENG (electronic news gathering), which ended the reliance on film in TV journalism.
Jane Fonda * Born Lady Jayne Seymour Fonda on December 21, 1937, she is an American actress, writer, political activist, former fashion model and fitness guru. She is a two-time Academy Award winner and in 2014 was the recipient of the American Film Institute’s Life Achievement Award. Fonda made her Broadway debut in the 1960 play There Was a Little Girl, for which she received the first of two Tony Award nominations, and made her screen debut later the same year in Tall Story. She rose to fame in such 1960s films as Period of Adjustment (1962), Sunday in New York (1963), Cat Ballou (1965), Barefoot in the Park (1967) and Barbarella (1968). A seven-time Academy Award nominee, she received her first nomination for They Shoot Horses, Don’t They (1969) and went on to win two Best Actress Oscars in the 1970s for Klute (1971) and Coming Home (1978). In 1982, she released her first exercise video, Jane Fonda’s Workout, which became the highest-selling video of the time. It would be the first of 22 workout videos released by her over the next 13 years which would collectively sell over 17 million copies. Her first husband was Barbarella director Roger Vadim. Divorced from second husband Tom Hayden, she married billionaire media mogul Ted Turner in 1991 and retired from acting. Divorced from Turner in 2001, she returned to acting with her first film in 15 years with the 2005 comedy Monster in Law. In 2009, she returned to Broadway after a 45-year absence in the play 33 Variations, which earned her a Tony Award nomination, and had a recurring role in the HBO drama series The Newsroom (2012-2014), She is now appearing in the Netflix comedy series Grace and Frankie with fellow 70 + futurists Lily Tomlin, Martin Sheen and Sam Waterston. Fonda has been an activist for many political causes. Her counterculture era opposition to the Vietnam War included a controversial visit to Hanoi. She has also protested the Iraq War and violence against women, and describes herself as a feminist.
Harrison Ford * Born July 13, 1942, he is an American actor and film producer who gained worldwide fame for his starring roles as Han Solo in the original Star Wars epic and the title character of the Indiana Jones film series. His career has spanned six decades and includes roles such blockbusters as Apocalypse Now, Presumed Innocent and The Fugitive. At one point, four of the top six box-office hits of all time included one of his roles.
Pope Francis * Born in Buenos Aires, Argentina, as Jorge Mario Bergoglio on December 17, 1936, he is the reigning Pope of the Roman Catholic Church. He was ordained a priest in 1969 and from 1973 to 1979 was Argentina’s Provincial superior of the Society of Jesus. He became the Archbishop of Buenos Aires in 1998 and was created a cardinal in 2001. He succeeded Pope Benedict XVI on February 28, 2013. He is the first Jesuit pope, the first from the Americas, the first from the Southern Hemisphere and the first non-European pope in 1,272 years. Pope Francis is noted for his humility, his concern for the poor and his commitment to dialogue as a way to build bridges between people of all backgrounds, beliefs and faiths. He is known for a simpler and less formal approach to the papacy, and chose not to reside in the papal apartments used by his predecessors.
Morgan Freeman * Born June 1, 1937, this American actor and narrator won an Academy Award in 2005 for Best Supporting Actor with Million Dollar Baby (2004), and he has received Oscar nominations for his performances in Street Smart (1987), Driving Miss Daisy (1989), The Shawshank Redemption (1994) and Invictus (2009). He also won a Golden Globe Award and a Screen Actors Guild Award. Freeman has appeared in many other box office hits, including Glory (1989), Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves (1991), Seven (1995), Deep Impact (1998), The Sum of All Fears (2002), Bruce Almighty (2003), The Dark Knight Trilogy, The Lego Movie (2014), and Lucy (2014). He is known for his distinctively smooth, deep voice. He got his break as part of the cast of the 1970s children’s program The Electric Company. Morgan Freeman is ranked as the 3rd highest box office star with over $4.316 billion total box office gross, an average of $74.4 million per film.
James Galway * Born December 8, 1939, he is an Irish flute player and became one of the first with that talent to be internationally known as a soloist. After studying the flute in London and Paris, he spent 15 years as an orchestral player with various orchestras in Europe before leaving the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra to go solo. Galway is known for combining standard classical with contemporary music in his performances. Galway has produced over 70 CDs with many original songs, as well as authored articles and books about flute music. In addition to his busy touring schedule, Galway is president of a global, nonprofit organization called Flutewise, which supports young flute players. He also makes time to share his expertise with youth through the 10-day ‘Galway Flute Festival’ he holds each year with his wife in Switzerland and the USA. Galway was made an Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) in 1977, and was knighted in 2001, the first wind player ever to receive that honor. His 2015 tour schedule includes concerts in Asia, Canada, the United States and Europe, reflecting his popularity around the world.
David Lawrence Geffen * Born February 21, 1943, he is an American business magnate, producer, film studio executive and philanthropist. Geffen created or co-created Asylum Records in 1970, Geffen Records in 1980, and DGC Records in 1990. He was one of the three founders of DreamWorks SKG in 1994. Like so many others of legend, he began in the mailroom at William Morris Agency, then left to become a personal manager and was immediately successful with Laura Nyro and Crosby, Stills and Nash. He then started Asylum Records, eventually signing The Eagles, Joni Mitchell, Bob Dylan and Linda Ronstadt, among others. In 1980 he started Geffen Records, whose label would include John Lennon, Olivia Newton-John, Elton John, Cher, Aerosmith, Nirvana and Neil Young. Geffen was the backer for the Broadway musicals Dreamgirls and Cats, and in 1994 co-founded DreamWorks SKG with Steven Spielberg and Jeffrey Katzenberg. A prominent philanthropist, he gave UCLA a $200 million endowment for its School of Medicine (now named in his honor) in 2002, and added another $100 million in 2015. That same year he pledged $100 million toward renovating Avery Fisher Hall at New York’s Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts in New York. His estimated net worth is $6 billion.
Frank Owen Gehry * Born February 28, 1929, he is a Canadian architect currently a United States resident based in Los Angeles. A number of his buildings, including his private residence, have become world-renowned tourist attractions and are cited as among the most important works of contemporary architecture in the 2010 World Architecture Survey — which led Vanity Fair to label him as “the most important architect of our age.” Although the list of his works defies abbreviation, they include the titanium-clad Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao (Spain), the Walt Disney Concert Hall in downtown Los Angeles, the Louis Vuitton Foundation in Paris, MIT’s Ray and Maria Stata Center in Cambridge, the New World Center in Miami Beach, the Weisman Art Museum in Minneapolis, the Dancing House in Prague, the Art Gallery of Ontario in Toronto, the Cinémathèque Française in Paris, and 8 Spruce Street in New York. He also designed the future National Dwight D. Eisenhower Memorial.
Georgie Anne Geyer * Born April 2, 1935, she is a leading American journalist and columnist for the Universal Press Syndicate. Her columns focus on foreign affairs issues and appear in approximately 120 newspapers in North and South America. She speaks Spanish, Portuguese, German and Russian. Her first job was with the Chicago Southtown Economist. From 1959 to 1974, Geyer was a reporter for the now-defunct Chicago Daily News, where she started with society reporting and worked her way to the news desk and eventually to be a foreign correspondent. After leaving the paper, she began her syndicated column. She is the author of several books, including a biography of Fidel Castro. In 1973, she was the first Western reporter to interview Saddam Hussein, then Vice President of Iraq. She interviewed Yasser Arafat, Anwar Sadat, King Hussein of Jordan, Muammar al-Gaddafi and the Ayatollah Khomeini. She reported on rebels in the Dominican Republic, was held by authorities in Angola for her reporting during civil war, and was threatened with death by the White Hand death squads in Guatemala. Geyer has more than 21 honorary degrees, including three from Northwestern alone.
Joe Jackson Gibbs * Born November 25, 1940, he is a former American football coach, NASCAR championship team owner, and two time NHRA team owner. He was twice the head coach for the e Washington Redskins (1981–1992, 2004–2007). During his first stint in the National Football League, he coached the Redskins for 12 seasons and led them to eight playoff appearances, four NFC Championship titles, and three Super Bowl titles. After retiring at the end of the 1992 season, he switched focus to his NASCAR team, Joe Gibbs Racing, which has won three championships under his ownership. On January 7, 2004, Gibbs came out of retirement to rejoin the Redskins as head coach and team president, signing a five-year, $28.5 million contract. He remains with the organization as “Special Advisor” to team owner Daniel Snyder.
George Franklin Gilder * Born November 29, 1939, he is an American investor, writer, economist, techno-utopian advocate, Republican Party activist and co-founder of the Discovery Institute. His 1981 international bestseller Wealth and Poverty advanced a practical and moral case for supply-side economics and capitalism during the early months of the Reagan Administration and made him President Reagan’s most quoted living author. In 2013 he published Knowledge and Power: The Information Theory of Capitalism and How It is Revolutionizing Our World, which reformulated economics in terms of the information theory of Alan Turing (widely considered to be the father of theoretical computer science and artificial intelligence) and Claude Shannon (known as the father of Information theory). In the 1970s Gilder established himself as a critic of feminism and government welfare policies, arguing that they eroded the “sexual constitution” that civilized and socialized men in the roles of fathers and providers. In the 1990s he became an enthusiastic evangelist of technology and the Internet through several books and his newsletter, the Gilder Technology Report. He’s also known as chairman of George Gilder Fund Management LLC.
Ruth Joan Bader Ginsburg * Born March 15, 1933, she took the oath as an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States on August 10, 1993. She is the second female justice (after Sandra Day O’Connor) and the first Jewish female justice. Ginsburg is generally viewed as belonging to the liberal wing of the Court. Before becoming a judge, she was an advocate for women’s rights as a constitutional principle, and was a volunteer lawyer for the American Civil Liberties Union, a member of its board of directors and a general counsel in the 1970s. She was a professor at Rutgers School of Law–Newark and Columbia Law School. In She was appointed by President Jimmy Carter to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit and by President Bill Clinton to the Supreme Court.
Rudolph William Louis “Rudy” Giuliani * Born May 28, 1944) is an American lawyer, businessman, former politician, and public speaker most remembered for his tenure as mayor of New York City. Politically a Democrat, then an Independent in the 1970s and a Republican since the 1980s, Giuliani was the United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York during the 1980s. He prosecuted pivotal cases against the American mafia and corrupt corporate financiers. Giuliani is credited for taming organized crime, most famously leading the case that sent John Gotti, the “Teflon Don,” to prison for life. That accomplishment won Giuliani a reputation for being tough on crime; he is widely credited for major improvements in the city’s quality of life and in lowering the rate of violent crimes. Giuliani gained international fame as New York City’s leader in the immediate aftermath of the 9/11 attacks in 2001. He was named Time magazine’s Person of the Year for 2001 was given an honorary knighthood in 2002 by Queen Elizabeth II.
John Herschel Glenn Jr. * This former U.S. Marine Corps aviator, engineer, astronaut and United States senator (born July 18, 1921 was selected as one of the “Mercury seven” group of military test pilots selected in 1959 by NASA to become America’s first astronauts and fly the Project Mercury spacecraft. On February 20, 1962, Glenn flew the Friendship 7 mission and became the first American to orbit the Earth and the fifth person in space. He won election to the Senate in 1974 and served through January 3, 1999. On October 29, 1998, while still a sitting senator, he became the oldest person to fly in space. He was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2012.
Dame Jane Morris Goodall * Born April 3, 1934, she is an English primatologist, ethologist, anthropologist and UN Messenger of Peace. Considered to be the world’s foremost expert on chimpanzees, Goodall is best known for her 55-year study of social and family interactions of wild chimpanzees in Gombe Stream National Park, Tanzania. She is the founder of the Jane Goodall Institute and the Roots & Shoots program, and has worked extensively on conservation and animal welfare issues, serving on the board of the Nonhuman Rights Project since its founding in 1996.
Donald Edward Graham * Born April 22, 1945, he is chief executive officer and chairman of Graham Holdings Company and former chairman of the Washington Post Co., sold to Amazon founder Jeffrey Bezos in 2013 for $250 million. The Meyer and Graham families had owned the Post for 80 years, and his mother (Katharine Graham) and father (Philip Graham) were notable in its rise to become one of the nation’s greatest newspapers. Graham graduated from St. Albans School and attended Harvard College. In 1966 he volunteered for military service in Vietnam from 1967 to 1968. He then became a patrolman for the Washington Metropolitan Police Department. In 1971, Graham joined the Post as a reporter and was elected to the board in 1974 and became executive vice president and general manager in 1976. He succeeded his mother as publisher in 1979 and became CEO in 1991. The company then owned the educational services provider Kaplan Inc., Post-Newsweek Stations, Cable One, Slate magazine, and other smaller companies. Graham also serves on the Pulitzer Prize board. He is president of the District of Columbia College Access Program, a trustee of the Federal City Council in Washington, on the board of The Summit Fund of Washington and a member of the board of directors at Psycho-Renderman. He is also the lead independent director on the board of Facebook.
Donald Andrew Hall Jr. * Born September 20, 1928, he is an American poet, writer, editor and literary critic, the author of over 50 books across genres from children’s literature, biography, memoir and essays, and including 22 volumes of verse. Regarded as a “plainspoken, rural poet,” Hall’s work “explores the longing for a more bucolic past and reflects the poet’s abiding reverence for nature.” He became the first poetry editor of The Paris Review (1953–1961) and was noted for interviewing poets and other authors on their craft. He taught at Stanford University, Bennington College and the University of Michigan, and was appointed as the Library of Congress’s 14th Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry, commonly known as Poet Laureate of the United States.
Stephen William Hawking * Born January 8, 1942, he is an English theoretical physicist, cosmologist, author and director of research at the Centre for Theoretical Cosmology within the University of Cambridge. His remarkable career in the realm of physics is the subject of a new popular movie, The Theory of Everything. His scientific works include theorems in the framework of general relativity, and the theoretical prediction that black holes emit radiation, often called Hawking radiation. He was the first to set forth a cosmology explained by a union of the general theory of relativity and quantum mechanics. Hawking is an Honorary Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts, a lifetime member of the Pontifical Academy of Sciences, and a recipient of the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the highest civilian award in the United States. His book, A Brief History of Time, stayed on the British Sunday Times best-seller list for a record-breaking 237 weeks. Hawking suffers from a rare early-onset slow-progressing form of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), also known as Lou Gehrig’s disease.
Dustin Lee Hoffman * Born August 8, 1937, he is an American actor and director best known for his versatile portrayals of antiheroes and vulnerable characters and widely considered one of the finest actors in history. He won the Academy Award for Best Actor in 1980 for Kramer vs. Kramer, and in 1988 for Rain Man. Hoffman first drew critical praise for starring in the play, Eh?, for which he won a Theatre World Award and a Drama Desk Award. This achievement was soon followed by his breakthrough 1967 film role as Benjamin Braddock, the title character in The Graduate. Since that time, Hoffman’s career has largely been focused on the cinema, with sporadic returns to television and to the stage. Hoffman’s notable films include: Midnight Cowboy, Little Big Man, Straw Dogs, Papillon, Lenny, Marathon Man, All the President’s Men, Kramer vs. Kramer, Tootsie, Rain Man, Hook, and Wag the Dog. He made his directorial debut in 2012, with Quartet. Along with two Academy Award wins, Hoffman has been nominated for five additional Academy Awards and was nominated for 13 Golden Globes, winning six. He has won four BAFTAs, three Drama Desk Awards, a Genie Award, and an Emmy, along with the AFI Life Achievement Award in 1999 and the Kennedy Center Honors Award in 2012.
Sir Philip Anthony Hopkins * Similarly considered in the ranks of the greatest living actors, the Welsh born actor (December 31, 1937) is well known for his portrayal of Hannibal Lecter in The Silence of the Lambs, for which he won the Academy Award for Best Actor, its sequel Hannibal, and the prequel Red Dragon. Other notable films include The Mask of Zorro, The Bounty, Meet Joe Black, The Elephant Man, Magic, 84 Charing Cross Road, Bram Stoker’s Dracula, Legends of the Fall, Thor, The Remains of the Day, Amistad, Nixon, The World’s Fastest Indian, Instinct, and Fracture. He was knighted by Queen Elizabeth II in 1993 for services to the arts, received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in 2003 and was made a Fellow of the British Academy of Film and Television Arts in 2008. He has also won three BAFTA Awards, two Emmys and the Cecil B. DeMille Award. Hopkins enrolled at the Royal Welsh College of Music & Drama in Cardiff in his early teens and graduated in 1957. After two years in the British Army doing his national service, he moved to London, where he trained at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art. In 1965, after several years in repertory, he was spotted by Laurence Olivier, who invited him to join the Royal National Theatre in London. Hopkins became Olivier’s understudy, and filled in when Olivier was struck with appendicitis during a production of August Strindberg’s The Dance of Death. Olivier later noted in his memoir, Confessions of an Actor, that “A new young actor in the company of exceptional promise named Anthony Hopkins was understudying me and walked away with the part of Edgar like a cat with a mouse between its teeth.” In 1968 he got his break in The Lion in Winter playing Richard I. Although Hopkins continued in theatre he gradually moved away from it to become more established as a television and then film actor. In 1980 he starred in The Elephant Man as the English doctor Sir Frederick Treves, and also that year starred opposite Shirley MacLaine in A Change of Seasons and famously said “she was the most obnoxious actress I have ever worked with.” In 1984 he starred opposite Mel Gibson in The Bounty as William Bligh, captain of the Royal Navy ship the HMS Bounty, in a retelling of the mutiny on the Bounty, and in 1992 portrayed Abraham Van Helsing in Francis Ford Coppola’s Bram Stoker’s Dracula. Hopkins starred opposite Emma Thompson in the critically acclaimed The Remains of the Day (1993) and was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Actor for his performance, and the film frequently ranks among the best British films of all time. He was Britain’s highest paid performer in 1998, starring in The Mask of Zorro and Meet Joe Black, and also agreed to reprise his role as Dr Hannibal Lecter for a fee of £15 million. In 2000, Hopkins narrated Dr. Seuss’ How the Grinch Stole Christmas. Hopkins portrayed Odin, the Allfather or “king” of Asgard, in the 2011 film adaptation of Marvel Comics’ Thor, and portrayed Alfred Hitchcock in Sacha Gervasi’s biopic Hitchcock, following his career while making Psycho.
Amos Barr Hostetter Jr. * Born January 12, 1937, he was an early developer of American cable television and became an industry statesman. He was the first chairman of C-SPAN, whose public service channels pioneered in covering the Congress. In 1963, Hostetter and his college roommate, H. Irving Grousbeck, founded Continental Cablevision in Fostoria and Tiffin, Ohio. At the time of the company’s sale in 1996 to US West, it was the largest privately owned cable company. Hostetter is currently chairman of Pilot House Associates LLC and a Life Trustee at Amherst College, his alma mater. His current net worth is estimated at $2.6 billion.
Carl Celian Icahn * Born February 16, 1936, he is an American businessman, activist shareholder, and investor — the majority shareholder of Icahn Enterprises, a diversified holding company. He began his career on Wall Street as a stockbroker in 1961 and by 1968 had formed Icahn & Co., a securities firm that focused on risk arbitrage and options trading. In 1978, he began taking controlling positions in individual companies, and has taken substantial or controlling positions in various corporations including RJR Nabisco, TWA, Texaco, Phillips Petroleum, Western Union, Gulf & Western, Viacom, Uniroyal, American Can, Marvel Comics, Revlon, Fairmont Hotels, Blockbuster, Kerr-McGee, Time Warner, Netflix, Motorola, and Herbalife. In the process Icahn developed a reputation as a ruthless “corporate raider” after his hostile takeover of TWA in 1985. The result of that takeover was Icahn systematically selling TWA’s assets to repay the debt he used to purchase the company, described as asset stripping. In 1988, Icahn took TWA private, gaining a personal profit of $469 million, and leaving TWA with a debt of $540 million. In 1991, Icahn sold TWA’s prized London routes to American Airlines for $445 million. A litany of the country’s biggest companies have attracted his interest since. In July 2013 Icahn started an attempt to acquire Dell Inc., and in August that year announced that his new stock pick is Apple, pushing the stock up 5{b163ed859cc9a16ba73837184ee02d2cdeccd9aa6dd670f1698634a383290a0c}. In February 2013 Forbes listed Icahn as one of the 40 highest-earning hedge fund managers.
Jesse Louis Jackson Sr. * Born Jesse Louis Burns on October 8, 1941, he is an American civil rights activist and Baptist minister. He has been known for commanding public attention since he first started working for Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. In 1965, Jackson participated in the Selma to Montgomery marches and, impressed by his drive and organizational abilities, King soon began giving Jackson a role in the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC). But he has often been at odds with others in the black leadership. By 1971 he had organized a new civil rights organization, now called People United to Serve Humanity (PUSH). In 1978 he called for a closer relationship between blacks and the Republican Party, saying that “the Republican Party needs black people if it is ever to compete for national office.” In 1984, Jackson organized the Rainbow Coalition and resigned his post as head of Operation PUSH to run for President. Jackson remains a key figure in civil rights activities to this day.
Sir Michael Philip Jagger * Better known as Mick Jagger, he was born on July 26, 1943, and came to fame as the lead performer and a founding member of The Rolling Stones. His career as a singer, songwriter and one-time actor has spanned over 50 years, and he has been described as “one of the most popular and influential front men in the history of rock & roll”. His distinctive voice and performance, along with the guitar of Keith Richards, have been the trademark of the Stones throughout their history. Jagger gained press notoriety for his admitted drug use and romantic involvements, and was often portrayed as a countercultural figure. In the late 1960s Jagger began acting in films (starting with Performance and Ned Kelly), to mixed reception. In 1985, Jagger released his first solo album, She’s the Boss. The outspoken Jagger doesn’t hold back. “Rock ‘n’ roll is like sex,” he says. “It’s very addictive. But you have to really be careful because you don’t want to do it all the time. It’s like when you are young and you think if you are not having sex you’re wasting your time. I try not to think about when I can’t do this any more. I say, don’t look at the clouds of tomorrow through the sunshine of today.” Jagger was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1989, and in 2004 into the United Kingdom’s Music Hall of Fame with the Rolling Stones. In 2003 he was knighted for his services to music.
Jerral Wayne “Jerry” Jones Sr. * Born October 13, 1942, he owns the NFL’s Dallas Cowboys. He is one of a few owners who actually earned significant success as a player. After several unsuccessful business ventures (including passing up the opportunity to purchase the American Football League’s San Diego Chargers in 1967) he began an oil and gas exploration business in Arkansas, Jones Oil and Land Lease, which became successful. His privately held company currently does natural resource prospecting.
Vernon Eulion Jordan Jr. * Born August 15, 1935, he has long been a leading figure in the civil rights movement as well as an influential figure in American politics. After earning a law degree at Howard University he joined an activist firm in Atlanta that sued the University of Georgia for racial discrimation in its admission policies, successfully winning the admission of two African Americans. He then became Georgia field director for the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, and later became executive director of the United Negro College fund before becoming president of the National Urgan League from 1971 to 1981. On May 29, 1980, Jordan was shot and seriously wounded outside the Marriott Inn in Fort Wayne, Indiana. He then became Washington legal counsel for the Dallas law firm of Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld. A friend and political adviser to Bill Clinton, Jordan served as part of Clinton’s transition team in 1992–93. Since January 2000, Jordan has been senior managing director with Lazard Freres & Co. LLC, an investment banking firm.
Anthony McLeod Kennedy * This Associate Justice of the U. S. Supreme Court (born July 23, 1936) was appointed by President Ronald Reagan in 1988. Since the retirement of Sandra Day O’Connor, he has often been the swing vote on many of the Court’s 5–4 decisions. He attended Stanford University and, after spending his senior year at the London School of Economics, earned an LL.B from Harvard Law School, graduating cum laude in 1961. He continues to teach constitutional law at McGeorge School of Law at University of the Pacific. In 1975 he was nominated by President Gerald Ford to the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, and to the Supreme Court by President Reagan in 1987. Although appointed by a Republican president, Kennedy is not easily pigeonholed ideologically. He has tended to look at cases individually instead of deciding them on the basis of a rigid ideology, yet has reliably issued conservative rulings during most of his tenure.
Giles M. Kelly * Born July 17, 1921, his career was distinguished by service in the Merchant Marine and the U. S. Navy (eventually promoted to the rank of captain), the Central Intelligence Agency, foreign service with the State Department and academia. He saw combat duty in the South Pacific during World War II and after graduating from Williams College and Princeton was recruited by the CIA and sent to London to liaise with the British Intelligence Service. He taught at American University before taking command of and recommissioning the historic but then decaying yacht of U. S. Presidents, which he memorialized in the book Presidential Yacht Sequoia.
Billie Jean King * Nee Moffitt, she was born on November 22, 1943, and is a former World No. 1 professional tennis player. King won 39 Grand Slam titles, including 12 singles, 16 women’s doubles, and 11 mixed doubles titles. She won the singles title at the inaugural WTA Tour Championships, and often represented the United States in the Federation and the Wightman Cups. She was a member of the victorious United States team in seven Federation Cups and nine Wightman Cups. For three years, King was the United States’ captain in the Federation Cup. An advocate for sexual equality, in 1973, at age 29, she won the so-called Battle of the Sexes tennis match against the 55-year-old Bobby Riggs, and was the founder of the Women’s Tennis Association, World Team Tennis (with former husband Larry King), and the Women’s Sports Foundation. King received the Presidential Medal of Freedom and was inducted into the International Tennis Hall of Fame.
Henry Kissinger * Born Heinz Alfred Kissinger on May 27, 1923, in Fürth, Germany, he served as National Security Advisor and later concurrently as Secretary of State in the administrations of Presidents Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford. For his actions negotiating the U.S. withdrawal from Vietnam, he controversially received the 1973 Nobel Peace Prize. A proponent of Realpolitik, Kissinger played a prominent role in United States foreign policy between 1969 and 1977 and pioneered the policy of détente with the Soviet Union, orchestrated the opening of relations with the People’s Republic of China, and negotiated the Paris Peace Accords, ending American involvement in the Vietnam War. He is the founder and chairman of Kissinger Associates, an international consulting firm. Kissinger has been a prolific author and has written over a dozen books.
Charles de Ganahl Koch * Born November 1, 1935, he is the elder of the two Koch brothers who have come to prominence as important financial supporters of the Republican Party. He is an American businessman and philanthropist and co-owner, chairman of the board, and chief executive officer of Koch Industries, which his brother David H. Koch serves as Executive Vice President. Charles and David each own 42{b163ed859cc9a16ba73837184ee02d2cdeccd9aa6dd670f1698634a383290a0c} of the conglomerate. The brothers inherited the business from their father, Fred C. Koch, then expanded the business. Originally involved exclusively in oil refining and chemicals, Koch Industries now includes process and pollution control equipment and technologies; polymers and fibers; minerals; fertilizers; commodity trading and services; forest and consumer products, and ranching. The businesses produce a wide variety of well-known brands, such as Stainmaster carpet, the Lycra brand of spandex fiber, Quilted Northern tissue and Dixie Cup. Koch Industries was the second-largest privately held company by revenue in the United States according to a 2010 Forbes survey. In February 2014, Charles Koch was ranked 9th richest person in the world by Hurun Report with an estimated net worth of $36 billion. Koch supports a number of free market-oriented educational organizations, including the Institute for Humane Studies and the Mercatus Center at George Mason University. He also contributes to the Republican Party and candidates, Libertarian groups, and various charitable and cultural institutions. He co-founded the Washington, DC-based Cato Institute. Through the Koch Cultural Trust, founded by Charles Koch’s wife, Elizabeth, the Koch family has also funded artistic projects and creative artists.
David Hamilton Koch * Born May 3, 1940 and the younger of the Koch brothers prominent in Republican politics, he is an American businessman, philanthropist, political activist and chemical engineer. He became president of the Koch Engineering subsidiary in 1979 and a co-owner of Koch Industries, with older brother Charles, in 1983. He is now an executive vice president. David Koch is an influential libertarian, having financed and run on the 1980 U.S. Libertarian Party presidential ticket and founded Citizens for a Sound Economy. He has contributed to several charities including Lincoln Center, Sloan Kettering, a fertility clinic at New York-Presbyterian Hospital and the American Museum of Natural History’s David H. Koch Dinosaur Wing. The New York State Theater at Lincoln Center, home of the New York City Ballet, was renamed the David H. Koch Theater in 2008 following a gift of $100 million for its renovation. Condé Nast Portfolio described him as “one of the most generous but low-key philanthropists in America.” He and his brother Charles have also donated to political advocacy groups and to political campaigns, almost entirely Republican. He is a survivor of the USAir Flight 1493 crash in 1991. Koch was the fourth richest person in America as of 2012 and the wealthiest resident of New York City as of 2013.
Henry R. Kravis * Born January 6, 1944, is the co-founder of Kohlberg Kravis Roberts & Co., a private equity firm with $94.3 billion in assets as of December 31, 2013. He has an estimated net worth of $5.1 billion as of January 2015, ranked by Forbes as the 94th richest man in America and the 278th richest man in the world. After getting an MBA at Columbia University and working variously in New York City’s financial sector, he and his first cousin, George R. Roberts, joined the staff of Bear Stearns, where they worked under corporate finance manager Jerome Kohlberg Jr., among whom the partnership emerged. In the late 1960s and early 1970s they began a series of what they described as “bootstrap” investments, and after completing a series of buyouts created limited partnerships to acquire these various corporations. They split from Bear Stearns in 1976. Kohlberg resigned from KKR and Kravis and Roberts continued to lead the firm, which was responsible for the 1988 leveraged buyout of RJR Nabisco at a cost of $31.4 billion then the highest price ever paid for a commercial enterprise. The publicity surrounding the event led to the story being dramatized in the book and film, Barbarians at the Gate.
Dalai Lama * Born as Lhamo Dondrub on July 6, 1935, and given the religious name of Tenzin Gyatso Tenzin Gyatso, he was formally recognized as the 14th Dalai Lama in 1950 at the age of 15. He is at 80 the longest-lived Dalai Lama in history (which itself dates back to the 1570’s). He won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1989 for “his consistent resistance to the use of violence in his people’s struggle to regain their liberty.” During the 1959 Tibetan uprising, he fled to India, where he denounced the People’s Republic of China (PRC) and established the nongovernmental Central Tibetan Administration. Since that time, he has advocated for the welfare of Tibetans, taught Tibetan Buddhism and stressed the importance of compassion as the source of happiness. His views have enlightened and influenced many people around the world on issues including the environment, economic inequality, women’s rights, non- violence, health and interfaith dialogue. His current policy on the status of Tibet is that he would accept it as a genuine autonomous region within the PRC rather than seeking independent sovereignty. The Chinese government, on the other hand, still pursues a policy of sovereignty over Tibet, not recognizing it as an independent state.
Brian Patrick Lamb * Born October 9, 1941, he is the founder, executive chairman, and now retired but still evident CEO of C-SPAN, the American cable network that provides coverage of the U.S. House of Representatives and U.S. Senate as well as other public affairs events. Prior to launching C-SPAN in 1979 , Lamb was a White House telecommunications policy staffer and Washington bureau chief for Cablevision magazine. He also served as a commissioned officer in the United States Navy for four years. Lamb has conducted thousands of interviews in his lifetime, including those on C-SPAN’s Booknotes and Q&A, and is known for his unique interview style, focusing on short, direct questions. His numerous honors include the Presidential Medal of Freedom and the National Humanities Medal.
Phyllis Barbara Lambert * Nee Bronfman and born January 24, 1927, she is a Canadian architect and philanthropist who graduated from the Illinois Institute of Technology in 1963. In the 1960s she designed the Saidye Bronfman Centre in Montreal, named for her mother. She was influential in bringing Ludwig Mies van der Rohe into the project for New York’s distinctive Seagram Building. In 1979, she founded the Canadian Centre for Architecture. In 1990 she received an honorary DFA in Architecture from the Pratt Institute and in 1992 was made Officier of the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres de France. She has been made a Member of the Order of Canada and was awarded the Vincent Scully Prize by the National Building Museum in 2006. It was announced in 2014 that Lambert would receive the Golden Lion at the 14th Venice Architecture Biennale.
Dame Angela Brigid Lansbury, DBE * Born October 16, 1925, her career as an actress and singer has spanned seven decades, much of it based in the United States, and her work has attracted international attention. She moved first to New York and then to Hollywood, signing with MGM and getting her first film roles in Gaslight (1944) and The Picture of Dorian Gray (1945), earning two Oscar nominations and a Golden Globe Award. Although her appearance in the film adaptation of The Manchurian Candidate (1962) was widely acclaimed, she finally gained stardom for her theatrical starring role in the Broadway musical Mame (1966). Moving to television, in 1984 Lansbury achieved widespread fame as the fictional writer and sleuth Jessica Fletcher in the American murder mystery series Murder, She Wrote, which ran for 12 seasons until 1996. She is currently touring in what she says will be her final performance, as Madame Arcati in Noel Coward’s Blithe Spirit.
Ralph Lauren * Born Ralph Lifshitz on October 14, 1939, he is best known for the clothing and design corporation, a global multi-billion-dollar enterprise, as well as his collection of rare automobiles. He has been declared a Chevalier de la Legion d’honneur by French President Nicolas Sarkozy, and as of January 2015 Forbes estimates his wealth at $8 billion, making him the 155th richest person in the world. He went to Baruch College but dropped out and served two years in the U. S. Army. After working briefly for Brooks Brothers he established his own company working out of a drawer in the Empire State Building, taking rags and turning them into ties. He sold the ties to small shops in New York, with a major turning point when Neiman Marcus bought 1,200. With the financial backing of Manhattan clothing manufacturer Norman Hilton, Lauren opened a necktie store where he also sold ties of his own design, under the label “Polo.” He expanded his line and opened a Polo boutique on Rodeo Drive in Beverly Hills and a store on the Magnificent Mile in Chicago. The Polo Ralph Lauren flagship store now occupies the Rhinelander Mansion on Madison Avenue in New York City. In 1970, Lauren won the COTY Award for his menswear line, and at about that time released a line of women’s suits tailored in a classic men’s style. He also gained recognition after being contracted to provide clothing styles for the movie The Great Gatsby as well as for Diane Keaton’s title character in Annie Hall. On June 11, 1997, Ralph Lauren Corporation became a public company, traded on the New York Stock Exchange under the symbol RL. A large number of his over 70 automobiles are held in his estate in Katonah, New York.
Norman Milton Lear * This American television writer and producer (born July 27, 1922) revolutionized that medium with such 1970s sitcoms as All in the Family, Sanford and Son, One Day at a Time, The Jeffersons, Good Times and Maude. As a political activist, he founded the advocacy organization People for the American Way in 1981 and has supported First Amendment rights and progressive causes. Lear enlisted during World War II and served in the Mediterranean theater as a radio operator/gunner on Boeing B-17 Flying Fortress bombers and flew 52 combat missions. In television, what most of the Lear sitcoms had in common was that they were character-driven, had sets that more resembled stage plays, were shot on videotape in place of film, used a live studio audience, and most importantly dealt with the social and political issues of the day. Lear’s longtime producing partner was Bud Yorkin; their company was known as Tandem Productions, founded in 1958. Lear and talent agent Jerry Perenchio founded T.A.T. Communications (the Yiddish initials for “Tuchus Affen Tisch,” or “putting one’s butt on the line”) in 1974, which co-existed with Tandem Productions. Lear also developed the cult favorite TV series Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman, starring Louise Lasser. In 2001, Lear and his wife, Lyn, purchased a Dunlap broadside, one of the first published copies of the United States Declaration of Independence, for $8.1 million and toured it throughout the U. S. He was nominated for an Academy Award for writing Divorce, American Style. In 1999, President Bill Clinton awarded him the National Medal of Arts. He continues to be involved in creative, business, political and humanitarian interests.
Richard Leibner * Born March 15, 1939, he wrote the book for talent agentry in the journalism business. Leibner is the longtime president of N. S. Bienstock Inc., now the East Coast subsidiary of Beverly Hills-based United Talent Agency (UTA), and with his wife and partner Carole Cooper has been at the forefront of the broadcast news business since 1964, pioneering representation of on-air and off-air talent in television, conventional and talk radio, cable and syndication from coast to coast. Among their clients are or have been Diane Sawyer, Bob Schieffer, Anderson Cooper, Bill O’Reilly, Robin Roberts, Dan Rather, Ed Bradley, Andy Rooney, Phil Donahue, Steve Kroft, Glenn Beck, Natalie Morales, Chris Matthews, Paula Zahn and Bob Simon. Leibner, the face of the company, is perhaps best known for beginning the trend of big news salaries in the 1980s by playing the networks against one another and getting big deals for Dan Rather and Diane Sawyer (the two came to make more than $7 million and $10 million, respectively). He and his wife were honored as Giants of Broadcasting & The Electronic Arts by the Library of American Broadcasting in 2013.
Jorge Mario Pedro Vargas Llosa * Born March 28, 1936, he is a Peruvian writer, politician, journalist, essayist, college professor and recipient of the 2010 Nobel Prize in Literature. Some critics consider him to have had a larger international impact and worldwide audience than any other writer of the Latin American boom. Vargas Llosa rose to fame in the 1960s with novels such as The Time of the Hero, The Green House and the monumental Conversation in the Cathedral. He writes prolifically across an array of literary genres, including literary criticism and journalism. His novels include comedies, murder mysteries, historical novels, and political thrillers. Several have been adapted as feature films. Like many Latin American writers, Vargas Llosa has been politically active throughout his career; he has gradually moved from the political left towards liberalism or neoliberalism. He ran for the Peruvian presidency in 1990, but lost.
Sophia Loren * An Italian-French actress and film star, born Septembers 20, 1934, she began her career at 14 after entering a beauty pageant. Encouraged to enroll in acting lessons, Loren appeared in several bit parts and minor roles until the late 1950s when Loren’s five-picture contract with Paramount launched her international career with such notable appearances as Houseboat, That Kind of Woman and It Started in Naples. It was not until her performance in Vittorio De Sica’s Two Women that her talents as an actress were recognized; her performance earned the Academy Award for Best Actress in 1962 and made her the first artist to win an Oscar for a foreign-language performance. She holds the record for having earned six David di Donatello Awards for Best Actress, the most ever received. In later years, she has appeared in American films such as Grumpier Old Men and Nine.
John C. Malone * Born March 7, 1941, he is a billionaire American business executive, landowner and philanthropist. He served as chief executive officer of Tele-Communications Inc. (TCI), a cable and media giant, for 24 years from 1973 to 1996 and is now chairman of Liberty Media, Liberty Global and Liberty Interactive. After a distinguished academic career he went into business with AT&T in 1963 and joined McKinsey & Company in 1968, in 1970 becoming group vice president at General Instrument and later president of Jerrold Electronics, a GI subsidiary, before beginning his reign as one of the cable industry’s strongest and most aggressive forces at TCI. In business dealings he has been dubbed “Darth Vader,” a nickname allegedly given to him by Al Gore when Malone was the head of TCI, where he demanded equity positions in cable programming services in return for carriage. As chairman of Liberty Global he once held 32{b163ed859cc9a16ba73837184ee02d2cdeccd9aa6dd670f1698634a383290a0c} of the shares of News Corporation and was considered a threat to that company’s Rupert Murdoch. Malone owns Silver Spur Ranches, a ranching and beef company which includes large holdings in Wyoming, New Mexico, Colorado and Maine. As of February 2011 he had surpassed Ted Turner as the largest individual private landowner in the United States, owning 2,100,000 acres, mostly in Maine. His philanthropy has been primarily in grants to various universities, perhaps in excess of $200 million.
Lester Lowry Mays * This Texas broadcaster and business executive was born on July 24, 1935 and his Clear Channel Communications became at one time the largest broadcast stations owner in the U. S., as well as a major force in outdoor advertising. While he earned his MBA at Harvard, his heart remains with Texas A&M. Mays founded the San Antonio Broadcasting Company in 1972 with one station but by the mid-90s Clear Channel owned 43 radio and 16 television stations. After the Telecommunications Act of 1996 significantly deregulated the broadcast industry, the company eventually accumulated ownership of over 1,200 radio stations and 41 television stations in the United States, as well as one of the nation’s leading live entertainment companies and over 750,000 outdoor advertising displays. After suffering a stroke in 2005, Mays relinquished his position as CEO of the company to his son, Mark. The senior Mays served on the Texas A&M Board of Regents from 1985-1991, was reappointed in 2001, and served as chairman from 2003 – 2005. The university’s business school is named in his honor.
John Sidney McCain III * The senior Senator from Arizona (born August 29, 1936) and a war hero, he was the Republican presidential nominee in the 2008 election. A U. S. Naval Academy graduate, he became a naval aviator and, while in combat during the Vietnam war, was shot down, seriously injured and captured by the North Vietnamese. He was a prisoner of war until 1973, experiencing episodes of torture, and left with lifelong physical limitations from his war wounds. Retired from the Navy as a captain in 1981, he was elected to two terms in the U. S. House of Representatives and then to the Senate, winning reelection four times, most recently in 2010. While generally adhering to conservative principles, McCain has had a media reputation as a “maverick” for his willingness to disagree with his party on certain issues. He made campaign finance reform a signature concern, leading eventually to passage of the McCain-Feingold Act in 2002. McCain has chaired the Senate Commerce Committee and in 2015 became chairman of the Armed Services Committee. He has largely opposed actions of the Obama administration, especially in regard to foreign policy.
Sir James Paul McCartney MBE * Born June 18, 1942, he gained worldwide fame as a member of the Beatles with John Lennon, George Harrison and Ringo Starr. He is a singer-songwriter, multi- nstrumentalist, and composer. After the band’s break-up, he pursued a solo career and formed Wings with his first wife, Linda, and Denny Laine. McCartney has been recognized as one of the most successful composers and performers of all time, with 60 gold discs and sales of over 100 million albums and 100 million singles of his work with the Beatles and as a solo artist. More than 2,200 artists have covered his Beatles song Yesterday, more than any other copyrighted song in history. Wings’ 1977 release “Mull of Kintyre” is one of the all-time best-selling singles in the UK. A two-time inductee into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and a 21-time Grammy Award winner, McCartney has written or co-written 32 songs that have reached number one on the Billboard Hot 100, and as of 2014 he has sold more than 15.5 million RIAA-certified units in the United States. McCartney, Lennon, Harrison and Starr received MBEs in 1965, and in 1997 McCartney was knighted for his services to music.
Addison Mitchell “Mitch” McConnell, Jr. * Born February 20, 1942, he is the senior Senator from Kentucky. A Republican, he has been e Majority Leader of the Senate since January 3, 2015. He is the 15th Senate Republican Leader and the second Kentuckian to lead his party in the Senate. He is also the longest-serving U.S. Senator in Kentucky history. McConnell enlisted in the U.S. Army Reserve during his last year of law school but was discharged for medical reasons (optic neuritis) after five weeks. McConnell began interning for Senator John Sherman Cooper (R-Ky.) in 1964, and his time with Cooper inspired him to run for the Senate. Later, McConnell was an assistant to Senator Marlow Cook (R-Ky.) and was a Deputy Assistant Attorney General under President Gerald R. Ford, where he worked alongside future Justice Antonin Scalia. In 1977, McConnell was elected the Jefferson County Judge/Executive, the former top political office in Jefferson County, Kentucky. He was re-elected in 1981and in 1984 ran for the U.S. Senate against two-term Democratic incumbent Walter Dee Huddleston. The election race wasn’t decided until the last returns came in, and McConnell won by a thin margin — 5,200 votes out of more than 1.8 million, or just over 0.4{b163ed859cc9a16ba73837184ee02d2cdeccd9aa6dd670f1698634a383290a0c}. McConnell was the only Republican Senate challenger to win that year, despite Ronald Reagan’s landslide victory in the presidential election. During the 1998 and 2000 election cycles, McConnell was chairman of the National Republican Senatorial Committee. Republicans maintained control of the Senate in both. He was first elected as Majority Whip in the 108th Congress and unanimously re-elected on November 17, 2004. Senator Bill Frist, the Majority Leader, did not seek re-election in the 2006 elections. In November 2006, after Republicans lost control of the Senate, they elected McConnell to replace Frist as Minority Leader. After Republicans took control of the Senate following the 2014 Senate elections, McConnell became the Majority Leader. According to The New York Times, in his early years as a politician in Kentucky, McConnell was “something of a centrist.” In recent years, however, he veered sharply to the right, now opposing collective-bargaining rights and minimum-wage increases that he previously supported, and abandoning pork barrel projects he once delivered to the state of Kentucky. He believed that Reagan’s popularity made conservatism much more appealing. According to a profile in Politico, “While most politicians desperately want to be liked, McConnell has relished — and cultivated — his reputation as a villain.” The Politico profile also noted “For most of Obama’s presidency, McConnell has been the face of Republican obstructionism.” According to Salon, “Despite McConnell’s reputation as the man who said his No. 1 goal was to stop President Obama from winning a second term, it’s been McConnell at the table when the big deals—be they over threatened government shutdowns, debt defaults or fiscal cliffs—have been finalized.” With a 49{b163ed859cc9a16ba73837184ee02d2cdeccd9aa6dd670f1698634a383290a0c} disapproval rate, he has the highest disapproval rate out of all senators.
Ian McKellen * Born May 25, 1939, this English actor is the recipient of six Laurence Olivier Awards, a Tony, a Golden Globe, a Screen Actors Guild Award, a BIF Award, two Saturns, four Drama Desk Awards and two Critics’ Choice Awards. He has also received two Academy Award nominations, four BAFTA nominations and five Emmy Award nominations. McKellen’s work spans genres from Shakespearean and modern theatre to popular fantasy and science fiction. His most widely known roles are in The Lord of the Rings, The Hobbit trilogies and the X-Men films. While he made his sexual orientation known to fellow actors early on, it was not until 1988 that he came out to the general public in a program on BBC Radio. He has continued to be active in LGBT rights efforts and is a co-founder of Stonewall, an LGBT rights lobby group in the United Kingdom.
John Angus McPhee * Born March 8, 1931, he is an American writer widely considered one of the pioneers of creative nonfiction. He is a four-time finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in the category General Nonfiction and he won that award on the fourth occasion in 1999 for Annals of the Former World. In 2008 he received the George Polk Career Award for his “indelible mark on American journalism during his nearly half-century career.” McPhee’s writing career began at Time magazine and led to a long association with The New Yorker beginning in 1965 and continuing to the present. Many of his 29 books include material originally written for that magazine. His first book was a profile of Princeton senior – and future pro basketball star – Bill Bradley, whom McPhee followed closely during Bradley’s four-year basketball career at Princeton University. The resulting book, A Sense of Where You Are, is a classic of non-fiction writing – a literary craftsman’s admiring profile of a basketball craftsman. McPhee’s subjects, reflecting his personal interests, are highly eclectic. One of his most widely read books, Coming Into the Country, is about the Alaskan wilderness, and some of his most memorable work describes people who work out of the limelight: a builder of birch bark canoes (Henri Vaillancourt), a bush pilot, and a French-speaking wine maker in the Swiss army. Unlike Tom Wolfe and Hunter Thompson, who helped kick-start the “new journalism” in the 1960s, McPhee produced a gentler, more literary style of journalism that more thoroughly incorporated techniques from fiction. Since 1974, McPhee has been the Ferris Professor of Journalism at Princeton University in the town where he was born, went to school and has resided for most of his life.
Lorne Michaels * Born Lorne Lipowitz on November 17, 1944, he is a Canadian-American television producer, writer, comedian and actor, best known for creating and producing Saturday Night Live. Michaels began his career in 1966 as a writer and broadcaster for CBC Radio, moving from Toronto to Los Angeles in 1968 to work as a writer for Laugh-In and The Beautiful Phyllis Diller Show. In 1975, with fellow NBC employee Dick Ebersol and network president Herb Schlosser, Michaels created NBC’s Saturday Night, which in 1977 changed its name to Saturday Night Live. It established an immediate reputation for being cutting-edge and unpredictable, and became a vehicle for launching the careers of some of the most successful comedians in the United States. SNL has been nominated for more than 156 Emmy Awards and has won 36. It has consistently been one of the highest-rated late-night television programs. Michaels also was executive producer of 30 Rock and Up All Night during their runs, and now the Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon.
George John Mitchell Jr. * Born August 20, 1933, he is noted for his skills as a negotiator and peacemaker. His career as an American lawyer, businessman and politician took him to the Senate as a Democrat from Maine from 1980 to 1885 and as Senate Majority Leader from 1989 to 1995. Since retiring from the Senate, Mitchell has assumed a variety of high profile positions in politics and business, serving as a director of such corporations as Federal Express, Xerox, Staples and the Boston Red Sox. From 2004 to 2007, Mitchell served as board chairman of The Walt Disney Company, and was the chancellor of Queen’s University in Belfast, Northern Ireland, from 1999 to 2009. On the world stage, Mitchell has taken leading roles in negotiations for peace in Northern Ireland and the Middle East, being appointed United States Special Envoy for Northern Ireland (1995–2001) by President Clinton and as United States Special Envoy for Middle East Peace (2009–2011) by President Obama. In recognition for his role in the Ireland peace process, he received the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the Liberty Medal and was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize in 1998. Mitchell is currently a partner and chairman of the Global Board of the DLA Piper international law firm and also serves as co-chair of the Housing Commission at the Bipartisan Policy Center.
Barbara Ann Mikulski * Born July 20, 1936, she is the senior United States Senator from Maryland, a Democrat serving since 1987. She earlier served in the House of Representatives from 1977 to 1987, and is the longest-serving woman in the history of the United States Congress. From the death of Senator Daniel Inouye in December 2012 until 2015, Mikulski chaired the Senate Appropriations Committee, the first woman to hold the position. She also serves on the Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee and the Select Committee on Intelligence. Mikulski has announced that she would retire at the end of the 114th Congress in 2017.
Gordon Earle Moore * Born January 3, 1929, he is a co-founder and chairman emeritus of Intel Corporation and the author of Moore’s law. As of January 2015, his net worth was estimated at $6.7 billion. When asked in l965 to predict the semiconductor components industry’s future over the next 10 years, he observed that the number of components in a dense integrated circuit had doubled approximately every year, and speculated it would continue to do so for at least the next 10 years. In 1975, he revised the forecast rate to approximately every two years, and it is now popularized as “Moore’s law.” In 1968, Robert Noyce and Moore founded NM Electronics, which later became Intel Corporation. Under its founders and later Andrew Grove, Intel has pioneered new technologies in the areas of computer memory, integrated circuits and microprocessor design, becoming a household name in computers. Betty and Gordon Moore established a foundation under their names to target environmental conservation, science and the San Francisco Bay Area in 2000 with a gift worth about $5 billion. They also donated $600 million to the California Institute of Technology, Caltech, the largest gift ever to an institution of higher education. In 2007 they similarly donated $200 million to Caltech and the University of California for the construction of the Thirty Meter Telescope, the world’s second largest optical telescope with a mirror 30 meters across. In 2009, the Moores received the Andrew Carnegie Medal of Philanthropy. Among Moore’s many honors are the National Medal of Technology and Innovation and the Presidential Medal of Freedom.
Mary Tyler Moore * Born December 29, 1936, she is best known for The Mary Tyler Moore Show (1970–77), in which she starred as Mary Richards, a 30-something single woman who worked as a local news producer in Minneapolis, and for her earlier role as Laura Petrie on The Dick Van Dyke Show (1961–66). She also appeared in a number of films, most notably 1967’s Thoroughly Modern Millie and 1980’s Ordinary People, in which she played a role very different from her television character, and for which she was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Actress. Moore has been active in charity work and various political causes, particularly the issues of animal rights and diabetes mellitus type 1, of which she was diagnosed early in the run of The Mary Tyler Moore Show.
Rita Moreno * Born December 11, 1931, this Puerto Rican actress, singer and dancer is the only Hispanic and one of the few performers to have won all four major annual American entertainment awards, which include an Oscar, an Emmy, a Grammy and a Tony, and was the second Puerto Rican to win an Oscar. At age 5, Moreno began her first Spanish dance lessons soon after arriving in New York. She had her first Broadway role by the time she was 13, which caught the attention of Hollywood talent scouts and launched her career as a performer. In 1961, Moreno landed the role of Anita in the groundbreaking Broadway musical, West Side Story. She won the Best Supporting Actress Academy Award for that role. During the mid-1990s, Moreno provided the voice of Carmen Sandiego on Fox’s animated series Where on Earth is Carmen Sandiego* In 1993 she was invited to perform at President Bill Clinton’s inauguration and later that month was asked to perform at the White House. Moreno continues to be active on stage and screen and as a singer.
Patricia Morison * Born March 19, 1915 as Patricia Augusta Fraser Morison, she is an American stage and film actress and mezzo-soprano who made her film debut in 1939. She was lauded as a beauty with large eyes and extremely long, dark hair, and was often cast as the femme fatale or “other woman.” It was only when she returned to Broadway that she achieved her greatest success as the lead in the original production of Cole Porter’s Kiss Me, Kate, when she created the role of Lilli Vanessi, the imperious stage diva whose own volatile personality coincided with that of her onstage role (Kate from The Taming of the Shrew). The role reunited Morison with her former co-star Alfred Drake, and the play ran on Broadway from 1948 until 1951 for a total of 1,077 performances. In World War II Morison entertained American troops, and in 1942 she joined Al Jolson, Merle Oberon, Allen Jenkins and Frank McHugh on a USO Tour in Great Britain. In the 1950s she starred in a number of productions of The King and I with Yul Brynner. In recent years Morison has devoted herself to painting and has had several showings in and around Los Angeles. In March 2014, at age 99, she appeared on stage for Broadway Backwards 9, a benefit at the Al Hirschfeld Theater. She sang “Brush Up Your Shakespeare” from Kiss Me, Kate.
Willie Hugh Nelson * Born April 29, 1933, he is an American musician, singer, songwriter, author, poet, actor, and activist. The critical success of the album Shotgun Willie (1973), combined with the critical and commercial success of Red Headed Stranger (1975) and Stardust (1978), made Nelson one of the most recognized artists in country music. He was one of the main figures of outlaw country, a subgenre of country music that developed in the late 1960s as a reaction to the conservative restrictions of the Nashville sound. Nelson has acted in over 30 films, co-authored several books, and has been involved in activism for the use of biofuels and the legalization of marijuana. Born during the Great Depression, and raised by his grandparents, Nelson wrote his first song at age 7 and joined his first band at 10. During high school, he toured locally with the Bohemian Polka as their lead singer and guitar player. After graduating from high school in 1950, he joined the Air Force but was later discharged due to back problems. After his return, Nelson attended Baylor University for two years but dropped out because he was succeeding in music. During this time, he worked as a disc jockey in Texas radio stations and a singer in honky-tonks. Nelson moved to Vancouver, Washington, where he wrote “Family Bible” and recorded the song “Lumberjack” in 1956. In 1958, he moved to Houston, Texas after signing a contract with D Records. During that time, he wrote songs that would become country standards, including “Funny How Time Slips Away”, “Hello Walls”, “Pretty Paper”, and “Crazy”. In 1960 he moved to Nashville, Tennessee, and later signed a publishing contract with Pamper Music which allowed him to join Ray Price’s band as a bassist. In 1962, he recorded his first album, …And Then I Wrote. Due to this success, Nelson signed in 1964 with RCA Victor and joined the Grand Ole Opry the following year. After mid-chart hits in the late 1960s and the early 1970s, Nelson retired in 1972 and moved to Austin, Texas. The ongoing music scene of Austin motivated Nelson to return from retirement, performing frequently at the Armadillo World Headquarters. In 1973, after signing with Atlantic Records, Nelson turned to outlaw country, including albums such as Shotgun Willie and Phases and Stages. In 1975, he switched to Columbia Records, where he recorded the critically acclaimed album, Red Headed Stranger. The same year, he recorded another outlaw country album, Wanted! The Outlaws, along with Waylon Jennings, Jessi Colter, and Tompall Glaser. During the mid-1980s, while creating hit albums like Honeysuckle Rose and recording hit songs like “On the Road Again”, “To All the Girls I’ve Loved Before”, and “Pancho and Lefty”, he joined the country supergroup The Highwaymen, along with fellow singers Johnny Cash, Waylon Jennings, and Kris Kristofferson. In 1990, Nelson’s assets were seized by the Internal Revenue Service, which claimed that he owed $32 million. The difficulty of paying his outstanding debt was aggravated by weak investments he had made during the 1980s. In 1992, Nelson released The IRS Tapes: Who’ll Buy My Memories?, the profits of the double album, destined to the IRS, and the auction of Nelson’s assets cleared his debt. During the 1990s and 2000s, Nelson continued touring extensively, and released albums every year. Nelson made his first movie appearance in the 1979 film The Electric Horseman, followed by other appearances in movies and on television. He is a major liberal activist and the co-chair of the advisory board of the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws.
Joyce Carol Oates * Born June 16, 1938, Oates published her first book in 1963 and has since published over 40 novels, as well as a number of plays and novellas, and many volumes of short stories, poetry, and nonfiction. She has won many awards for her writing, including the National Book Award for her novel them (1969), two O. Henry Awards, and the National Humanities Medal. Her novels Black Water (1992), What I Lived For (1994), Blonde (2000), and short story collections The Wheel of Love and Other Stories (1970) and Lovely, Dark, Deep: Stories (2014) were each nominated for the Pulitzer Prize. Oates has taught at Princeton University since 1978 and is currently the Roger S. Berlind ’52 Professor Emerita in the Humanities with the Program in Creative Writing. Oates attended the same one-room school her mother attended as a child.] She became interested in reading at an early age and remembers her grandmother’s gift of Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland (1865) as “the great treasure of my childhood, and the most profound literary influence of my life. This was love at first sight!” In her early teens, she devoured the writing of Charlotte Brontë, Emily Brontë, Fyodor Dostoevsky, William Faulkner, Ernest Hemingway, and Henry David Thoreau, whose “influences remain very deep.” Oates began writing at the age of 14 and was the first in her family to complete high school. Oates earned a scholarship to attend Syracuse University, which she found “a very exciting place academically and intellectually,” and trained herself by “writing novel after novel and always throwing them out when I completed them.”[ It was not until this point that Oates began reading the work of Franz Kafka, D. H. Lawrence, Thomas Mann, and Flannery O’Connor although, she noted, “these influences are still quite strong, pervasive.” Oates graduated as valedictorian from Syracuse University with a degree in English in 1960 and received her M.A. from the University of Wisconsin–Madison in 1961. She was a Ph.D. student at Rice University when she made the decision to become a full-time writer. Vanguard published her first book, the short-story collection By the North Gate, in 1963, and her first novel, With Shuddering Fall, in 1964, when she was 26. In 1966, she published the short story “Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been? “dedicated to Bob Dylan and written after listening to his song “It’s All Over Now, Baby Blue.” Oates says it is the most noted of all her works. Her second novel was A Garden of Earthly Delights (1967), first of the so-called Wonderland Quartet published by Vanguard from 1967 to 1971. All were finalists for the annual National Book Award, which she won in 1970 for them, set in Detroit rom the 1930s to the 1960s, most of it in black ghetto neighborhoods, and dealing openly with crime, drugs, and racial/class conflicts. Since then she has published an average of two books a year. Frequent topics in her work include rural poverty, sexual abuse, class tensions, desire for power, female childhood and adolescence, and occasionally the supernatural. Violence is a constant in her work, leading Oates to write an essay in response to the question, “Why Is Your Writing So Violent?” She is a fan of poet and novelist Sylvia Plath, describing Plath’s sole novel The Bell Jar as a “near perfect work of art.” For more than 25 years Oates has been rumored to be a “favorite” to win the Nobel Prize in Literature by oddsmakers and critics.
Leon Edward Panetta * Born June 28, 
1938, he is an American statesman, lawyer, and professor who served in the Obama administration as Director of the Central Intelligence Agency from 2009 to 2011 (overseeing the military operation that led to the death of Osama bin Laden) and as Secretary of Defense from 2011 to 2013. A Democrat, he was a member of the House of Representatives from 1977 to 1993, served as Director of the Office of Management and Budget from 1993 to 1994, and as President Bill Clinton’s chief of staff from 1994 to 1997. He is the founder of the Panetta Institute for Public Policy, served as Distinguished Scholar to Chancellor Charles B. Reed of the California State University System, and as a professor of public policy at Santa Clara University. His memoir, “Worthy Fights,” was published in 2014. Panetta graduated magna cum laude from that institution with a Bachelor of Arts in Political Science as well as a Juris Doctor. He joined the U. S. Army in 1964 and served as an officer in Army military intelligence. Panetta got his political start in 1966 as a legislative assistant to Republican Senator Thomas Kuchel, the Minority Whip from California, whom Panetta has called “a tremendous role model.” In 1969 he became the assistant to Robert H. Finch, Secretary of the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare in the Nixon administration, and soon thereafter was appointed Director of the Office for Civil Rights. Eventually forced out of office in 1970, Panetta resigned and left Washington to work as Executive Assistant for John Lindsay, the then-Republican mayor of New York City (Lindsay would switch parties the following year.) He wrote about this experience in his 1971 book Bring Us Together. He then moved back to Monterey to practice law at Panetta, Thompson & Panetta from 1971 through to 1976. As had Lindsay, Panetta switched to the Democratic Party in 1971 because he thought the Republican Party was moving away from the political center. In 1976 he was elected to the U.S. Congress to represent California’s 16th congressional district, unseating incumbent Republican Burt Talcott with 53{b163ed859cc9a16ba73837184ee02d2cdeccd9aa6dd670f1698634a383290a0c} of the and was reelected for nine terms. He left the House in 1993 when President Bill Clinton selected him to be Director of the United States Office of Management and Budget. He is credited with developing the budget package that would eventually result in the balanced budget of 1998. In 1994, Clinton asked Panetta what was wrong with his administration, who cited the lack of order in the White House. Clinton named Panetta as his new chief of staff, replacing Mack McLarty. According to author Nigel Hamilton, “Panetta replaced McLarty for the rest of Clinton’s first term — and the rest is history. To be a great leader, a modern president must have a great chief of staff—and in Leon Panetta, Clinton got the enforcer he deserved.” Then President-elect Barack Obama nominated Panetta to the post of Director of the Central Intelligence Agency on January 5, 2009. On April 28, 2011, Obama announced the nomination of Panetta as Secretary of Defense to replace the retiring Secretary Robert Gates. In November 2011, speaking at the Halifax International Security Forum, Panetta described the United States as confronting “fiscal realities of limited resources” and outlined the future of the United States Armed Forces “that, while smaller, is agile, flexible, deployable and technologically equipped to confront the threats of the future.” He also urged other countries to share in the burden of maintaining global security. When the debt reduction super-committee did not approve a deficit reduction plan, Panetta said that “the failure of the congressional super-committee to reach an agreement on deficit reduction is a setback for the country’s efforts to achieve fiscal responsibility while protecting our national security,” adding that “if Congress fails to act over the next year, the Department of Defense will face devastating, automatic, across-the-board cuts that will tear a seam in the nation’s defense.” Panetta and his wife founded the Leon & Sylvia Panetta Institute for Public Policy in December 1998, where they serve as the Institute’s directors. The Institute is located at California State University, Monterey Bay. Panetta was instrumental in creating CSU Monterey Bay by converting Fort Ord, where he was chief of operations and planning of the intelligence section when he was in the army, into the university. Leon & Sylvia Panetta both served on the board of the UC Santa Cruz Foundation, as Distinguished Scholar to the Chancellor of California State University and as Presidential Professor at Santa Clara University.
Vincent Edward “Vin” Scully * Born November 29, 1927, this American sportscaster is best known as the play-by-play announcer for the Los Angeles Dodgers. He has been with the team since its days in Brooklyn. His 67 seasons with the Dodgers (1950–present) are the longest time any broadcaster has been with a single team in professional sports history, and he is second by one year to only Tommy Lasorda in terms of number of years with the Dodgers organization in any capacity.Scully currently calls most Dodger home games (and selected road games) on SportsNet LA television and KLAC radio. He is known for his dulcet voice, lyrically descriptive style, and signature introduction to Dodger games: “It’s time for Dodger baseball! Hi, everybody, and a very pleasant good (afternoon/evening) to you, wherever you may be.” Born in the Bronx, Scully grew up in the Washington Heights section of Manhattan, and he attended high school at the Fordham Preparatory School. He decided at 8 years of age that he wanted to become a sports announcer when he became fascinated with the football broadcasts on the radio. After serving in the Navy for two years, Scully began his career as a student broadcaster and journalist at Fordham University and later sent about 150 job-seeking letters to stations along the Eastern seaboard. He received only one response, from CBS Radio affiliate WTOP in Washington, which made him a fill-in. Scully was then recruited by Red Barber, the sports director of the CBS Radio Network, for its college football coverage. Scully impressed his boss with his coverage of a November 1949 University of Maryland versus Boston University football game from frigid Fenway Park in Boston, despite having to do so from the stadium roof. Expecting an enclosed press box, Scully had left his coat and gloves at his hotel, but never mentioned his discomfort on the air. Barber mentored Scully and told him that if he wanted to be a successful sports announcer he should never be a “homer” (openly showing a rooting interest for the team that employs you), never listen to other announcers, and keep his opinions to himself. In 1950, Scully joined Red Barber and Connie Desmond in the Brooklyn Dodgers radio and television booths. When Barber got into a salary dispute with World Series sponsor Gillette in 1953, Scully took Barber’s spot for the 1953 World Series. At the age of 25, Scully became the youngest man to broadcast a World Series game (a record that stands to this day). Barber left the Dodgers after the 1953 season to work for the New York Yankees. Scully eventually became the team’s principal announcer. Scully announced the Dodger games in Brooklyn until 1957, after which the club moved to Los Angeles. Scully accompanied the Dodgers to their new location beginning with the 1958 season, and quickly became popular in Southern California. During the Dodgers’ first four seasons in Los Angeles, inexperienced baseball fans had difficulty following the action in the very large Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum, and it soon became common for them to bring transistor radios to the games to hear Scully and partner Jerry Doggett describe the action. This practice continued even after the team moved to the much smaller Dodger Stadium for the 1962 baseball season. Radio and television engineers often had difficulty compensating for the sound of Scully’s play-by-play reverberating through the stands at Dodger home games. In 1964, the New York Yankees offered Scully the opportunity to succeed Mel Allen as their lead play-by-play announcer. Scully chose to remain with the Dodgers, however, and his popularity in Los Angeles had become such that in 1976 Dodger fans voted him the “most memorable personality” in the history of the franchise. Outside of Southern California, Scully is probably best remembered as NBC television’s lead baseball broadcaster from 1983 to 1989. Besides calling the Saturday Game of the Week for NBC, Scully called three World Series (1984, 1986, and 1988), four National League Championship Series (1983, 1985, 1987, and 1989), and four All-Star Games (1983, 1985, 1987, and 1989). Scully also reworked his Dodgers schedule during this period, broadcasting home games on the radio, and road games for the Dodgers television network, with Fridays and Saturdays off so he could work for NBC. The Dodgers management announced in February 2006 that it had extended Scully’s contract through the 2008 baseball season for about $3 million per year. On August 28, 2015, it was announced via a series of cue cards presented by comedian Jimmy Kimme on the Dodger Stadium video board that Scully would be back for the 2016 season, his 67th with the Dodgers. At a press conference August 29, Scully said 2016 would probably be his final year. “I mean, how much longer can you go on fooling people? So yeah, I would be saying, ‘Dear God, if you give me next year, I will hang it up.”
Ruth Slenczynska * Born on January 15, 1925 in Sacramento, California, she is an American pianist with a worldwide reputation. She was pushed by her violinist father from age 3 to practice the piano relentlessly. At 4 she began her piano studies in Europe, later studying with Artur Schnabel, Egon Petri, Alfred Cortot, Josef Hofmann and Sergei Rachmaninoff. She played her debut in Berlin at 6 and with a full orchestra in Paris at 7. Resuming her concert career in 1964 she accepted a full time position at Southern Illinois University Edwardsville as Artist-in-Residence, a title she retained until 1987. A large assortment of her memorabilia and recordings constitutes a Special Collection in the Lovejoy Library as SIUe. In 1957 she published a book of memoirs, Forbidden Childhood, which deals with life as a child prodigy, and a book on piano technique, Music at Your Fingertips: Aspects of Pianoforte Technique. Now juggling concerts in Europe and Asia with master classes and a handful of private lessons at home in New York, she will return to Paris at 90 to perform a program of Chopin nocturnes, seldom-heard mazurkas and technically challenging ballades. Despite her deep classical repertoire, she still learns new pieces. “I like to reach out and do things that I don’t know,” she says. “How can you grow if you don’t*”
Dame Maggie Smith * Born Margaret Natalie Smith on December 28, 1934, she is one of the world’s most famous and distinguished actresses whose extensive and varied career in stage, film and television has spanned over 60 years. She began her career on stage at the Oxford Playhouse in 1952 and made her Broadway debut in New Faces of 56 in 1956. She has starred in some of the best parts with some of the most prominent actors and actresses in the world. These include: with some of the most prominent actors and actresses in the world. These include: Othello (1965) with Laurence Olivier, The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie (1969), California Suite (1978) with Michael Caine and Jane Fonda, A Room with a View (1985), Richard III (1995) with Ian McKellen and Jim Broadbent, Franco Zeffirelli’s Tea with Mussolini (1999) with Judi Dench, Joan Plowright and Cher and Gosford Park (2001) with Kristin Scott Thomas and Clive Owen, directed by Robert Altman. She also appeared in the successful Harry Potter franchise as the formidable Professor McGonagall. Smith has appeared in over 50 films and has won numerous awards for acting in theatre, film and television. These include two Academy Awards, five BAFTA Awards, three Emmy Awards, three Golden Globes, four Screen Actors Guild Awards and a Tony. Smith currently stars as Violet Crawley, the Dowager Countess of Grantham, on Downton Abbey, for which she has won a Golden Globe, two Screen Actors Guild awards and two consecutive Emmy awards. Her sons, Christopher Larkin and Toby Stephens, are famous actors as well. She was appointed Dame Commander of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire in 1990.
George Soros * Born in Budapest on August 12, 1930, he is a Hungarian-American business magnate, investor and philanthropist. The chairman of Soros Fund Management, he is known as “The Man Who Broke the Bank of England” because of his short sale of $10 billion worth of pounds, giving him a profit of $1 billion during the 1992 Black Wednesday UK currency crisis. As of July 22, 2014 Forbes listed Soros as the 27th richest person in the world, the world’s richest hedge-fund manager, and number 7 on its list of the 400 wealthiest Americans, with a net worth estimated at $23 billion. He is a well-known supporter of progressive-liberal political causes. Between 1979 and 2011 he gave away over $8 billion to human rights, public health and education causes. He played a significant role in the peaceful transition from communism to capitalism in Eastern Europe and provided one of Europe’s largest higher education endowments to Central European University in Budapest. Soros is also the chairman of the Open Society Foundations. Soros emigrated to England in 1947 and became an impoverished student at the London School of Economics, while working as a railway porter and a waiter. There he earned a BSc in philosophy in 1951 and a PhD in philosophy in 1954. In 1956, Soros moved to New York City where he worked as an arbitrage trader for F. M. Mayer (1956–59) and as an analyst for Wertheim & Co. (1959–63). He planned to stay for five years, enough time to save $500,000, after which he intended to return to England to study philosophy. During this period, Soros developed the theory of reflexivity, based on the ideas of Karl Popper. Reflexivity posited that the valuation of any market produces a procyclical “virtuous or vicious” circle that further affects the market. After wanting to assert himself as an investor to make reflexivity profitable, in 1967 First Eagle Funds created an opportunity for Soros to run an offshore investment fund as well as the Double Eagle hedge fund in 1969. In 1970 he founded Soros Fund Management and became its chairman. Soros announced in July 2011 that he had returned funds from outside investors’ money (valued at $1 billion) and instead invested funds from his $24.5 billion family fortune due to U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission disclosure rules. In 2013 his Quantum Fund made $5.5 billion, making it the most successful hedge fund in history. The fund has generated $40 billion since its inception in 1973. Soros had been building a huge position in pounds sterling for months leading up to September 1992. Soros recognized the unfavorable position at which the United Kingdom joined the European Exchange Rate Mechanism. For Soros, the rate at which the United Kingdom was brought into the European Exchange Rate Mechanism was too high, their inflation was also much too high (triple the German rate) and British interest rates were hurting their asset prices. On September 16, 1992, Black Wednesday, Soros’ fund sold short more than $10 billion in pounds, profiting from the UK government’s reluctance to either raise its interest rates to levels comparable to those of other European Exchange Rate Mechanism countries or to float its currency. Finally, the UK withdrew from the European Exchange Rate Mechanism, devaluing the pound. Soros’s profit on the bet was estimated at over $1 billion. Economist Paul Krugman is critical of Soros’ effect on financial markets. “[N]obody who has read a business magazine in the last few years can be unaware that these days there really are investors who not only move money in anticipation of a currency crisis, but actually do their best to trigger that crisis for fun and profit. These new actors on the scene do not yet have a standard name; my proposed term is ‘Soroi’.” Soros’ book, The New Paradigm for Financial Markets (May 2008), described a “superbubble” that had built up over the past 25 years and was ready to collapse. This was the third in a series of books he has written that have predicted disaster. As he states: “I have a record of crying wolf … I did it first in The Alchemy of Finance (in 1987), then in The Crisis of Global Capitalism (in 1998) and now in this book. So its three books predicting disaster. (After) the boy cried wolf three times . . . the wolf really came.“ In February 2009, Soros said the world financial system had effectively disintegrated, adding that there was no prospect of a near-term resolution to the crisis. “We witnessed the collapse of the financial system … It was placed on life support, and it’s still on life support. There’s no sign that we are anywhere near a bottom.” In 2003, former Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volcker wrote: “George Soros has made his mark as an enormously successful speculator, wise enough to largely withdraw when still way ahead of the game. The bulk of his enormous winnings is now devoted to encouraging transitional and emerging nations to become ‘open societies,’ open not only in the sense of freedom of commerce but—more important—tolerant of new ideas and different modes of thinking and behavior.” Soros donated a large amount of money in an unsuccessful effort to defeat President George W. Bush’s bid for re-election in 2004. In an interview with The Washington Post, Soros said that removing Bush from office was the “central focus of my life” and “a matter of life and death.” He said he would sacrifice his entire fortune to defeat Bush “if someone guaranteed it.” When Soros was asked in 2006 about his statement in The Age of Fallibility that “the main obstacle to a stable and just world order is the United States,” he responded that “it happens to coincide with the prevailing opinion in the world. And I think that’s rather shocking for Americans to hear. The United States sets the agenda for the world. And the rest of the world has to respond to that agenda. By declaring a ‘war on terror’ after September 11, we set the wrong agenda for the world… when you wage war, you inevitably create innocent victims.” On September 27, 2012, Soros announced that he was donating $1 million to the super PAC backing President Barack Obama’s reelection, Priorities USA Action. In October 2013, Soros donated $25,000 to Ready for Hillary, becoming a co-chair of the super PAC’s national finance committee. In 2010, he donated $1 million in support of Proposition 19, which would have legalized marijuana in the state of California. He was an initial donor to the Center for American Progress, and he continues to support the organization through the Open Society Foundations. The Open Society Foundations have active programs in more than 60 countries around the world with total expenditures currently averaging approximately $600 million a year. Soros’ writings focus heavily on the concept of reflexivity, where the biases of individuals enter into market transactions, potentially changing the fundamentals of the economy. Soros argues that different principles apply in markets depending on whether they are in a “near to equilibrium” or a “far from equilibrium” state. He argues that, when markets are rising or falling rapidly, they are typically marked by disequilibrium rather than equilibrium, and that the conventional economic theory of the market (the ‘efficient market hypothesis’) does not apply in these situations. He has stated that his own financial success has been attributable to the edge accorded by his understanding of the action of the reflexive effect. In an interview regarding the late-2000s recession, Soros referred to it as the most serious crisis since the 1930s. According to Soros, market fundamentalism with its assumption that markets will correct themselves with no need for government intervention in financial affairs has been “some kind of an ideological excess.” In Soros’ view, the markets’ moods—a “mood” of the markets being a prevailing bias or optimism/pessimism with which the markets look at reality—”actually can reinforce themselves so that there are these initially self-reinforcing but eventually unsustainable and self-defeating boom/bust sequences or bubbles.” In reaction to the late-2000s recession, he founded the Institute for New Economic Thinking in October 2009. This is a think tank composed of international economic, business and financial experts, mandated to investigate radical new approaches to organizing the international economic and financial system. Soros attributes a recent resurgence of antisemitism to the policies of Israel and the United States, and the role of wealthy and influential individuals, and emphasized that “I do not subscribe to the myths propagated by enemies of Israel and I am not blaming Jews for anti-Semitism. Anti-Semitism predates the birth of Israel. Neither Israel’s policies nor the critics of those policies should be held responsible for anti-Semitism. At the same time, I do believe that attitudes toward Israel are influenced by Israel’s policies, and attitudes toward the Jewish community are influenced by the pro-Israel lobby’s success in suppressing divergent views.” Soros has expressed concern about the growth of Chinese economic and political power. “China has risen very rapidly by looking out for its own interests … They have now got to accept responsibility for world order and the interests of other people as well.” Regarding the political gridlock in America, he said, “Today, China has not only a more vigorous economy, but actually a better functioning government than the United States.” In January 2015, Soros said that “Europe needs to wake up and recognize that it is under attack from Russia.” He also urged Western countries to expand economic sanctions against Russia for its support of separatists in eastern Ukraine.
Soros ascribes his own success to being able to recognize when his predictions are wrong. “I’m only rich because I know when I’m wrong. Basically, I have survived by recognizing my mistakes. I very often used to get backaches due to the fact that I was wrong. Whenever you are wrong you have to fight or [take] flight. When I make the decision, the backache goes away.”
Lesley Rene Stahl * Born December 16, 1941, she is an American television journalist who has reported on CBS’s 60 Minutes since 1991. Her broadcasting career began at Boston’s WHDH-TV as a producer and on-air reporter. She joined CBS News in 1972 and became a correspondent in 1974. “I was born on my 30th birthday,” Stahl would later write about the experience. “Everything up ‘til then was prenatal.” Stahl credits her CBS News hire to the Federal Communication Commission’s 1972 inclusion of women in its affirmation action mandate, saying : “The television networks were scouring the country for women and blacks with any news experience at all. A friend in New York had called to tell me about a memo floating around CBS News mandating that ‘the next reporter we hire will be a woman.’” According to Stahl, Connie Chung and Bernard Shaw were “the two other ‘affirmative action babies’ in what became known as the Class of ’72.” Stahl’s prominence grew after she covered the Watergate affair. She went on to become White House correspondent during the presidencies of Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan and George H. W. Bush. At the Republican Convention of 1980, she broke the news on CBS that Reagan’s negotiations with ex-President Ford had broken down and the answer to the question of who would be vice-presidential nominee was: “It’s Bush! Yes, it’s Bush!” George H. W. Bush had been standing perhaps not far away, largely off by himself, looking discouraged because he was sure he wasn’t going to be chosen. Stahl was the moderator of Face the Nation between September 1983 and May 1991. In addition, from 2002–2004, she hosted 48 Hours Investigates. In 2002, Stahl made headlines when Al Gore appeared on 60 Minutes and revealed for the first time that he would not again run for president in 2004. When Katie Couric was hired, CBS News asked Stahl to reduce her salary by $500,000 to accommodate Couric’s salary, bringing her down to $1.8 million. In October 2007 Nicolas Sarkozy, President of France, stood up and walked away from an interview with Stahl because she asked him about his relationship with his soon-to-be estranged spouse. Stahl has written one book, Reporting Live, which was published in 1999. She received a Doctorate of Humane Letters from Colgate University in 2008 and a Doctorate of Humane Letters from Loyola College in Maryland in 2008. She is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and one of the founding members, along with Liz Smith, Mary Wells Lawrence and Joni Evans, of wowOwow.com, a website for women to talk about culture, politics and gossip.
Gloria Marie Steinem * This American feminist, journalist, and social and political activist (born March 25, 1934) became nationally recognized as a leader and a spokeswoman for the feminist movement in the late 1960s and early 1970s Steinem was a columnist for New York magazine and a founder of Ms. Magazine. Her 1969 article titled “After Black Power, Women’s Liberation,” brought her to national fame as a feminist leader. In 2005, Steinem, Jane Fonda, and Robin Morgan co-founded the Women’s Media Center, an organization that works “to make women visible and powerful in the media.” Steinem currently travels internationally as an organizer and lecturer, and is a media spokeswoman on issues of equality. Her family history may hold a clue: the paternal grandmother, Pauline Perlmutter Steinem, was chairwoman of the educational committee of the National Woman Suffrage Association, a delegate to the 1908 International Council of Women, and the first woman to be elected to the Toledo Board of Education, as well as a leader in the movement for vocational education, who also rescued many members of her family from the Holocaust. Steinem’s mother, Ruth, at age 34, suffered a “nervous breakdown” that left her an invalid, trapped in delusional fantasies that occasionally turned violent Steinem was 10 years old when her parents finally separated in 1944. The impact of these events had a formative effect on her personality: Steinem concluded that her mother’s inability to hold on to a job was evidence of general hostility towards working women. Years later, Steinem described her mother’s experiences as having been pivotal to her understanding of social injustices and convinced Steinem that women lacked social and political equality. She attended Smith College, an institution with which she continues to remain engaged, and from which she graduated as a member of Phi Beta Kappa. In the late 1950s she spent two years in India as a Chester Bowles Asian Fellow. After returning to the U.S., she served as director of the Independent Research Service, an organization funded in secret by a donor that turned out to be the CIA. In 1960, she was hired by Warren Publishing as the first employee of Help! Magazine. Esquire magazine features editor Clay Felker gave freelance writer Steinem what she later called her first “serious assignment,” regarding contraception. Her resulting 1962 article about the way in which women are forced to choose between a career and marriage preceded Betty Friedan’s book The Feminine Mystique by one year. In 1963, while working on an article for Huntington Hartford’s Show magazine, Steinem was employed as a Playboy Bunny at the New York Playboy Club. The article, published in 1963 as “A Bunny’s Tale,” featured a photo of Steinem in Bunny uniform and detailed how women were treated at those clubs. Steinem has maintained that she is proud of the work she did publicizing the exploitative working conditions of the bunnies and especially the sexual demands made of them, which skirted the edge of the law. However, for a brief period after the article was published, Steinem was unable to land other assignments; in her words, this was “because I had now become a Bunny – and it didn’t matter why.” Steinem eventually landed a job at Felker’s newly founded New York magazine in 1968. In 1969, she covered an abortion speak-out for New York Magazine, which was held in a church basement in Greenwich, New York. Steinem had had an abortion herself in London at the age of 22.] She felt what she called a “big click” at the speak-out, and later said she didn’t “begin my life as an active feminist” until that day. As she recalled, “It [abortion] is supposed to make us a bad person. But I must say, I never felt that. I used to sit and try and figure out how old the child would be, trying to make myself feel guilty. But I never could! I think the person who said: ‘Honey, if men could get pregnant, abortion would be a sacrament’ was right. Speaking for myself, I knew it was the first time I had taken responsibility for my own life. I wasn’t going to let things happen to me. I was going to direct my life, and therefore it felt positive. But still, I didn’t tell anyone. Because I knew that out there it wasn’t [positive].” She also said, “In later years, if I’m remembered at all it will be for inventing a phrase like ‘reproductive freedom’ … as a phrase it includes the freedom to have children or not to. So it makes it possible for us to make a coalition.” In 1972, Steinem co-founded the feminist-themed magazine Ms. with Dorothy Pitman Hughes; it began as a special edition of New York, and Clay Felker funded the first issue. Its 300,000 test copies sold out nationwide in eight days. Within weeks, Ms. had received 26,000 subscription orders and over 20,000 reader letters. The magazine was sold to the Feminist Majority Foundation in 2001; Steinem remains on the masthead as one of six founding editors and serves on the advisory board. Also in 1972, Steinem became the first woman to speak at the National Press Club. On July 10, 1971, Steinem was one of over 300 women who founded the National Women’s Political Caucus (NWPC), including such notables as Bella Abzug, Betty Friedan, Shirley Chisholm, and Myrlie Evers-Williams. As a co-convener of the Caucus, she delivered the speech “Address to the Women of America”, stating in part: “This is no simple reform. It really is a revolution. Sex and race, because they are easy and visible differences, have been the primary ways of organizing human beings into superior and inferior groups and into the cheap labor on which this system still depends. We are talking about a society in which there will be no roles other than those chosen or those earned. We are really talking about humanism. Steinem has stated, “I think the fact that I’ve become a symbol for the women’s movement is somewhat accidental. A woman member of Congress, for example, might be identified as a member of Congress; it doesn’t mean she’s any less of a feminist but she’s identified by her nearest male analog. Well, I don’t have a male analog so the press has to identify me with the movement. I suppose I could be referred to as a journalist, but because Ms. is part of a movement and not just a typical magazine, I’m more likely to be identified with the movement. There’s no other slot to put me in.”
Martha Helen Stewart * Born August 3, 1941, she became one of America’s most celebrated businesswoman, writer, and television personality. As founder of Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia, which went public in 1999, she gained success through a variety of business ventures, encompassing publishing, broadcasting, merchandising and electronic commerce. She has written numerous bestselling books, is the publisher of the Martha Stewart Living magazine, and hosted two long-running syndicated television shows, Martha, which ran from 2005 to 2012, and Martha Stewart Living, which ran from 1993 to 2005. In 2004, Stewart was convicted of charges related to the ImClone insider trading affair and sentenced to federal prison for five months. There was speculation that the incident would effectively end her media empire, although Stewart began a comeback campaign in 2005 and her company returned to profitability in 2006. Stewart rejoined the board of directors of Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia in 2011 and again became chairman in 2012.
Stephen Arthur Stills * Born January 3, 1945, he is an American musician and multi-instrumentalist, best known for his work with Buffalo Springfield and Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young. His accomplishments as a guitarist draw from a myriad of genres including rock and roll, blues, gospel, country, folk and Latin, and in 2003 he was ranked #28 in Rolling Stone Magazine’s list of “The 100 Greatest Guitarists of All Time.” Stills became the first person to be inducted twice on the same night into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame for his work with Buffalo Springfield and Crosby, Stills & Nash. Several of his songs, including “Suite: Judy Blue Eyes,” were inspired by his on-again, off-again relationship with singer Judy Collins. Alike other members of Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young, Stills has long been involved in liberal causes and politics. In 2000, he served as a member of the Democratic credentials committee from Florida during the Democratic National Convention, and was a delegate in previous years.
Sir Howard Stringer * Born February 19, 1942, in Cardiff, Wales, and he was knighted by Queen Elizabeth II on December 31, 1999 after distinction as an American businessman, broadcast executive and journalist who became chairman, president and CEO of Sony Corporation after service as president of CBS News and eventually of CBS Inc. He is also was to head the board of trustees of the American Film Institute. He received a Master of Arts in modern history from the University of Oxford. After moving to the United States in 1965, he worked at WCBS-TV New York before being drafted into the U. S. Army and serving in the Vietnam War. Returning to CBS, he embarked on a 30-year career. He started in a series of lowly jobs, including answering backstage phones for The Ed Sullivan Show. He then became a journalist, producer and senior executive before becoming president of its news division and subsequently responsible for all the broadcast activities of its entertainment, news, sports, radio and television stations as president of CBS Inc. Stringer left CBS in 1995 to set up TELE-TV, a media and technology company formed by U. S. telecoms Bell Atlantic, NYNEX, Pacific Telesis and the Creative Artists Agency, and left two years later in February 1995. Another two years later he joined Sony as president of its U. S. operational unit (Sony Corporation of America). After June 2005 he oversaw Sony’s entire business structure (the first non-Japanese national to attain that rank), including Sony Computer Entertainment, Sony Music Entertainment, Sony Electronics, Sony Pictures Entertainment and Sony Financial Holdings. On April 1, 2009, he became president of Sony Corporation and was to serve as executive chairman and chief executive officer of Sony Corporation of America. On February 1, 2012, Sony announced that Stringer would step down as president and CEO and become chairman of the board, from which he retired in June 2013.
Mary Jean “Lily” Tomlin * Born September 1, 1939, she is an American actress, comedienne, writer and producer. She has been a major force in American comedy since the late 1960s, when she began a career as a stand-up comedienne and became a featured performer on television’s Rowan & Martin’s Laugh-In. Her career has spanned television, comedy recordings, Broadway and motion pictures, and she has starred in such films as Nashville, 9 to 5, All of Me and The Beverly Hillbillies. She is now appearing as Frankie Bergstein in the Netflix series Grace and Frankie.
Alex Trebek * George Alexander “Alex” Trebek, born July 22, 1940, has been the host of the syndicated game show Jeopardy! since 1984 and is contracted through 2018. Trebek was born in Sudbury, Ontario, Canada, and earned a degree in philosophy at the University of Ottawa in 1961. He began his broadcasting career working for the Canadian Broadcasting Corp. as a newscaster and sportscaster. In 1973 he moved to the United States and worked for NBC as host of a new game show, The Wizard of Odds. A year later Trebek hosted the popular Merrill Heatter-Bob Quigley game show, High Rollers, which had two incarnations on NBC (1974–76 and 1978–80), and an accompanying syndicated season (1975–76). During the intervening period he appeared in a number of game shows before joining with producer Merv Griffin to shoot two pilots for a revival of Jeopardy!, which proved a successful take. This revival sold; he began hosting the revival in 1984 and hasn’t stopped since. In 1991 Trebek made broadcast history by hosting three game shows at the same time, the other two To Tell the Truth and Classic Concentration.
Ted Turner * Robert Edward “Ted” Turner III was born November 19, 1938, and excelled in all of his lives as a visionary media mogul, journalist, sportsman, team owner, adventurer and philanthropist. He began his career in television with a secondary UHF station in Atlanta and pioneered the national superstation concept in cable television. He revolutionized television journalism by creating the first 24-hour cable news channel, CNN. As a sportsman he won the America’s Cup in sailing and as a team owner turned the Atlanta Braves into a nationally popular franchise that won the World Series, at the same time launching the charitable Goodwill Games. He helped reinvent interest in professional wrestling when he owned one of the most popular wrestling companies known as World Championship Wrestling (WCW). As landowner he is just shy of being the nation’s largest, and his herd of buffalo, brought back from extinction, is indeed the largest. As a philanthropist, he is known for his $1 billion gift to support the United Nations, which created the United Nations Foundation, a public charity to broaden support for the UN. Turner has also devoted his assets to environmental causes. Turner’s media empire began with his father’s billboard business, Turner Outdoor Advertising, which was worth $1 million when Turner took it over in 1963, and would be the basis for beginning the Turner Broadcasting System in 1970. Turner’s penchant for controversial statements earned him the nicknames “The Mouth of the South” and “Captain Outrageous.” He was also Time magazine’s man of the year. Those who keep score figure he’s worth about $2 billion now, down from perhaps $10 billion at the top. He says that with a little economizing you can get by.
Desmond Mpilo Tutu * Born on October 7, 1931, he is a South African social rights activist and retired Anglican bishop who rose to worldwide fame during the 1980s as an opponent of apartheid. He received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1984, the Albert Schweitzer Prize for Humanitarianism in 1986, the Pacem in Terris Award in 1987, the Sydney Peace Prize in 1999; the Gandhi Peace Prize in 2007 and the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2009. He was the first black Archbishop of Cape Town and bishop of the Church of the Province of Southern Africa (now the Anglican Church of Southern Africa). Tutu’s admirers see him as a man who since the demise of apartheid has been active in the defense of human rights and uses his high profile to campaign for the oppressed. He has campaigned to fight HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis, poverty, racism, sexism, the imprisonment of Chelsea Manning, homophobia and transphobia. Tutu headed the Truth and Reconciliation Commission formed after the fall of apartheid. Tutu is generally credited with coining the term Rainbow Nation as a metaphor for post-apartheid South Africa after 1994 under African National Congress rule. The expression has since entered mainstream consciousness to describe South Africa’s ethnic diversity. Since his retirement, Tutu has worked as a global activist on issues pertaining to democracy, freedom and human rights. Tutu launched a global campaign to insure that all children are registered at birth, as an unregistered child did not officially exist and was vulnerable to traffickers and other disasters. Tutu is widely regarded as “South Africa’s moral conscience” and was described by the late President Nelson Mandela as “sometimes strident, often tender, never afraid and seldom without humour, Desmond Tutu’s voice will always be the voice of the voiceless.”
Barbara Walters * Born September 25, 1929, she is an American broadcast journalist, author and television personality, famous for hosting Today and The View, the television news magazine 20/20 and co-anchoring the ABC Evening News. She began working on Today with host Hugh Downs in 1962. Her excellent interviewing ability and popularity eventually allowed more air time. She acquired the title co-host with Jim Hartz in 1974, the first woman with that title for any network’s news or public affairs program. Two years later, continuing to pioneer for women, she became the first female co-anchor of any network evening news, working with Harry Reasoner on the ABC Evening News. From 1979 to 2004, Walters worked as co-host and producer for the ABC News magazine 20/20, again appearing with Hugh Downs. Beginning in 1997, she created and appeared as co-host on The View. Walters retired from ABC News and as co-host of The View on May 16, 2014, although she remains the executive producer for as long as it’s on the air.
Samuel Atkinson Waterston * Born November 15, 1940, he is an American actor, producer and director. Among other roles, he is noted for his Academy Award-nominated portrayal of Sydney Schanberg in The Killing Fields (1984), and his Golden Globe-nominated and Screen Actors Guild Award-winning role as Jack McCoy on the NBC television series Law & Order (1994-2010). He has been nominated for multiple Golden Globe, Screen Actors Guild, BAFTA and Emmy awards, having starred in over 80 film and television productions during his 50-year career. Allmovie has characterized Waterston as having “cultivated a loyal following with his quietly charismatic, unfailingly solid performances.” He was a fixture on the HBO series The Newsroom and now appears in the Netflix comedy series Grace and Frankie
James Dewey Watson * Born April 6, 1928, he is a noted American molecular biologist, geneticist and zoologist, best known as a co-discoverer of the structure of DNA in 1953 with Francis Crick. Watson, Crick, and Maurice Wilkins were awarded the 1962 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine “for their discoveries concerning the molecular structure of nucleic acids and its significance for information transfer in living material”. After studies at the University of Chicago and Indiana University, Watson did postdoctoral research to absorb chemistry with the biochemist Herman Kalckar in Copenhagen. Watson next worked at the University of Cambridge’s Cavendish Laboratory in England, where he met his future collaborator and friend Francis Crick. From 1956 to 1976, Watson was on the faculty of the Harvard University Biology Department, promoting research in molecular biology. From 1968 he served as director of Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory on Long Island, New York, greatly expanding its level of funding and research. At CSHL, he shifted his research emphasis to the study of cancer, along with making it a world leading research center in molecular biology. In 1994, he started as president 1994 and served for 10 years. Between 1988 and 1992, Watson was associated with the National Institutes of Health, helping to establish the Human Genome Project. Watson has written many books, including the textbook Molecular Biology of the Gene and his bestselling The Double Helix.
Raquel Welch * Born Jo Raquel Tejada on September 5, 1940, she is an American actress who first won attention for her role in Fantastic Voyage (1966), after which she won a contract with 20th Century-Fox. It, in turn, loaned her to a British studio where she made One Million Years B.C. (1966). Although she had only three lines in the film, images of her in the doe-skin bikini she wore in the film became a best-selling poster that turned her into an iconic sex symbol and catapulted her to stardom. She later starred in notable films like Bedazzled (1967), Bandolero! (1968), 100 Rifles (1969) and Myra Breckinridge (1970). She carved out a place in movie history portraying strong female characters and breaking the mold of the submissive sex symbol. In 1995, Welch was chosen by Empire magazine as one of the 100 Sexiest Stars in Film History. Playboy named Welch no. 3 on its 100 Sexiest Stars of the Twentieth Century list. In 2011, Men’s Health magazine ranked her no. 2 in its Hottest Women of All Time list. Welch is one of the first and few actresses to portray a female leading role in a Western movie. Her Hannie Caulder (1971) was a clear influence on later revenge films; Quentin Tarantino said the film was one of his inspirations for Kill Bill (2003).
Richard E. Wiley * Born in 1934, he served as chairman of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) from March 8, 1970 to October 12, 1977, where he advocated increased competition and lessened regulation in the communications field. Wiley played a pivotal role in the development of HDTV in the United States, serving from 1987 to 1995 as Chairman of the FCC’s Advisory Committee on Advanced Television Service. In 1983, Wiley founded the Washington, D. C. law firm Wiley Rein LLP, now home to more than 200 lawyers practicing in almost two-dozen areas of law including communications, government contracts, insurance, international trade, public policy and litigation. Wiley, the firm’s chairman, leads its preeminent communications practice. He has often been profiled by the media and recognized for his expertise and contributions to the communications industry. He has been called the “Father of High-Definition television” (The Globe and Mail), the “most influential media and telecommunications lawyer in the United States” (The International Herald Tribune) and one of the top “100 Men of the Century” (Broadcasting & Cable). Wiley is the recipient of numerous awards, including an Emmy from the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences, the Electronic Industries’ Medal of Honor, the Distinguished Service Award of the National Association of Broadcasters, the North American Broadcasters Association’s International Achievement Award, an Award of Special Recognition from the Radio and Television News Directors Foundation, the Digital Pioneer’s Award, Leading Communications Lawyer by Legal Times of Washington and the Chambers USA Award for Excellence in the area of telecommunications regulatory work. He has served as chairman/president of The Media Institute, the Center for Telecommunication and Information at Columbia University and the Federal Bar and Federal Communication Bar Associations.
Robert Upshur “Bob” Woodward * Born March 26, 1943, he was one half of the investigative journalistic team (with Carl Bernstein) largely credited with exposing the Watergate scandal leading to the resignation of President Richard Nixon. He has worked at The Washington Post since 1971 as a reporter and is now an associate editor. Gene Roberts, the former executive editor of The Philadelphia Inquirer and former managing editor of The New York Times, has called the work of Woodward and Bernstein “maybe the single greatest reporting effort of all time.” Woodward has since written 16 books on American politics, 12 of which have been bestsellers. Woodward made crucial contributions to two Pulitzers won by The Washington Post – for the Watergate story and later for coverage of the September 11 attacks. Woodward himself has been a recipient of nearly every major American journalism award. He has authored or co-authored 16 nonfiction books in the last 35 years. All have been national bestsellers and 12 of them have been No. 1 national nonfiction bestsellers—more No. 1 national nonfiction bestsellers than any contemporary author.
Leslie L. Vadász * Born in Budapest, Hungary, in 1936, and an immigrant to the U. S. in 1961, he became an American engineer and manager and one of the founding members of Intel Corporation. He was that company’s third employee, hired directly by Andrew Grove. Vadasz became head of the design group that developed the Intel 4004, the first microprocessor, and has been an innovator and strategic leader throughout the company’s history. He was the founder and – until 2003 – president of the Intel Capital strategic investment program.
Richard Wayne “Dick” Van Dyke * Born December 13, 1925, his career as an American actor, comedian, writer, singer, dancer, and producer has spanned almost seven decades. Van Dyke starred in the films Bye Bye Birdie (1963), Mary Poppins (1964) and Chitty Chitty Bang Bang (1968) and in the TV series The Dick Van Dyke Show and Diagnosis: Murder. Beginning in 2006, he was introduced to a new generation through his Recipient of five Emmys, a Tony and a Grammy, Van Dyke was inducted into the Television Hall of Fame in 1995. He received the Screen Actors Guild’s highest honor, the SAG Life Achievement Award, in 2013, has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame and has been recognized as a Disney Legend. Van Dyke’s first network TV appearance was with Dennis James on James’ Chance of a Lifetime in 1954. He later appeared in two episodes of The Phil Silvers Show during its 1957–58 season. He also appeared early in his career on ABC’s The Pat Boone Chevy Showroom and NBC’s The Polly Bergen Show, followed by a seven-year contract with CBS. He recalls being anchorman for the morning show during this period with Walter Cronkite as his newsman. From 1961 to 1966, Van Dyke starred in the CBS sitcom The Dick Van Dyke Show, in which he portrayed a comedy writer named Rob Petrie. Complementing Van Dyke was a veteran cast of comic actors including Rose Marie, Morey Amsterdam, Jerry Paris, Ann Morgan Guilbert, Richard Deacon, and Carl Reiner, as well as 23-year-old Mary Tyler Moore, who played Rob’s wife Laura Petrie. Van Dyke won three Emmy Awards as Outstanding Lead Actor in a Comedy Series, and the series received four Emmy Awards as Outstanding Comedy Series. Van Dyke began his film career by playing the role of Albert J. Peterson in the film version of Bye Bye Birdie (1963). Despite his unhappiness with the adaptation—its focus differed from the stage version in that the story now centered on a previously supporting character—the film was a success. That same year, Van Dyke was cast in two roles: as the chimney sweep Bert, and as bank chairman Mr. Dawes Senior, in Walt Disney’s Mary Poppins (1964). Whose enduring appeal has made it one of the most famous films of all time. With Julie Andrews, Van Dyke received a Grammy Award in 1964 for his performance on the soundtrack. In 1970 Van Dyke Faith, Hope and Hilarity: A Child’s Eye View of Religion a book of humorous anecdotes based largely on his experiences as a Sunday School teacher