2. A magazine publisher with a degree in law, he made the world cry with an act of bravery when he was a toddler; later, many of us cried again at his accidental death in 1999.

3. This alum’s name rose to prominence when TV producer Ken Burns brought his moving Civil War love letter to mass media audiences almost 150 years after its composition.

4. At PA, she played Navy nurse Nellie Forbush in
South Pacific; later, her Emmy Award-winning portrayal
of another military nurse in a TV series about Vietnam
catapulted her to stardom.

5. A minimalist artist, he transformed our understanding of sculpture by shifting concentration from the object
created to its component features, such as material, line and gravity. He also worked as an army intelligence officer, poet, editorial assistant and railroad conductor.

6. Nicknamed “Poppy” at Andover, this erstwhile Big
Blue baseballer once announced at an alumni meeting that his wife was unable to attend the reunion because she was “back in Texas, breeding governors.”

7. Who would have thought you could make a best-selling story out of an individual home, a fifth-grade classroom, a small town or a single machine? He did—and he has a Pulitzer Prize and National Book Awards to prove it.

8. As a child, he trailed his father around the football field at the U.S. Naval Academy, absorbing knowledge. Later, you may have cheered this coach’s team to victory in the 2001 Superbowl contest.

9. The first dean of the University of Rochester’s School of Medicine and Dentistry, this New Hampshire-born pathologist won the 1933 Nobel Prize for his work on pernicious anemia.

10. He tried ranching, retail sales and gold mining before finding fame as the author of science fiction stories and adventure books; his most popular series had a jungle setting.

11. An anthropologist and best-selling author, she captivated the hearts of readers with moving accounts of animal behavior.

12. A pioneer of what he calls “thinking about thinking,” this MIT professor wrote the seminal artificial intelligence book The Society of Mind.

13. President of Harvard College from 1828-1845,
he also served as mayor of a New England city where a familiar tourist attraction bears his name.

14. From Watergate to Ollie North, from eugenics
to gays in the military, any important controversy in our nation’s capital seems to have involved this U.S. district court judge.

15. A pediatrician, psychologist and Olympic rower, this onetime presidential hopeful was best known for his widely selling books on child-rearing practices.