Curated playlist
Columbia Graduate School of Arts and Sciences alumni
- Ursula K. Le GuinUrsula K. Le Guin was eleven years old when she mailed her first short story to Astounding Science Fiction. The magazine sent it back. She then submitted nothing else for ten years. Nearly sixty years of publishing lay ahead of her after…
- Milton FriedmanMilton Friedman argued the Federal Reserve let the money supply shrink by one-third between 1929 and 1933.
- Joseph HellerJoseph Heller's novel Catch-22 was first called Catch-18. It was renamed to avoid confusion with Mila 18.
- Alan GreenspanIn October 2008, Alan Greenspan told Congress his faith in free markets had a flaw.
- Charles A. BeardCharles A. Beard argued that money, not philosophy, drove the men who wrote the Constitution.
- Lynn ThorndikeHistorians still say "early modern" thanks to Lynn Thorndike, who first proposed it in 1926.
- Isaac AsimovIsaac Asimov coined the word "robotics" in a 1941 story, thinking it was just a natural term.
- E. L. DoctorowE. L. Doctorow won the National Book Critics Circle Award three times. He mixed real and invented people.
- Roger ZelaznyA story by Roger Zelazny traveled to Mars in 2008. "A Rose for Ecclesiastes" rode on a DVD aboard the Phoenix lander.
- Joan KellyIn 1976, historian Joan Kelly asked: Did women have a Renaissance? Her answer was no.
- Neil deGrasse TysonNeil deGrasse Tyson was nine years old when he visited the sky theater of the Hayden Planetarium in New York. He grew up to be an American astrophysicist, author and science communicator, born on the 5th of October 1958. Looking back, he…
- Naomi ZackPhilosopher Naomi Zack argues a government's duty is to plan ahead for disasters.
- Anna SchwartzA Federal Reserve official told Anna Schwartz, "Regarding the Great Depression, you're right."
- Eric FonerHistorian Eric Foner started college as a physics major. A Civil War seminar at Columbia changed his path.
- Nicholas Murray ButlerA 1939 poem in Poetry secretly spelled out an insult to Nicholas Murray Butler. The magazine later apologized.
- John G. TrumpJohn G. Trump died in Cambridge, Massachusetts, on the 21st of February 1985, six days before a White House ceremony in his honor. His son John Jr. accepted the National Medal of Science on his behalf. President Ronald Reagan had awarded…