Joseph Fourier, as in “Joseph Fourier University” and as in “Fourier Transform” and “Fourier Analysis” and “Fourier Number” and “Fourier Series” and so on.
At that, there’s also Nobel Prize winner Otto Wallach, as in “Wallach’s rule” — and as in “Wallach degradation”, and as in “the Wallach rearrangement”.
Devin Nunes, who has been a Congressman for fifteen years and counting, is currently Chairman of the House Intelligence Committee.
And, for a guy who’s been serving in Congress even longer than Nunes: Joe Wilson, who picked up a dose of fame or notoriety or something when he, ah, responded to President Obama during the State of the Union address. “There are also those who claim that our reform effort will insure illegal immigrants. This, too, is false. The reforms I’m proposing would not apply to those who are here illegally.”
Quoth Wilson: “You lie!”
(Some time after that, in 2012, Wilson got re-elected with 96% of the vote.)
Nick Cave — who presumably counts in his own right — wrote lyrics referencing a line from poet Wallace Stevens, who in turn has a Wikipedia page containing what might be the most American sentence I’ve ever seen: “After he won the Pulitzer Prize in 1955, he was offered a faculty position at Harvard but declined since it would have required him to give up his vice-presidency of The Hartford.”
(For bonus points, that was also the year — well, one of the years — when Stevens won the National Book Award For Poetry.)
Despite being in his forties, boxing champ Adonis Stevenson managed this past weekend to retain the light heavyweight title he’s been defending since 2013.
He doesn’t exactly have what you’d call leading-man looks, but Donal Logue manages to get leading-man work when he isn’t busy in a supporting role.
Tim McGraw has seven multiplatinum albums — nine, if you count ‘greatest hits’ compilations — and has parlayed that into lots of acting credits: hosting SNL; doing memorable work in Friday Night Lights and The Blind Side; getting billed second to Gwyneth Paltrow in Country Strong, and to Alison Lohman in Flicka; and so on.
Maybe none of that will overshadow his Grammys, but it’s solid.
Happy birthday to Philip Pearlstein, who at 94 has “paintings in the collections of over 70 public art museums.” Books have been written about the guy, and not just because he was Andy Warhol’s roommate back when they were doing catalog work; here’s a bit where it’s noted that Pearlstein, “credited as the chief reviver of late 20th-century realism and its leading figure painter, is perhaps the oldest artist still producing exhibition-quality work.”
Eddie Eagan won gold at the Summer Olympics, and won completely unrelated gold at the Winter Olympics, and near as I can tell that makes him unique; and, near as I can tell, that’s what earned him the postage-stamp treatment, since said stamp showcases, well, (a) his face and his name, and (b) both events.
After his award-winning work on THE SOPRANOS, Matthew Weiner got all sorts of attention for triumphing with MAD MEN: he won an Emmy for writing it, and another Emmy for producing it; and then, for its second year, he won an Emmy for writing it, and another Emmy for producing it; and then, for its third year, he won an Emmy for writing it, and another Emmy for producing it…
On in a few minutes: the finale of DECEPTION, the second prime-time show built around giving a starring role to Jack Cutmore-Scott — after he was Cooper Barrett, the title character on COOPER BARRETT’S GUIDE TO SURVIVING LIFE).
Nicolas Sarkozy recently had a five-year run as President of France.
Rob Bironas founded The Rob Bironas Fund after managing a number of NFL records that still stand (most field goals made in one half, and most field goals made in one game, and most field goals made in one game without missing, and most points by a kicker in one game, and most game-winning field goals in one season) but before he managed yet another NFL record that’s also still standing (most consecutive games with a 40+ yard field goal).
Movie star Tim McCoy got top billing in plenty of cowboy pictures.
Jiro Ono, the award-winning chef from the award-winning Jiro Dreams Of Sushi.
Douglas Slocombe’s first credit on IMDB is for filming 1940’s Lights Out, by “covering a Goebbels rally and the burning of a synagogue, for which he was briefly arrested.” His last credit on IMDB: cinematographer on the top-grossing movie in the world, with audiences cheering Indiana Jones for standing up to Nazis.
(And before Last Crusade and Temple of Doom he’d earned an Oscar nomination for his work on Raiders of the Lost Ark: the top-grossing movie in the world for its year. And he’d earned Oscar nominations before that, as part of a big fine career: having made Michael Caine look good in The Italian Job the year after he did the same for Peter O’Toole in The Lion In Winter, for example. And he did it for Robert Redford, as The Great Gatsby; and for Sean Connery, as James Bond…)
Marian Nixon got tons of ‘leading lady’ roles back when: getting billed second to Spencer Tracy in Face In The Sky; and to Will Rogers, in Too Busy To Work; and to Jimmy Cagney, in Winner Take All — and getting top billing, over Ralph Bellamy, in Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm — which goes a long way to explaining why she got a star on the Hollywood Walk Of Fame, because, hey, leading lady to Tom Mix in a western, and to Buddy Rogers in a comedy, and to Warner Baxter in a drama?
Gabriel Lippmann (who invented the Lippmann electrometer, which Wiki says was used in the first electrocardiograph; and who, per Wiki, also invented the coelostat, and also created integral photography) won a Nobel Prize for something other than all of that stuff I just now relegated to parenthetical status.
LA LAW was a monster hit: it won the Emmy for Outstanding Drama Series in its first season, and then got nominated again for its second; and then won three in a row for its third and its fourth and its fifth, which is when Richard Dysart picked up three Emmy nominations in a row for his performance as Leland McKenzie; and when the show’s sixth season topped out at a nomination, Dysart won one.
Of course, he was already an award-winning Broadway actor before all of that.