Famous Academics a to z

Grace Abbott is best known for her social activism on behalf of immigrants and children. She headed the Children's Bureau from 1921 to 1934.

Chinua Achebe is a Nigerian novelist and author of Things Fall Apart, a work that in part led to his being called the "patriarch of the African novel."

Maria Gaetana Agnesi is best known for writing the first book discussing integral and differential calculus.

Syed Ahmed Khan was an Indian educator, politician and Islamic reformer whose work inspired a new generation of Muslims and pioneered the revival of Indian Islam in the late 19th century.

Amos Bronson Alcott, teacher, mystic, writer and the father of Louisa May Alcott, became an itinerant teacher before settling in Boston to found his own school.

Samuel Alexander was an Australian-born British philosopher. He was the first Jewish fellow of an Oxford or Cambridge college.

Sidney Altman is a Nobel Prize-winning Canadian-American molecular biologist.

Rodolfo Anaya is a Mexican-American writer best known for his Chicano-themed books such as Bless Me, Ultima, Heart of Aztlán and Tortuga.

Philosopher, novelist and scholar Kwame Anthony Appiah is known for his contributions to political philosophy, moral psychology and the philosophy of culture.

Italian Dominican theologian Saint Thomas Aquinas was the foremost medieval Scholasticist and father of the Thomistic school of theology.

Scottish mathematician, physician and satirist John Arbuthnot is known for his satirical writings, which include a political allegory, The History of John Bull.

Hannah Arendt gained much attention for her writings on totalitarianism and Jewish affairs after World War II.

Ancient Greek philosopher Aristotle, together with Socrates and Plato, laid much of the groundwork for western philosophy.

Svante Arrhenius was a Nobel Prize winning scientist known for his revolutionary theories in various fields, including physics, chemistry and astronomy.

Jean Arthur was an American actress best known for her roles in films such as Mr. Smith Goes To Washington and The More The Merrier.

As Emperor of Rome from 161-180, Marcus Aurelius kept the empire safe from the Parthians and Germans, but is best known for his intellectual pursuits.

Charles Babbage was known for his contributions to the first mechanical computers, which laid the groundwork for more complex future designs.

Francis Bacon was an English Renaissance statesman and philosopher, best known for his promotion the scientific method.

Social activist and pacifist Emily Greene Balch won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1946 for being a lifetime advocate of the persecuted and oppressed.

Deep-sea archaeologist and oceanographer Robert Ballard is best known for discovering the wreck of the RMS Titanic in 1985.

George Bancroft was known as the "father of U.S. history." His work, History of the United States, was the first comprehensive study of U.S. History.

Imamu Amiri Baraka is an African-American poet and scholar. He has served as professor emeritus of Africana Studies at the State Unversity of New York at Stony Brook.

The first U.S. commissioner of education, Henry Barnard founded the Connecticut Common School journal and the Rhode Island Institute of Instruction.

Roland Barthes was a French literary philosopher whose work influenced structuralism, semiotics and anthropology.

Clara Barton was an educator, nurse and founder of the American Red Cross.

A professor and a poet, Katharine Lee Bates wrote the poem "America the Beautiful." Her poem became the lyrics to the popular American ballad still enjoyed today.

Patricia Bath is the first African American to complete a residency in ophthalmology. She invented the Laserphaco Probe for cataract treatment in 1986.

Jean Baudrillard was a French postmodern social theorist and philosopher who developed theories of "hyperreality" and "simulacrum."

Cesare Beccaria was one of the greatest minds of the Age of Enlightenment in the 18th century. His writings on criminology and economics were well ahead of their time.

Arnold Beckman was an American chemist who founded Beckman Instruments and funded the first silicon transistor company, giving rise to Silicon Valley.

Henri Becquerel was a French physicist who discovered radioactivity, an achievement for which he won the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1903.

Lawrence Beesley was a teacher, journalist and Titanic survivor. After the collision, he boarded lifeboat 13, which was eventually rescued by the Carpathia.

Alexander Graham Bell was one of the primary inventors of the telephone, did important work in communication for the deaf and held more than 18 patents.

Gertrude Bell was a British writer, archaeologist and political officer best known for helping to establish modern Iraq after World War I.

Saul Bellow was a celebrated novelist who won the Pulitzer, the Nobel Prize for Literature and the National Book Award for Fiction three times.

Isaiah Berlin was a trailblazing 20th century scholar, philosopher and author, who championed pluralistic thinking and openness to ideas.

Charles H. Best was a physiologist and medical researcher who co-discovered the use of insulin as a treatment for diabetes.

Mary McLeod Bethune was an educator and activist, serving as president of the National Association of Colored Women and founding the National Council of Negro Women.

Jill Biden is best known for being the wife of U.S. Vice President Joe Biden, and for her role as America's second lady.

J. Michael Bishop is a Nobel Prize winning physician and scholar who made groundbreaking discoveries in cancer research.

Elizabeth Blackwell was the first woman to graduate from medical school in the United States. She became a leading public health activist during her lifetime.

Louis Braille was a French educator who developed the Braille system of printing and writing for the blind.

André Breton was a French writer, editor and critic who was a key figure in the Dada and Surrealist art movements.

Charlotte Hawkins Brown was a teacher and founder of the Palmer Memorial Institute, a trailblazing Southern prep school for African-American students.

Dan Brown is the New York Times-bestselling author of The Da Vinci Code. He is known for the intricate plotting and detail in his books.

Herbert C. Brown was a scientist and professor who won the Nobel Prize for his work in organic chemistry.

African-American poet Sterling Brown is best known for writing poetry distinctly rooted in folklore and authentic black dialect. His works, including Southern Road (1932), have been widely praised for their authenticity and phonetic spelling.

In 1949, mathematician Marjorie Lee Browne became one of the first two African-American women to earn a Ph.D. in her field.

James M. Buchanan is an American economist best known for his work on public choice theory, for which he receive the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences in 1986.

British historian Alan Bullock is the author of several works on 20th century Europe, including studies of Hitler, Bevin and Stalin.

Sir Richard Burton was a British explorer and linguist. He translated The Arabian Nights, and wrote extensively about his travels in Asia, Africa and America.

Laura Bush is the wife of 43rd U.S. President George W. Bush. She served as first lady from 2001 to 2009.

Joseph Campbell was a professor and author who focused on comparative folklore with books like The Power of Myth and The Hero With a Thousand Faces.

An advocate of children and families in Harlem, NY, Geoffrey Canada is president of the Harlem Children’s Zone. In 2009, President Barack Obama announced plans to replicate the educational center in 20 cities.

Howard Carter was a British archaeologist who excavated King Tut's tomb beginning in 1922.

Jacques Alexandre César Charles was a French scientist and inventor who, along with Nicholas Robert, was the first to take flight in a hydrogen balloon.

Charles Chesnutt was a trailblazing short-story author and novelist who presented African-American life in works like The Conjure Woman and The Colonel's Dream.

Judy Chicago is an American artist, educator and writer, and a leading figure in feminist art. She received critical acclaim in the 1970s for her art project "The Dinner Party."

Famed scholar Noam Chomsky is known for both his groundbreaking contributions to linguistics and his penetrating critiques of political systems.

Psychologist and educator Kenneth Bancroft Clark was the first black president of the American Psychological Association.

Septima Poinsette Clark was a pioneering educator and activist who championed teacher’s rights with organizations like the NAACP.

Lucille Clifton is a poet whose works generally examine family life, racism and gender issues.

Chuck Close is noted for his highly inventive techniques used to paint the human face. He rose to fame in the late 1960s for his large-scale, photo-realist portraits.

Samuel Taylor Coleridge was an English poet of the Romantic Movement, best known for his allegorical sea-faring poem, "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner."

Teacher Marva Collins was one of the most influential education activists of the 20th century, working to gain equal access for minorities to quality education.

French philosopher Auguste Comte (1798–1857) greatly advanced the field of social science, giving it the name "sociology" and influenced many 19th-century social intellectuals.

Confucius was an influential Chinese philosopher, teacher and political figure known for his popular aphorisms and for his models of social interaction.

Alistair Cooke was a British-born journalist who worked in newspaper, radio and television. He hosted television's Masterpiece Theatre.

Astronomer Nicolaus Copernicus identified the concept of a heliocentric solar system, in which the sun, rather than the earth, is the center of the solar system.

As head principal of the Institute for Colored Youth, Fanny Coppin innovated a practice-teaching system and an elaborate industrial-training department.

John Warcup Cornforth is an Australian scientist who won the 1975 Nobel Prize for his research in stereochemistry and enzyme-based synthesis.

Lucy Craft Laney was a school teacher and educator who opened a school for African-American students in the South in the late 1800s.

French physicist Pierre Curie was of founding fathers of modern physics and is best known for being a pioneer in radioactive studies.

Leonardo da Vinci was an Italian painter and a genius in many realms of science. He is best known for two paintings: the "Mona Lisa" and "The Last Supper."

Chemist John Dalton is credited with pioneering modern atomic theory. He was also the first to study color blindness.