Portal:Minnesota/Selected biography

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Norman Ernest Borlaug (born March 25, 1914) is an American agronomist, humanitarian, Nobel laureate, and has been called the father of the Green Revolution. Borlaug was one of five people in history to have won the Nobel Peace Prize, the Presidential Medal of Freedom and the Congressional Gold Medal. He is also an awardee of the Padma Vibhushan, India's highest civilian honour to non-citizens of exemplary accomplishment. Borlaug received his Ph.D. in plant pathology and genetics from the University of Minnesota in 1942. Increases in yield have been labeled the Green Revolution, and Borlaug is often credited with saving over a billion people from starvation. He was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1970 in recognition of his contributions to world peace through increasing food supply. More recently, he has helped apply these methods of increasing food production to Asia and Africa. Borlaug has continually advocated the use of his methods and biotechnology to decrease world famine. His work has faced environmental and socioeconomic criticisms. (Full article)

[edit] Queue

[edit] Selected biographies

1.

Terrence Vance Gilliam (born November 22, 1940) is an American-born British filmmaker, animator, and member of the Monty Python comedy troupe. He has the distinction of being the only American-born Python, as the rest of the group are all native Britons. In 1968, Gilliam obtained British citizenship and held a dual American and British citizenship for 38 years. In January 2006, he renounced his American citizenship in protest at George W. Bush. He is now allowed to spend only 30 days per year in the United States, less than ordinary British citizens. Gilliam also maintains a residence in Italy near the Umbria-Tuscany border. He has been instrumental in establishing the annual Umbria Film Festival, held in the nearby hill town of Montone.

Gilliam started his career as an animator and strip cartoonist; one of his early photographic strips for Help! featured future Python cast-member John Cleese. Moving to England, he animated features for Do Not Adjust Your Set, which also featured future Pythons Eric Idle, Terry Jones, and Michael Palin. Gilliam's surreal animations for Monty Python have a distinctive style. He mixed his own art, characterized by soft gradients and odd, bulbous shapes, with backgrounds and moving cutouts from antique photographs, mostly from the Victorian era. (Full article)

2.

Heidemarie Martha Stefanyshyn-Piper (born February 7, 1963 in St. Paul, Minnesota) is an American Naval officer and a NASA astronaut.

Of Ukrainian-American extraction, Stefanyshyn-Piper graduated in 1980 from what was then the all-girls Derham Hall High School in St. Paul, Minnesota, and holds Bachelor of Science (1984) and Master's (1985) degrees in mechanical engineering from MIT. She is a licensed Amateur radio operator (ham) with Technician License KD5TVR.

Stefanyshyn-Piper is a Captain in the United States Navy.

Stefanyshyn-Piper flew her first mission on STS-115 (launched on September 9, 2006, returned September 21, 2006), as a Mission Specialist and became only the 8th woman to perform a spacewalk (out of 156 total spacewalkers). Stefanyshyn-Piper's two EVAs for a total of 12 hours, 8 minutes made her the second most experienced female spacewalker. She also became the first Minnesotan woman to go into space. (Full article)

3.

Leonid "Leo" Hurwicz (born August 21, 1917) is an American economist and mathematician who is known to fifty years of students as a professor and to his peers as the researcher who originated incentive compatibility and mechanism design, which are used in economics, social science and political science to achieve desired outcomes. Interactions of individuals and institutions, markets and trade are analyzed and understood today using the models Hurwicz developed. A man of commanding intellect, Hurwicz is described as calm and humble. He loves to teach and to connect with people and is admired for thinking of others as equals. Hurwicz is Regents’ Professor of Economics (Emeritus) at the University of Minnesota. He is among the first economists to recognize the value of game theory and is a pioneer in its application. Hurwicz shared the 2007 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences with Eric Maskin and Roger Myerson for their work on mechanism design. Hurwicz's interests include mathematical economics and modeling and the theory of the firm. His published works in these fields date back to 1944. He is internationally renowned for his pioneering research on economic theory, particularly in the areas of mechanism and institutional design and mathematical economics. (Full article)

4.

Robert Bly (born December 23, 1926) is an American poet, author, activist and leader of the Mythopoetic Men's Movement in the United States. Bly was born in Madison, Minnesota to parents of Norwegian stock. Following graduation from Madison High School in 1944, he enlisted in the United States Navy, serving two years. After one year at St. Olaf College in Minnesota, he transferred to Harvard University, joining the later famous group of writers who were undergraduates at that time, including Donald Hall, Adrienne Rich, Kenneth Koch, Frank O'Hara, John Ashbery, Harold Brodkey, George Plimpton, and John Hawkes. He graduated in 1950 and spent the next few years in New York. In 1966, Bly co-founded American Writers Against the Vietnam War, and went on to lead much of the opposition to that war among writers. When he won the National Book Award for The Light Around the Body, he contributed the prize money to the Resistance. Among his most famous works is Iron John: A Book About Men, an international bestseller which has been translated into many languages. In February, 2008, Bly was named Minnesota's first poet laureate. (Full article)

5.

Bob Dylan (born Robert Allen Zimmerman, May 24, 1941) is an American singer-songwriter, author, musician, poet, and, of late, disc jockey who has been a major figure in popular music for five decades. Much of Dylan's most celebrated work dates from the 1960s, when he became an informal chronicler and a reluctant figurehead of American unrest. A number of his songs, such as "Blowin' in the Wind" and "The Times They Are a-Changin'", became anthems of the anti-war and civil rights movements. His most recent studio album, Modern Times, released on August 29, 2006, entered the U.S. album charts at #1, making him, at age 65, the oldest living person to top those charts. It was later named Album of the Year by Rolling Stone magazine.

Dylan's early lyrics incorporated politics, social commentary, philosophy and literary influences, defying existing pop music conventions and appealing widely to the counterculture of the time. While expanding and personalizing musical styles, he has shown steadfast devotion to many traditions of American song, from folk and country/blues to gospel, rock and roll and rockabilly, to English, Scottish and Irish folk music, even jazz and swing. Dylan performs with the guitar, keyboard and harmonica. Backed by a changing lineup of musicians, he has toured steadily since the late 1980s on what has been dubbed the "Never Ending Tour". Although his accomplishments as performer and recording artist have been central to his career, his songwriting is generally regarded as his greatest contribution. (Full article)

6.

Franklin Steele (1813 – September 9, 1880) was an early and significant settler of Minneapolis, Minnesota in the United States. With encouragement from his future brother-in-law Henry Hastings Sibley, Steele saw opportunities in the western frontier and traveled to Fort Snelling via the steamboat Burlington. At that time, the land on both sides of the Mississippi River at St. Anthony Falls was controlled by the U.S. Government as part of the Fort Snelling Reservation. However by 1837 over 150 squatters had staked unofficial claims on fort property. In 1838, the fort commander, Joseph Plympton convinced the government to release the east bank of the river for settlement, hoping to stake a personal claim on the valuable land closest to the Falls. But Steele surreptitiously staked the first claim on the choicest land before sunrise on the first day of legal settlement. He claimed a half-mile of east-bank riverfront, controlling half of the water power of St. Anthony Falls. For many years river crossing between Minneapolis and St. Anthony was via a rope-drawn ferry, by foot when the river surface was frozen, or on floating log booms that often filled the channel. Although he ran one such ferry, as early as 1852, Steele anticipated a need for a permanent bridge to span the river near present-day Hennepin Avenue. He formed the Mississippi Bridge Company to build a 620-foot (189 m)-long, 17-foot (5 m) wide suspension bridge, linking Minneapolis to Nicollet Island and hired Thomas Griffith to design it. (Full article)

7.

Brook Busey (born June 14, 1978), better known by the pen name Diablo Cody, is an American Academy Award-winning screenwriter, writer and blogger. First known for her candid chronicling of her year as a stripper in her Pussy Ranch blog and 2006 memoir, Candy Girl: A Year in The Life of an Unlikely Stripper, Cody won wider fame as the writer of the 2007 film Juno, for which she won the Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay. A sitcom written by Cody, called The United States of Tara, based on an idea by Steven Spielberg, is currently in pilot stage at Showtime. She has several other scripts in the development stage at various studios.

Juno was runner-up for the Toronto Film Festival People's Choice Award, won second prize at the Rome Film Festival, and earned four Academy Award nominations, including one for Best Picture. Cody herself won the Best Original Screenplay Oscar for her debut script, which also picked up a Golden Globe nomination and a Spirit Award for Best First Screenplay. She also won screenplay honors from BAFTA, the Writers Guild of America, Broadcast Film Critics Association, the National Board of Review, the Chicago Film Critics Association, the Dallas-Fort Worth Film Critics Association, the Florida Film Critics Circle, the Southeastern Film Critics Association, and the Satellite Awards. (Full article)

8.

Bradley Joseph (born 1965, Willmar, Minnesota) is an American composer, arranger, and producer of contemporary instrumental music. His compositions include works for orchestra, quartet, and solo piano, with his musical style ranging from "quietly pensive mood music to a rich orchestration of classical depth and breadth". Active since 1983, he played various instruments in rock bands throughout the Midwest until 1989 when Greek composer Yanni hired him for his next tour, sight unseen, based on a tape of his own compositions. He was a featured concert keyboardist with Yanni through six major tours and appeared in the 1994 multi-platinum album and video, Yanni Live at the Acropolis. He also spent four years as musical director and lead keyboardist for Sheena Easton, including a 1995 performance on the Tonight Show with Jay Leno. Joseph joined with Yanni in 2003 for the 60-city Ethnicity tour.

In 1994, Joseph's solo career began when he independently released Hear the Masses, featuring many of his Yanni bandmates. This debut release was followed by Rapture, an instrumental album recorded with a 50-piece orchestra, in which Joseph wrote and conducted all of the scores. It was released on the Narada label and reached NAV's "Airwaves Top 30". He produced his next eight albums and two piano books under his own record label, Robbins Island Music. Two of these albums, Christmas Around the World and One Deep Breath, also held positions on NAV’s Top 100 radio chart. (Full article)

9.

Mary GrandPré (born 1954 in South Dakota) is an American illustrator, best known for illustrating all of the American editions of the Harry Potter books. Her work has appeared in The New Yorker, The Atlantic Monthly, The Wall Street Journal and the film Antz. GrandPré spent most of her life in Minnesota and now resides in Sarasota, Florida with her family where she has donated work to Habitat for Humanity and a wellness community. Other books she illustrated include Pockets, Chin Yu Min and the Ginger Cat, Vegetables Go to Bed, The Thread of Life, Swing Around the Sun, The Sea Chest, Sweep Dreams, Plum, and Henry and Pawl and the Round Yellow Ball. She began drawing when she was five years old, beginning with a reproduction of Mickey Mouse. By age ten, she was imitating Salvador Dalí, experimenting with stretched objects painted with oils, before graduating to copying black and white photos from the encyclopedia. GrandPré holds degrees from Pomona College and the Minneapolis College of Art and Design. (Full article)

10.

Norman Ernest Borlaug (born March 25, 1914) is an American agronomist, humanitarian, Nobel laureate, and has been called the father of the Green Revolution. Borlaug was one of five people in history to have won the Nobel Peace Prize, the Presidential Medal of Freedom and the Congressional Gold Medal. He is also an awardee of the Padma Vibhushan, India's highest civilian honour to non-citizens of exemplary accomplishment. Borlaug received his Ph.D. in plant pathology and genetics from the University of Minnesota in 1942. Increases in yield have been labeled the Green Revolution, and Borlaug is often credited with saving over a billion people from starvation. He was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1970 in recognition of his contributions to world peace through increasing food supply. More recently, he has helped apply these methods of increasing food production to Asia and Africa. Borlaug has continually advocated the use of his methods and biotechnology to decrease world famine. His work has faced environmental and socioeconomic criticisms. (Full article)

11. W. Harry Davis, Sr. (April 12, 1923 – August 11, 2006) was an American civil rights activist, amateur boxing coach, civic leader and businessman in Minneapolis, Minnesota. He overcame poverty, childhood polio, and racial prejudice to become a humanitarian. Davis is remembered for his warm and positive personality, for coaching Golden Gloves champions in the upper Midwest, and for managing the Olympics boxing team that won nine gold medals. His contributions to public education in his community are enduring. A leader in desegregation during the civil rights movement, Davis helped Americans find a way forward to racial equality. (Full article)

12.

Alan Stuart "Al" Franken (born May 21, 1951) is an Emmy Award–winning American comedian, actor, author, screenwriter, political commentator, radio host and, recently, politician. He is noted for his work on Saturday Night Live and his liberal political views. On February 14, 2007, Franken entered the race for the United States Senate seat from Minnesota currently held by the Republican Norm Coleman, and formerly held by Franken's friend Paul Wellstone.

Franken was born in New York City to Phoebe G. (Kunst), a homemaker and real estate agent, and Joseph P. Franken, a printing salesman. Franken had a Jewish upbringing and grew up in St. Louis Park, Minnesota, a suburb near Minneapolis. Franken is a distant cousin of CNN's Bob Franken. His older brother, Owen Franken, is a photojournalist. Franken attended Saint Louis Park High School until the tenth grade. He graduated in 1969 from The Blake School, where he was on the wrestling team. He attended Harvard University and graduated cum laude in 1973 with a Bachelor of Arts in general studies. (Full article)

13.

Hubert Horatio Humphrey, Jr. (May 27, 1911 – January 13, 1978) was the 38th Vice President of the United States, serving under President Lyndon Johnson. Humphrey twice served as a United States Senator from Minnesota, and served as Democratic Majority Whip. He was a founder of the Minnesota Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party and Americans for Democratic Action. He also served as mayor of Minneapolis, Minnesota, from 1945–1949. In 1968, Humphrey was the nominee of the Democratic Party in the United States presidential election but narrowly lost to the Republican nominee, Richard M. Nixon.

In a renowned speech, Humphrey told the 1948 Democratic National Convention, "The time has arrived in America for the Democratic Party to get out of the shadows of states' rights and walk forthrightly into the bright sunshine of human rights," winning support for a pro-civil-rights plank in the Party's platform. (Full article)

14.

Amy Jean Klobuchar (born May 25, 1960 in Plymouth, Minnesota) is the county attorney of Hennepin County, Minnesota and the senator-elect in Minnesota (see 2006 Minnesota United States Senate election).

Klobuchar was first elected to county attorney in 1998 and re-elected in 2002 with no opposition. In 2001 she was selected "Attorney of the Year" by Minnesota Lawyer. Klobuchar was president of the Minnesota County Attorneys Association from November 2002 to November 2003. Besides working as a prosecutor, Klobuchar was a partner at one of Minnesota's top law firms, Dorsey & Whitney, where former Vice President Walter Mondale also works. In addition, Klobuchar was a partner at another top Minnesota law firm Gray Plant and Mooty before seeking public office. (Full article)