5 people who are famous in your area of expertise?

In My Humble Opinion
1

It seems that within a particular area of human endeavor there are a few people who are known by practically all participants in that area. For example, if you are a CEO of a Fortune 500 high-tech corporation, then you know about Ellison, Ballmer, Rollins, Otellini, and Palmisano. (Or you *are * one of them …)

In my area of expertise (investment analysis), Sharpe, Markowitz, Fama, Merton, and Black are well-known economists.

Who are five people who are known by practically everyone in your area of expertise, but are not necessarily famous among the general population?

2

Do they have to be still living? 'Cause that makes it a lot harder.

3

Too easy, I’m in the Air Force:)

4

The five top film historians ever, in my opinion (famous in their profession for being good writers and scrupulous fact-checkers) have been:

Kevin Brownlow
DeWitt Bodeen
William K. Everson
Daniel Blum
Alexander Walker

Others are famous but also dicey as far as actually getting their facts straight: Adela Rogers St. John, Anthony Slide, Leonard Maltin.

5

In puzzledom, currently active:

Known to even fairly casual solvers:
Will Shortz

Known to both constructors and solvers (and listed in roughly decreasing order of fame):
Maura Jacobsen
Merl Reagle
Cox and Rathvon

Admired within the biz, but not probably not known to a lot of solvers:
Mike Shenk

6

Charlie Papazian, Fred Eckhardt, David Miller, George Fix, Terry Foster.

If you are a home brewer, you know these demi-gods.

7

If they don’t all still have to be alive:

Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward (I’m considering them one because they worked as a team), Ernie Pyle, Samuel Clemens/Mark Twain (in fact, he started near where I live), Ernest Hemmingway and Walter Lippman.

I love the newspaper industry. We get the cool names.

~Tasha

8

Donna Kato, Victoria Hughes, Pier Voulkos, Steven Ford & David Forlano (counts as one, because they are a partnership), and Kathleen Dustin.

Of those, probably only Donna is known to those who are not specifically working in this field, as she appears fairly regularly on a popular show on HGTV.

9

Science fiction: Isaac Asimov, Ray Bradbury, Arthur C. Clarke, Robert A. Heinlein, H. G. Wells (and there are dozens of others).

Alive: Clarke, Bradbury, Harlan Ellison, Connie Willis, Neal Stephenson (and many many others).

10

If they don’t have to be alive, famous people in library science include Melville Dewey, Ranganathan, Charles Ammi Cutter, that Colon guy, and Nancy Pearl.

If they do have to be alive, you still get Nancy Pearl and you can add, say, Michael Stephens, Jenny Levine, Michael Gorman (boo, hiss!), Jessamyn West, Michael Golrick - there’s lots, but people who aren’t librarians haven’t heard of any of them.

11

Dead or alive. Past or present. (But not future …)

12

Computer Science: Charles Babbage, Ada Lovelace, Alan Turing, John von Neumann, Grace Hopper.

13

Not that well-known – I have zero idea what your field is.

14

Since silenus took Papazian & co. I’ll go with Jeff Cooper, Clint Smith, Elmer Keith, Massad Ayoob and … (I’m drawing a blank) … ok, in a totally different way and for different reasons, Carlos Hathcock. I don’t imagine there are many American shooters that don’t know most of them.

15

I’ll say… Edward Gibbon, Theodor Mommsen, Sir Ronald Syme, H. H. Scullard, Erich Gruen.

16

My list includes the living, dead, and fictional and includes those with highly questionable ethics - Lewis Binford, Indiana Jones, Ian Hodder, Heinrich Schliemann, and Walter Taylor.

However, in a more immediate and applicable sense, I would suggest - Robert Heizer, James Bennyhoff, Brian Fagan, Mike Moratto, and David Hurst Thomas.

17

It’s not a very big field - I’m a polymer clay artist.

18

Famous? There are local/state/federal people with long and distinguished histories in the field, but I’d have to modestly state that I am the only “famous” Bus Guy.

:wink:

19

I am really curious to know what some of these people already mentioned are famous for (off to google, I guess).

In higher education administration:

Derek Bok (president of Harvard for like a million years) and William Bowen (president of Princeton for like a million years and currently at the Mellon Foundation): I am counting them as one person because they are partners in crime, so to speak. Known for pushing policy issues, also a focus on opening up access to higher education, and particularly top-tier higher ed, to a wider demographic.

Johnnetta Cole: Another college president, advocate for HBCUs, and women’s issues in higher ed.

David Baltimore: Really he is a scientist (they gave him a prize and everything), but also well-known within the field for his work in administration for higher level (doc and post-doc) science research policy and education. Also somewhat notorious for being involved with a high-profile academic misconduct case, so he is also a cautionary tale.

Because this is a big area, I’m using my last two choices for my own slice of the administration pie, which focuses on students (as opposed to say, research or funding)…

Patrick Terenzini: Professor and researcher on measuring student development, admissions, services, currently at Penn State. My unscientific guess is that Terenzini is the most frequently cited scholar in academic papers on this aspect of education. Even though much of his own research is pretty old now, it’s a big part of the foundation.

Larry Moneta: Another student services person, big advocate for incorporating cutting edge technology into all aspects of student services delivery. Unfortunately, he has also been in the mainstream news recently as he is currently heading up Student Affairs at Duke.

These are all people currently active in the field. I would have to think more about historical people.

20

Ooh, can I play? Zsofia already got the librarians, except that Italian guy who organized the British Library in 1848 or so, so we’ll go with another one. My (hobby) field has:

Judy Martin, Marsha McCloskey, Judy Mathieson, Kaye England, and Lori Smith.

I’m learning about a new, more obscure field, and there we have Wendy Schoen, Susan Stewart, Carol Ahles, Nancy Coburn, and Margaret Pierce.