I took a survey course from him undergrad (UCSB, mid-'70s). 
Wow cool. I work a lot on the central coast and have excavated a number of sites that he dug on back in the day.
In my profession, I don’t believe there are any superstars.
In my area of academic expertise, the big names are Peter Ladefoged, Ian Maddieson, Larry Trask, John McWhorter, and Stephen Pinker.
Still living (and certainly not definitive):
David Francis
Paolo Cherchi Usai
Rick Prelinger
Bob Gitt
Bob Harris
Of course, probably the most famous (now deceased) was Henri Langlois.
I can only think of two off-hand: Neil deGrasse Tyson, and Jack “Star [del]Hustler[/del] Gazer” Horkheimer. (In that they’re associated with planetariums. I have not hosted a PBS science show, personally.)
Ollie Johnston
Frank Thomas
Glen Keane
John Lasseter
Brad Bird
Ferran Adria, Thomas Keller, Heston Blumenthal, Alain Ducasse, Joel Robuchon - Haute Cuisine
Marvin Minsky, Rod Brooks, Terry Winograd, John McCarthy, Herb Simon - Artificial Intelligence
I am not aware of any famous technical writers, even among technical writers. I guess the closest thing would be authors of grammar books, and of them I think that one of the best-known is Bill Walsh (The Elephants of Style and Lapsing Into a Comma). Many people might also recognize Lynne Truss’s name (Eats, Shoots & Leaves), but she wrote about British grammar and is therefore useless to me. 
Shigeru Miyamoto
Will Wright
Sid Meier
Hideo Kojima
Warren Spector
You beat me to it, but I was planning a slightly different list so I’ll post mine anyway:
Melvil Dewey
Ranganathan
Charles Ammi Cutter
Martha Manheimer
Lois Mai Chan
Now that you mention Pearl I realize she really should have been on my list, alas!
One of those is my husband’s actual name. He is outstanding in his field, but it’s not THAT field. 
Nancy Mulvaney, Larry Bonura, and maybe Sylvia Coates: indexing.
Don Pardo
Gary Owens
Shadoe Stevens
James Earl Jones
Don LaFontaine
In my hobby:
Jancis Robinson
Hugh Johnson
Doug Frost
Andrea Immer
Brian K. Julyan
[ul]
[li]Casey Kasem[/li][li]Dick Clark[/li][li]Howard Stern[/li][li]Erich “Mancow” Muller[/li][li]Gary Owens[/li][/ul]
Radio personalities, all of them.
Depends which way you go with my field. Either:
Art Spiegelman, Will Eisner, Frank Miller, Todd McFarlane, Art Crumb
or
Maurice Sendak, Theodore Geisel, Beatrix Potter, Lane Smith, Dav Pilkey
Hunter S. Thompson
Gandhi
Buckminster Fuller
The Gieco Gecko
An old cat toy I found in a second hand Smoking Jacket (Not a person, I realise, and hardly famous, but a great influence on my life)
Regards
FML
(Sorry I couldn’t resist)
Kofi Annan
James Baker III
Henry Kissinger
Richard Holbrooke
Madeline Albright
GPS and satellite navigation (with maybe a slight bias):
Brad Parkinson
A.J. Van Dierendonck
Ron Hatch
Jim Spilker
Per Enge
In my area of academic interest/study (someone else said a lot of the ones I was going to say, but I’ll try not to double up in case someone doesn’t want their list-researching antics spoilt):
Chris Taylor
Michel Ancel
Chris Crawford
Peter Molyneax
Greg Costikyan
I confess I had to look up the spelling on those last two.