Jacob Bernoulli: not the “Bernoulli Principle” Bernoulli, that’s his nephew; but the one who “discovered the fundamental mathematical constant e. However, his most important contribution was in the field of probability, where he derived the first version of the law of large numbers in his work Ars Conjectandi.”
Award-winning writer of bestsellers, Alastair Reynolds.
Record-breaking Olympic champ William McMillan, as in The McMillan Trophy.
Frank Converse may have only been third-billed in season after season of NYPD with Jack Warden — and then second-billed, after Claude Akins, in season after season of MOVIN’ ON — but he managed to star of his own primetime TV series, back when CORONET BLUE was up against THE BIG VALLEY and RUN FOR YOUR LIFE.
(And he was C.K. Dexter Haven on Broadway, to Blythe Danner as Tracy Lord.)
Paul Lauterbur won the Nobel Prize for his pioneering MRI work.
Damadian and Lauterbur both got the National Medal of Technology — for “their independent contributions in conceiving and developing the application of magnetic resonance technology to medical uses including whole body scanning and diagnostic imaging” — so I’d argue that anyone who wants to make a case that one should qualify for this thread, to the point of excluding the other, (a) has an uphill battle; but even so, I reckon that (b) would still make this post relevant.
Jack Kramer, who won at Wimbledon and at the US Open and who otherwise earned his spot in the tennis Hall of Fame as the #1 player in the world year after year after year after year after year after year: he managed it in a year when Pancho Gonzales was the runner-up, and in a year when Bobby Riggs was the runner-up, and, well, see for yourself, if you like; he was a busy guy, is my point.
Even a glance at the movie posters dotting his IMDB entry shows how Tom Moore was top-billed in dozens of silent films before he (a) got leading-man roles in talkies, and before he (b) wound up with that star on the Hollywood Walk Of Fame.
Baby Doc himself, Jean-Claude Duvalier, grabbed headlines as a head of state in his teens and kept right at it through his twenties and into his thirties.
In ‘77, the James E. Sullivan Award went to John Naber, who won four gold medals by setting four world records at the ‘76 Olympics. (He also earned a silver, which is why the bronze in that event went to a teammate who likewise parlayed gold medals and world records into a Hall of Fame career: Jim Montgomery.)
Award-winning Broadway star Richard Derr was second-billed on TV to Grace Kelly in The Big Build-Up in between being top-billed in the When Worlds Collide movie and being top-billed in Invisible Avenger as Lamont Cranston.
Champion golfer Curtis Strange.
Documentary filmmaker Morgan Neville won the Oscar (and, at that, the Grammy; and a lot of other accolades) for 20 Feet From Stardom — and, here and now, his latest effort, Won’t You Be My Neighbor?, has just become “the highest-grossing biographical documentary of all time” in the run-up to awards season, so expect to hear the guy’s name again and again and again soon.
Paul Langton got small roles in big films (TO HELL AND BACK, with Audie Murphy; THIRTY SECONDS OVER TOKYO, with Spencer Tracy; THEY WERE EXPENDABLE, with John Wayne; and so on) and likewise got leading-man roles in a number of movies (MURDER IS MY BEAT, and FIGHTING BACK, and THE SNOW CREATURE, and so on), which presumably explains why he became a prime-time television fixture due to hundreds of episodes of PEYTON PLACE.
Joe Frazier won Olympic gold as a heavyweight boxer in 1964, and then went pro.
George Foreman did the same in 1968, and then went pro likewise.
Félix Savón, though, won Olympic gold as a heavyweight boxer in 1992, and then did it again in 1996, and then did it again in 2000.
THE GIFTED is back for its second-season premiere in prime time tonight, complete with experienced soap-opera actor Blair Redford back in his opening-credits role as bulletproof superhero John Proudstar.
Nursultan Nazarbayev has been the President of Kazakhstan for decades, ever since that became a thing in the wake of the Soviet Union no longer being a thing. (And didja know Kazakhstan is on the Top Ten list of biggest countries?)
Earl Landgrebe seems worth mentioning today, since his service in Congress during the Watergate hearings is what drew a famous comment from the guy.
“Don’t confuse me with the facts,” he said; “I’ve got a closed mind.”
(Oh, and to quote wiki for a slightly less-well-known remark: “When Landgrebe was asked on August 7 about the apparently unanimous support for impeachment of Nixon among his Republican colleagues following this disclosure, he said: “I’m going to stick with my President even if he and I have to be taken out of this building and shot.” The next day, Richard Nixon announced his resignation.”)
Jeff Feagles has the all-time NFL record for consecutive games played.
(Holds a number of other position-specific records, but that’s the general one.)
Anne Nagel (Casey in The Green Hornet and The Green Hornet Strikes Again!) was a leading lady in the movies — by which I mean she not only got billed second to the leading man a bunch of times, but got top billing a bunch of others.
(I mean, if it’s a western like Guns of the Pecos or The Devil’s Saddle Legion in the ‘30s, then we can maybe grant that second-billing after the hero is about as good as it’d get for an actress — and in the ‘40s, if our hero is foiling Nazi operatives in the like of The Dawn Express or The Secret Code — but A Bride For Henry or Saleslady, that’s her being top-billed per the titles. So, second billing under Mickey Rooney in Hoosier Schoolboy one year, but top billing in Gang Bullets the next — and then top billing in Should A Girl Marry? — and then second billing in Winners of the West, because just like that we’re back to westerns again; and so on…)
Edmund Duffy, three-time Pulitzer Prize winner.