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Most Influential U.S. Americans

 

Helen Keller

Helen Adams Keller was an American author, disability rights advocate, political activist and lecturer. She became the first blind-deaf person to effectively communicate with the sighted and hearing world.

Harvey Cushing

Harvey Williams Cushing was an American neurosurgeon, pathologist, writer, and draftsman. A pioneer of brain surgery, he was the first exclusive neurosurgeon and the first person to describe Cushing’s disease.

 

Gloria Steinem

Gloria Marie Steinem is an American journalist and social-political activist who emerged as a nationally recognized leader of second-wave feminism in the United States in the late 1960s and early 1970s.

Jesse Owens

James Cleveland “Jesse” Owens was an American track and field athlete who won four gold medals at the 1936 Olympic Games. Owens specialized in the sprints and the long jump and was recognized in his lifetime as “perhaps the greatest and most famous athlete in track and field history”.

Duke Ellington

Edward Kennedy “Duke” Ellington was an American jazz pianist, composer, and leader of his eponymous jazz orchestra from 1923 through the rest of his life.

 

Steven Spielberg

Steven Allan Spielberg KBE is an American filmmaker. A major figure of the New Hollywood era and pioneer of the modern blockbuster, he is the most commercially successful director in history.

John Steinbeck

John Ernst Steinbeck Jr. was an American writer. He won the 1962 Nobel Prize in Literature “for his realistic and imaginative writings, combining as they do sympathetic humor and keen social perception”. He has been called “a giant of American letters.”

Miles Davis

Miles Dewey Davis III was an American jazz musician, trumpeter, bandleader, and composer. He is among the most influential and acclaimed figures in the history of jazz and 20th-century music.

Jim Henson

James Maury Henson was an American puppeteer, animator, cartoonist, actor, inventor, and filmmaker who achieved worldwide notability as the creator of the Muppets.

Louis Armstrong

Louis Daniel Armstrong, nicknamed “Satchmo”, “Satch”, and “Pops”, was an American trumpeter and vocalist. Armstrong’s influence extended far beyond jazz; the energetic, swinging rhythmic momentum of his playing was a major influence on soloists in every genre of American popular music.

Amelia Earhart

Amelia Mary Earhart was an American aviation pioneer and writer. Earhart was the first female aviator to fly solo across the Atlantic Ocean.

Elvis Presley

Elvis Aaron Presley, often referred to mononymously as Elvis, was an American singer and actor. Known as the “King of Rock and Roll”, he is regarded as one of the most significant cultural figures of the 20th century.

Sandra Day O’Connor

O’Connor is an American lawyer, former politician, and jurist who served as the first female associate justice of the Supreme Court of the United States from 1981 to 2006. She was both the first woman nominated and the first confirmed to the court.

Theodor Geisel (Dr. Seuss)

Theodor Seuss Geisel was an American children’s author and cartoonist. He is known for his work writing and illustrating more than 60 books under the pen name Dr. Seuss.

Oprah Winfrey

Oprah Gail Winfrey is an American talk show host, television producer, actress, author, and media proprietor. She is best known for her talk show, The Oprah Winfrey Show.

Steve Jobs

Steven Paul Jobs was an American business magnate, inventor, and investor. He was the co-founder, chairman, and CEO of Apple; the chairman and majority shareholder of Pixar; a member of The Walt Disney Company’s board of directors following its acquisition of Pixar; and the founder, chairman, and CEO of NeXT.

Al Gore

Al Gore was the 45th vice president of the United States (1993–2001) in the Democratic administration of President Bill Clinton. In 1976, at 28, after joining the United States House of Representatives, Gore held the “first congressional hearings on the climate change, and co-sponsor[ed] hearings on toxic waste and global warming”.

Ruby Bridges

Ruby Nell Bridges Hall is an American civil rights activist. She was the first African-American child to desegregate the all-white William Frantz Elementary School in Louisiana during the New Orleans school desegregation crisis on November 14, 1960.

Angela Davis

Angela Yvonne Davis is an American Marxist and feminist political activist, philosopher, academic, and author. Davis was a longtime member of the Communist Party USA and a founding member of the Committees of Correspondence for Democracy and Socialism.

Hillary Clinton

Hillary Diane Rodham Clinton served as the First Lady of the United States to the 42nd President, Bill Clinton. She went on to become a U.S. Secretary of State and U.S. Senator from New York. In the 2008 election, Clinton was a leading candidate for the Democratic Presidential nomination. A member of the Democratic Party, she was the party’s nominee for president in the 2016 presidential election, becoming the first woman to win a presidential nomination by a major U.S. political party. 

Herman Melville

Herman Melville was an American novelist, short story writer, and poet of the American Renaissance period. Among his best-known works is Moby-Dick.

William Faulkner

What are William Faulkner’s most famous works? William Faulkner wrote numerous novels, screenplays, poems, and short stories. Today he is best remembered for his novels The Sound and the Fury (1929), As I Lay Dying (1930), Sanctuary (1931), and Absalom, Absalom

Malcolm X

Malcolm X was an American Muslim minister and human rights activist who was a prominent figure during the civil rights movement.

Edward R. Murrow

Edward Roscoe Murrow was an American broadcast journalist and war correspondent. Murrow invented radio news, as we know it and was the standard-bearer of journalism, ethics, and reporting. Many consider him the father of broadcast journalism.

George Eastman

George Eastman was an American entrepreneur who founded the Eastman Kodak Company and helped to bring the photographic use of roll film into the mainstream.