Curated playlist
Columbia University faculty
- Emi NakamuraEmi Nakamura found that many recorded price changes were just temporary sales.
- Al GoreAl Gore won the 2000 popular vote but lost the presidency by 537 Florida votes.
- Edward ThorndikeEdward Thorndike timed hungry cats escaping from puzzle boxes. It led to his law of effect.
- Enrico FermiEnrico Fermi won a Nobel Prize partly for new elements that were really fission products.
- Béla BartókOnly ten people attended composer Béla Bartók's funeral in New York in 1945. He had fled fascism five years earlier.
- Joseph StiglitzJoseph Stiglitz explained why wages stay high in recessions even when workers are desperate for jobs.
- Herbert MarcuseHerbert Marcuse analyzed Nazi ideology for American spies before students made him a hero.
- Noam ChomskyNoam Chomsky wrote his first article at age 10, about the fall of Barcelona.
- Milton FriedmanMilton Friedman argued the Federal Reserve let the money supply shrink by one-third between 1929 and 1933.
- John A. GarratyHistorian John A. Garraty let his subject's grandson argue back in the footnotes.
- Thích Nhất HạnhMartin Luther King Jr. nominated a Vietnamese monk for the Nobel Peace Prize. His name was Thich Nhat Hanh.
- 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.
- Theodor W. AdornoTheodor W. Adorno opened his first lecture of the summer semester in 1969 by inviting students to ask questions whenever they arose. A student wrote on the blackboard: "If Adorno is left in peace, capitalism will never cease." Three women…
- Joseph SchumpeterJoseph Schumpeter did not coin "creative destruction", the phrase he made famous. He borrowed it from Werner Sombart.
- Alfred EinsteinAlfred Einstein said Mozart's last three symphonies were never played in his lifetime. Later evidence showed otherwise.
- Mira NairMira Nair finished cutting Salaam Bombay! only three days before the film had its world premiere. The date was the 19th of May 1988, and the setting was the closing gala of the Cannes Film Festival. When the screening ended, the audience…
- Hannah ArendtHannah Arendt's name is printed on journals, schools, scholarly prizes, humanitarian prizes, think-tanks and street signs. It also appears on stamps and monuments. She was born Johanna Arendt, and she grew into one of the most influential…
- Franco ModiglianiEconomist Franco Modigliani won a student prize from Mussolini himself. Later he fled Italy and won a Nobel Prize.
- Gary BeckerEconomist Gary Becker argued that criminals are not irrational. He said they weigh the risks and rewards of a crime.
- James HeckmanAre people who join a program different from those who don't? James Heckman won a Nobel Prize for fixing that problem.
- Allan NevinsIn 1948, historian Allan Nevins started the first institutionalized oral history program in the United States.
- Erich FrommErich Fromm argued that falling in love is not love at all. His 1956 book The Art of Loving became a bestseller.
- James S. ShapiroJames S. Shapiro wrote Contested Will to debunk the Oxfordian theory of who wrote Shakespeare's plays.
- D. T. SuzukiD. T. Suzuki's Buddhist name means both "Great Humility" and "Greatly Clumsy".
- Mehmet OzIn 2025, Mehmet Oz offered to take in a flock of 400 ostriches from British Columbia. The birds were set to be culled during an avian flu outbreak, and Oz proposed sending them to his ranch in Florida. It is a small and strange episode,…
- Eric FonerHistorian Eric Foner started college as a physics major. A Civil War seminar at Columbia changed his path.
- Frank KermodeIn 1996, city refuse collectors carted off critic Frank Kermode's boxes of valuable books. He sued for £20,000.
- Nicholas Murray ButlerA 1939 poem in Poetry secretly spelled out an insult to Nicholas Murray Butler. The magazine later apologized.
- Oskar HaleckiHistorian Oskar Halecki argued that Eastern Europe was no less European than Western Europe.
- Lorenzo Da PonteLorenzo Da Ponte, born Jewish, took his name from a bishop. He later wrote the words for Mozart's Don Giovanni.
- Theodosius DobzhanskyTheodosius Dobzhansky went from collecting butterflies in Kiev to writing a landmark book on evolution.
- Jeffrey SachsIn 1993, the New York Times called Jeffrey Sachs "probably the most important economist in the world." That reputation has carried him a long way. Sachs is an American economist and public policy analyst. He has advised governments from…
- John DeweyJohn Dewey was born in Burlington, Vermont, and over his lifetime he published more than 700 articles in 140 journals and roughly 40 books. In 1888, while still at the University of Michigan, he wrote a line that would organize all that…