List: American engineers

by likeorhate

•  Claude Shannon

  Claude Elwood Shannon (April 30, 1916 – February 24, 2001), an American electronic engineer and mathematician, is known as "the father of information theory". Shannon is famous for having founded information theory with one landmark paper published in 1948.

  

  41.7%
  

  19.4%
  

  38.9%
  
•  Clarence Johnson

  Clarence Leonard "Kelly" Johnson (February 27, 1910 – December 21, 1990) was an aircraft engineer and aeronautical innovator. As a member and first team leader of the Lockheed Skunk Works, Johnson worked for more than four decades and is said to have been an "organizing genius. " He played a leading role in the design of over forty aircraft including several that were honored with the prestigious Collier Trophy.

  

  13.3%
  

  36.7%
  

  50.0%
  
•  Eli Whitney, Jr.

  Eli Whitney (December 8, 1765 – January 8, 1825) was an American inventor best known for inventing the cotton gin. This was one of the key inventions of the Industrial Revolution and shaped the economy of the antebellum South. Whitney's invention made short staple cotton into a profitable crop, which strengthened the economic foundation of slavery.

  

  16.7%
  

  25.0%
  

  58.3%
  
•  John Bardeen

  John Bardeen (May 23, 1908 – January 30, 1991) was an American physicist and electrical engineer, the only person to have ever won the Nobel Prize in Physics twice: first in 1956 with William Shockley and Walter Brattain for the invention of the transistor; and again in 1972 with Leon Neil Cooper and John Robert Schrieffer for a fundamental theory of conventional superconductivity known as the BCS theory.

  

  51.7%
  

  20.7%
  

  27.6%
  
•  K. Eric Drexler

  Dr. Kim Eric Drexler (born April 25, 1955 in Alameda, California) is an American engineer best known for popularizing the potential of molecular nanotechnology (MNT), from the 1970s and 1980s. His 1991 doctoral thesis at MIT was revised and published as the book "Nanosystems Molecular Machinery Manufacturing and Computation" (1992), which received the Association of American Publishers award for Best Computer Science Book of 1992. He also coined the term grey goo.

  

  32.1%
  

  39.6%
  

  28.3%
  
•  Rube Goldberg

  Reuben Lucius Goldberg (July 4, 1883 – December 7, 1970) was an American cartoonist, sculptor, author, engineer, and inventor. Goldberg is best known for a series of popular cartoons he created depicting complex devices that perform simple tasks in indirect, convoluted ways – now known as Rube Goldberg machines. Goldberg received many honors in his lifetime including a Pulitzer Prize for his political cartooning in 1948 and the Banshees' Silver Lady Award 1959.

  

  32.3%
  

  29.0%
  

  38.7%
  
•  Robert Fulton

  Robert Fulton (November 14, 1765 – February 24, 1815) was an American engineer and inventor who is widely credited with developing the first commercially successful steamboat. In 1800 he was commissioned by Napoleon Bonaparte to design the Nautilus, which was the first practical submarine in history. Fulton had become interested in steamboats in 1777 when he visited William Henry of Lancaster, Pennsylvania, who had earlier learned about James Watt's steam engine on a visit to England.

  

  57.1%
  

  28.6%
  

  14.3%
  
•  Steve Wozniak

  Stephen Gary "Woz" Wozniak is an American computer engineer who founded Apple Computer, Inc. with Steve Jobs and Ronald Wayne. His inventions and machines are credited with contributing significantly to the personal computer revolution of the 1970s. Wozniak created the Apple I and Apple II computers in the mid-1970s. Wozniak has several nicknames, including "The Woz", "Wonderful Wizard of Woz" and "iWoz" (a reference to the ubiquitous naming scheme for Apple products).

  

  22.0%
  

  39.0%
  

  39.0%
  
•  Vint Cerf

  Vinton Gray "Vint" Cerf (born June 23, 1943) is an American computer scientist who is the "person most often called 'the father of the Internet'.". His contributions have been recognized repeatedly, with honorary degrees, and awards that include the National Medal of Technology, the Turing Award, and the Presidential Medal of Freedom.

  

  30.0%
  

  20.0%
  

  50.0%
  
•  George Westinghouse

  George Westinghouse, Jr (October 6, 1846–March 12, 1914) was an American entrepreneur and engineer who invented the railway air brake and was a pioneer of the electrical industry. Westinghouse was one of Thomas Edison's main rivals in the early implementation of the American electricity system. Westinghouse's system, which used alternating current based on the extensive research by Nikola Tesla, ultimately prevailed over Edison's insistence on direct current.

  

  50.0%
  

  25.0%
  

  25.0%
  
•  Ivan Sutherland

  Ivan Edward Sutherland is an American computer scientist and Internet pioneer. He received the Turing Award from the Association for Computing Machinery in 1988 for the invention of Sketchpad, an early predecessor to the sort of graphical user interface that has become ubiquitous in personal computers.

  

  50.0%
  

  12.5%
  

  37.5%
  
•  A. Baldwin Wood

  Albert Baldwin Wood (December 1, 1879 - May 10, 1956) was an inventor and engineer from New Orleans, Louisiana. He graduated from Tulane University with a Bachelor of Science in Mechanical Engineering in 1899.

  

  50.0%
  

  16.7%
  

  33.3%
  
•  Norbert Rillieux

  Norbert Rillieux (March 17, 1806 – October 8, 1894), an American inventor and engineer, is most noted for his invention of the multiple-effect evaporator, an energy-efficient means of evaporating water. This invention was an important development in the growth of the sugar industry. Rillieux was a cousin of the painter Edgar Degas.

  

  25.0%
  

  50.0%
  

  25.0%
  
•  Harry Nyquist

  Harry Nyquist (né Harry Theodor Nyqvist; pron. , not as often pronounced), (February 7, 1889 – April 4, 1976) was an important contributor to information theory.

  

  44.4%
  

  22.2%
  

  33.3%
  
•  An Wang

  Dr. An Wang was a Chinese American computer engineer and inventor, and co-founder of computer company Wang Laboratories.

  

  16.7%
  

  33.3%
  

  50.0%
  
•  Ellison Onizuka

  Ellison Shoji Onizuka was a Japanese American astronaut from Kealakekua, Kona, Hawaii who successfully flew into space with the Space Shuttle Discovery on STS-51-C, before losing his life to the destruction of the Space Shuttle Challenger, where he was serving as Mission Specialist for mission STS-51-L. He was the first Asian American to reach space.

  

  0.0%
  

  100.0%
  

  0.0%
  
•  Andrew Grove

  Andrew Stephen "Andy" Grove is a Hungarian American businessman and engineer. He was one of the earliest employees of Intel Corporation and ultimately played key leadership roles in its success.

  

  14.3%
  

  57.1%
  

  28.6%
  
•  Karl Guthe Jansky

  Karl Guthe Jansky (October 22, 1905 – February 14, 1950) was an American physicist and radio engineer who in August 1931 first discovered radio waves emanating from the Milky Way. He is considered one of the founding figures of radio astronomy.

  

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  50.0%
  

  50.0%
  
•  Sidney Darlington

  Sidney Darlington (July 18, 1906 – Exeter, New Hampshire, October 31, 1997) was an electrical engineer and inventor of a transistor configuration in 1953, the Darlington pair. He advanced the state of network theory, developing the insertion-loss synthesis approach, and invented chirp radar, bombsights, and gun and rocket guidance. Darlington joined Bell Labs in 1929, where his first supervisor was Hendrik Wade Bode, and he remained there until he retired in 1971.

  

  50.0%
  

  33.3%
  

  16.7%
  
•  Leik Myrabo

  Leik Myrabo is an aerospace engineering professor at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute who has demonstrated the feasibility of using ground-based lasers to propel objects into orbit; possibly reducing orbit-flight costs by a factor of 1000.

  

  75.0%
  

  0.0%
  

  25.0%
  
•  William Wesley Peters

  William Wesley Peters (June 12, 1912 - July 17, 1991) was a noted architect and engineer, apprentice to and protegé of Frank Lloyd Wright. Born in Terre Haute, Indiana, Peters was educated at Evansville College (now the University of Evansville) and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He then became Wright's first apprentice, joining the Taliesin Fellowship in 1932, and remained extremely loyal to the Wright organization throughout his entire career.

  

  66.7%
  

  33.3%
  

  0.0%
  
•  Leslie E. Robertson

  Leslie Earl Robertson (born 1928) was one of the chief engineers of the World Trade Center in New York, which was destroyed in the September 11, 2001 attacks and was responsible for the design of the buildings' sway-reduction features. He has since been structural engineer on numerous other projects, including the Shanghai World Financial Center and the Bank of China Tower in Hong Kong.

  

  50.0%
  

  25.0%
  

  25.0%
  
•  John Muir

  John Muir (21 April 1838 – 24 December 1914) was a Scottish-born American naturalist, author, and early advocate of preservation of wilderness in the United States. His letters, essays, and books telling of his adventures in nature, especially in the Sierra Nevada mountains of California, have been read by millions. His activism helped to save the Yosemite Valley, Sequoia National Park and other wilderness areas.

  

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  50.0%
  

  50.0%
  
•  Vladimir K. Zworykin

  Vladimir Kozmich Zworykin (July 30, 1889 – July 29, 1982) was a Russian-American inventor, engineer, and pioneer of television technology. Zworykin invented a television transmitting and receiving system employing cathode ray tubes. He played a role in the practical development of television from the early thirties, including charge storage-type tubes, infrared image tubes and the electron microscope.

  

  20.0%
  

  20.0%
  

  60.0%
  
•  Stephen Timoshenko

  Stephen P. Timoshenko, is reputed to be the father of modern engineering mechanics. He wrote many of the seminal works in the areas of engineering mechanics, elasticity and strength of materials, many of which are still widely used today.

  

  50.0%
  

  50.0%
  

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