Curated playlist
Members of the United States National Academy of Engineering
- D. Brainerd HolmesD. Brainerd Holmes was hired in 1961 to lead NASA's crewed spaceflight program. He oversaw Mercury.
- Elon MuskIn 2001, Elon Musk traveled to Moscow twice to buy missiles, hoping to launch a plant greenhouse to Mars.
- Arthur E. BrysonArthur E. Bryson and Henry J. Kelley developed an early version of backpropagation.
- Yu-Chi HoA paperwork error sent Yu-Chi Ho to electrical engineering instead of mechanical. He decided to stay.
- William R. LucasMarshall director William R. Lucas retired in 1986 after a commission criticized his role in Challenger.
- Neil ArmstrongNeil Armstrong's astronaut application came about a week late, until a colleague slipped it into the pile.
- Bill GatesBill Gates and Paul Allen wrote software for a computer they did not have. Their Altair demo worked the first time.
- Eric SchmidtEric Schmidt ran Google while taking a base salary of just $1 a year. That pay lasted from 2004 through 2010.
- Marvin MinskyIn 1951, Marvin Minsky built the first randomly wired neural network learning machine. He called it SNARC.
- Gordon MooreMoore's law began as a ten-year forecast that Gordon Moore wrote for a magazine. He never meant it as a law.
- William AndersWilliam Anders fled Japanese bombers as a boy, then photographed Earth from the Moon.
- John HouboltWhen Apollo 11 landed, Wernher von Braun turned to John Houbolt and said, "Thank you, John."
- Cynthia DworkA technique built to make junk email costly later helped make bitcoin possible. Cynthia Dwork co-created it.
- Judea PearlJudea Pearl gave computers a way to reason when facts are incomplete.
- Rodney BrooksRodney Brooks argued that robots don't need to think much to act.
- 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…