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June 7, 2005
Guess Who Is/Was an Engineer?
Surprise, surprise. When people think engineer, they often think researcher or inventor or designer. But as this list shows, engineers are also heads of state, world-class athletes and acclaimed film directors:
When Mark did his series of articles So, You Want to Be an Engineer... (Part I, II, III, IV, V and Final), he cited some lists of well-known people who are engineers or have an engineering background. I compiled them below:
Scott Adams
Cartoonist and creator of "Dilbert"
Yasser Arafat
The late Palestinian Authority President and Nobel Peace Prize Laureate
Edwin Howard Armstrong
Inventor of the wide-band frequency modulation, now known as FM radio
Neil Armstrong
First man to walk on the moon
Rowan Atkinson
British comedian; of TV series "Mr. Bean"
Alexander Graham Bell
Inventor of the telephone
Henry Bessemer
Inventor of the first cost-effective process for mass-producing steel
Leonid Brezhnev
Leader of the former Soviet Union
Frank Capra
Film director; "Mr. Smith Goes to Washington," "It's a Wonderful Life"
Jimmy Carter
39th President of the United States
Roger Corman
Film director; original version of "The Little Shop of Horrors"
Leonardo Da Vinci
Artist; one of the great masters of the High Renaissance
Rudolf Diesel
Inventor of the pressure-ignited heat engine
Ray Dolby
Audio system innovator and founder of Dolby Laboratories
Bonnie Dunbar
NASA astronaut
Thomas Edison
Invented the light bulb, among 1,093 patented inventions
Alexandre Gustave Eiffel
Designed the Eiffel Tower and the internal structure of the Statue of Liberty
George W. G. Ferris
Inventor of the Ferris Wheel
Sir Sanford Fleming
Creator of the worldwide system of standard time
Henry Ford
Father of 20th century American industry; instituted industrial mass production of automobiles
Lillian Gilbreth
Known as the "mother of modern management"; mother of 12; her children wrote "Cheaper by the Dozen"
Roberto C. Goizueta
Former chairman and chief executive of Coca-Cola
Andrew Grove
Intel co-founder
Herbie Hancock
Jazz musician
William Hewlett and David Packard
Hewlett-Packard co-founders
Alfred Hitchcock
Director and producer of famed psychological thrillers such as "Psycho" and "The Birds"
Herbert Hoover
31st President of the United States
Grace Murray Hopper
Developer of the first computer compiler and the computer program language COBOL
Lee Iacocca
Former chairman and chief executive officer of Chrysler Corp.
Bill Koch
Yachtsman and winning America's Cup captain in 1992
Hedy Lamarr
Famous actress in the 1940s
Tom Landry
Former Dallas Cowboys coach
Abraham Lincoln
16th President of the United States
Jair Lynch
Olympic gymnast, 1992, 1996
Guglielmo Marconi
Father of the radio; won the Nobel Prize for Physics
Elijah McCoy
Inventor of a revolutionary lubricator for steam engines; prompted people inspecting new equipment to query if it contained the "real McCoy"
George de Mestral
Inventor of the "hook and loop fastener," which was patented under the name Velcro
Arthur Nielsen
Developer of Nielsen rating system
Judith Resnik
Challenger astronaut
Tom Scholtz
Leader of the rock band Boston
John Sununu
Former White House Chief of Staff for President George Bush; CNN commentator
Nikola Tesla
Inventor of the induction motor and the accompanying alternating current long-distance electrical transmission system
George Washington
First President of the United States
John F. Welch, Jr.
Former chairman and chief executive officer of General Electric
George Westinghouse
Founder of the Westinghouse Electric Company; inventor of a system of air brakes that made train travel safe
Eli Whitney
Inventor of the cotton gin
Montel Williams
TV talk show host; highly decorated former Naval engineer and Naval Intelligence Officer
Boris Yeltsin
Former President of Russia
Sources:
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» Outing Famous Engineers from blog.jameshom.com
Thomas.Net outs famous people you might've not known were...engineers. Gotta come out of the (wiring) closet sometime, I suppose. Guess Who Is an Engineer But they forgot a couple of people who would've really put a different face on the... [Read More]
Tracked on June 7, 2005 1:47 PM
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Comment
24 CommentsMichael Bloomberg, Mayor of New York City, studied engineering as an undergraduate at Johns Hopkins University before obtaining a Harvard MBA.
June 7, 2005 1:37 PMCindy Crawford was a Chemical Engineering major at Northwestern (on scholarship!) before getting into modeling.
Teri Hatcher grew up in Sunnyvale, here in the middle of Silicon Valley, and was planning to go into engineering like her mom and dad. Now she's just a desperate housewife.
June 7, 2005 1:41 PMNikola Tesla was the father of the radio, not Marconi as stated in most history books.
June 7, 2005 1:57 PMTO Teri Hatcher;;; Thats your fault, but it aint too late. Go for it. Do it now or you never will and you will always regret it.
June 7, 2005 3:19 PMScott Adams was a speaker at the 2005 PLM World Conference in Texas, during the first week on May 2005; he stated that his degree was in economics, not engineering.
June 8, 2005 10:08 AMDear Hector,
You're right. Scott Adams does hold a BA in economics from Hartwick College, Oneonta, NY (as well as an MBA from the University of California at Berkeley).
He made it on this list of engineers because his former day job was as an applications engineer at Pacific Bell.
June 8, 2005 11:00 AMIt is interesting to note, that many of these people listed as engineers, have no engineering degree. Edison and Ford to name two. Education, although important does not make an engineer.
June 9, 2005 8:31 AMI thought that Abe Lincoln was a lawyer. Is he another without a degree? Knew that Washinton was a surveyor. Like your list though.
June 9, 2005 2:58 PMEngineering is a style of thinking.
June 17, 2005 2:01 PMHaving a degree does not make an engineer
June 18, 2005 3:55 PMYou left out 2 of the major figures of our early national history, Thomas Jefferson and Benjamin Franklin
August 5, 2005 2:44 PMIt takes more to being an engineer that just saying that you are an engineer. One of the reasons that our transportation systems are as screwed up as they are is because laborers who worked for 20 years building roads were given the title "engineer". Engineering is the application of scientific principals for the benefit of mankind and it requires years of study, both in the classroom and working under experienced engineers. I am an engineer and have worked as an engineer for over 20 years and I resent your inclusion of persons with no formal or practical training in engineering on this list!
September 4, 2005 4:31 PM
