What was this person’s contribution to American or world culture or science?

 

Louis Henri Sullivan (September 3, 1856 – April 14, 1924) was an American architect, called the "father of modernism." He is considered by many as the creator of the modern skyscraper, was an influential architect and critic of the Chicago School, and was a mentor to Frank Lloyd Wright and an inspiration to architects of the Prairie School.

Американский архитектор. Дал художественное осмысление типа высотного делового здания, введя композиционные членения и орнамент (небоскреб Гаранти-билдинг в Буффало, 1894-95; универмаг в Чикаго, 1899-1900). Выдвинул теоретические принципы функционализма и органической архитектуры.

Benjamin Franklin (January 17 [O.S. January 6] 1706 – April 17, 1790) was one of the most important and influential Founding Fathers of the United States of America. A noted polymath, Franklin was a leading author and printer, satirist, political theorist, politician, scientist, inventor, civic activist, statesman and diplomat. As a scientist he was a major figure in the Enlightenment and the history of physics for his discoveries and theories regarding electricity. He invented the lightning rod, bifocals, the Franklin stove, a carriage odometer, and a musical instrument. He formed both the first public lending library and fire department in America. He was an early proponent of colonial unity and as a political writer and activist he, more than anyone, invented the idea of an American nation and as a diplomat during the American Revolution, he secured the French alliance that helped to make independence possible.

Франклин разработал теорию происхождения штормовых ветров, участвовал в изучении Гольфстрима. Он доказал электрическую природу молнии, изобрел громоотвод (1752), ввел понятие положительного и отрицательного зарядов электричества. Научные заслуги Франклина получили международное признание, он был избран почетным членом ряда иностранных академий и обществ, в т. ч. Петербургской АН (1789). Был председателем конвента, разработавшего первую конституцию штата Пенсильвания. В 1775 назначен членом миссии по выработке договоров о дружбе и оборонительном союзе с Францией, которые были подписаны в 1778 в Париже. В 1778 конгресс назначил Франклина посланником США во Франции. В 1781-83 он входил в состав делегации по выработке мирного договора с Великобританией, участвовал в его подписании. В 1785 вернулся в США. В 1785-88 — президент исполнительного совета Пенсильвании. На Конституционном конвенте в Филадельфии (1787) высказался за принятие Конституции США.

Основал в Филадельфии первую в североамериканских колониях публичную библиотеку (1731), Пенсильванский университет (1740), Американское философское общество (1743). Призывал к отмене рабства негров. По философским воззрениям деист. Сформулировал за полвека до А. Смита трудовую теорию стоимости. Как естествоиспытатель известен главным образом трудами по электричеству, разработал его унитарную теорию. Один из пионеров исследований атмосферного электричества; предложил молниеотвод. Иностранный почетный член Петербургской АН (1789).

Louis Armstrong (b New Orleans, 4 Aug 1901; dNew York, 6 July 1971). American jazz trumpeter, singer and bandleader. His career began in clubs and Mississippi river-boat orchestras in New Orleans, but in 1922 he joined Joe Oliver's Creole Jazz Band in Chicago. In 1924 went to New York, where he joined Fletcher Henderson. Returning to Chicago (1925), he began the recordings with his Hot Five and Hot Seven which confirmed his international reputation as the greatest jazz musician of his time. For almost 20 years he led a big band (usually that of Luis Russell), returning to a sextet in 1948 with the founding of his All Stars, which he led for the rest of his life. His best work dates from the period of the Hot Five, when he turned jazz from an ensemble to a soloist's idiom. His most notable recordings from 1925-7 include Potato Head Blues, Hotter than That and West End Blues.

Henry Ford (July 30, 1863 – April 7, 1947) was the American founder of the Ford Motor Company and father of modern assembly lines used in mass production. His introduction of the Model T automobile revolutionized transportation and American industry. He was a prolific inventor and was awarded 161 U.S. patents. As owner of the Ford Company he became one of the richest and best-known people in the world. He is credited with "Fordism", that is, the mass production of large numbers of inexpensive automobiles using the assembly line, coupled with high wages for his workers.

Whitman, Walt- (1819-92) American poet. He wrote a poem “O, Captain, My Captain” and devoted it to Lincoln’s assassination. He invented the new style in writing poems. He wrote poems without rhyme. He was later named one of the Americans most famous poets of the 20-th century. He was a homosexual and later on he was chosen as one of the leaders of homosexual movement in the US. (American poet whose great work Leaves of Grass (first published 1855), written in unconventional meter and rhyme, celebrates the self, death as a process of life, universal brotherhood, and the greatness of democracy and the United States)

Neil Alden Armstrong (born August 5, 1930) is a former American astronaut, test pilot, university professor, and naval aviator. He is the first person to have set foot on the Moon. His first spaceflight was aboard Gemini 8 in 1966, for which he was the command pilot. On this mission, he performed the first manned docking of two spacecraft together with pilot David Scott. Armstrong's second and last spaceflight was as mission commander of the Apollo 11 moon landing mission on July 20, 1969. On this famous "giant leap for mankind", Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin descended to the lunar surface ("The Eagle has landed") and spent 2.5 hours exploring while Michael Collins orbited above.

Leonard Bernstein (August 25, 1918 – October 14, 1990) was a multi-Emmy-winning American conductor, composer, author, music lecturer and pianist. He was the first conductor born and educated in the United States of America to receive world-wide acclaim. He is perhaps best known for his long conducting relationship with the New York Philharmonic, which included the acclaimed Young People's Concerts series, and his compositions including West Side Story, Candide, and On the Town. He is known to baby boomers primarily as the first classical music conductor to make many television appearances, all between 1954 and 1989. Additionally he had a formidable piano technique and was a highly respected composer. He is one of the most influential figures in the history of American classical music, championing the works of American composers and inspiring the careers of a generation of American musicians.

Isadora Duncan (May 26, 1877 – September 14, 1927) was an American dancer. She was born Angela Isadora Duncan in San Francisco, California. Isadora Duncan is considered by many to be the mother of Modern Dance. Although never very popular in the United States, she entertained throughout Europe. In 1922, she married the Russian poet Sergei Yesenin, who was 18 years her junior. Duncan's fondness for flowing scarves which trailed behind her was the cause of her death in a freak automobile accident in Nice, France, on the night of September 14, 1927, at the age of 50. Barefoot, dressed in clinging scarves and faux-Grecian tunics, she created a primitivist style of improvisational dance to counter the rigid styles of the time. She was inspired by the classics, especially Greek myth. She rejected traditional ballet steps to stress improvisation, emotion, and the human form.

RobertFrost (March 26, 1874 – January 29, 1963) was an American poet. He is highly regarded for his realistic depictions of rural life and his command of American colloquial speech. His work frequently employed themes from the early 1900s rural life in New England, using the setting to examine complex social and philosophical themes. A popular and often-quoted poet, Frost was honored frequently during his lifetime, receiving four Pulitzer Prizes. Robert Frost was born in San Francisco, California on March 26, 1874. He died in Boston, on January 29, 1963. He was buried at the Old Bennington Cemetery in Bennington, Vermont. His epitaph reads, "I had a lover's quarrel with the world." "Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening" was Frost's favorite of his own poems and Frost in a letter to Louis Untermeyer called it "my best bid for remembrance."

BillGates (born October 28, 1955), is an American business magnate, philanthropist, the world's third richest person (as of February 8, 2008), the second richest American (as of October 10, 2008), and chairman of Microsoft, the software company he founded with Paul Allen. During his career at Microsoft, Gates held the positions of CEO and chief software architect, and remains the largest individual shareholder with more than 8 percent of the common stock. He has also authored or co-authored several books. Gates is one of the best-known entrepreneurs of the personal computer revolution. Gates's last full-time day at Microsoft was June 27, 2008. He remains at Microsoft as a part-time, non-executive chairman.

Andrew Carnegie (25 November 1835 – 11 August 1919) was a Scottish-born American industrialist, businessman, and a major philanthropist. He was an immigrant as a child with his parents. He built Pittsburgh's Carnegie Steel Company, which was later merged with Elbert H. Gary's Federal Steel Company and several smaller companies to create U.S. Steel. With the fortune he made from business, he turned to philanthropy and interests in education, founding the Carnegie Corporation of New York, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, and Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh. While Carnegie paid his employees the low wages typical of the time, he later gave away most of his money to fund the establishment of many libraries, schools, and universities in America, the United Kingdom and other countries, as well as a pension fund for former employees. He is often regarded as the second richest man in history. Carnegie started as a telegrapher and by the 1860s had investments in railroads, railroad sleeping cars, bridges and oil derricks. He built further wealth as a bond salesman raising money for American enterprise in Europe

Sir Charles Spencer "Charlie" Chaplin, KBE (16 April 1889 – 25 December 1977) was a British comic actor, filmmaker, and composer who rose to fame in the silent era. Chaplin became a worldwide icon through his screen persona "the Tramp" and is considered one of the most important figures of the film industry. His career spanned more than 75 years, from childhood in the Victorian era until a year before his death at age 88, and encompassed both adulation and controversy.

The Wright brothers, Orville (August 19, 1871 – January 30, 1948) and Wilbur (April 16, 1867 – May 30, 1912), were two American brothers, inventors, and aviation pioneers who were credited with inventing and building the world's first successful airplane and making the first controlled, powered and sustained heavier-than-air human flight, on December 17, 1903. From 1905 to 1907, the brothers developed their flying machine into the first practical fixed-wing aircraft. Although not the first to build and fly experimental aircraft, the Wright brothers were the first to invent aircraft controls that made fixed-wing powered flight possible.

Walter Elias "Walt" Disney December 5, 1901 – December 15, 1966) was an American business magnate, animator, cartoonist, producer, director, screenwriter, entrepreneur, and voice actor. A major figure within the American animation industry and throughout the world, he is regarded as an international icon,[4] and philanthropist, well known for his influence and contributions to the field of entertainment during the 20th century. As a Hollywood business mogul, he, along with his brother Roy O. Disney, co-founded Walt Disney Productions, which later became one of the best-known motion picture production companies in the world. The corporation is now known as The Walt Disney Company and had an annual revenue of approximately US$36 billion in the 2010 financial year

Woody Allen (born Allan Stewart Konigsberg; December 1, 1935) is an American film director, writer, actor, comedian, and playwright.

Allen's distinctive films, which run the gamut from intense dramas to screwball sex comedies, have made him one of the most respected living American directors. He is also distinguished by his rapid rate of production and his very large body of work.[1] Allen writes and directs his movies and has also acted in the majority of them. For inspiration, Allen draws heavily on literature, sexuality, philosophy, psychology, Jewish identity, European cinema, and New York City, where he was born and has lived his entire life.

Allen is also a jazz clarinetist. What began as a teenage avocation has led to regular public performances at various small venues in his Manhattan hometown, with occasional appearances at various jazz festivals. Allen joined the Preservation Hall Jazz Band and the New Orleans Funeral Ragtime Orchestra in performances that provided the film score for his 1973 comedy Sleeper, and a rare European tour in 1996 featuring Allen was the subject of the documentary Wild Man Blues.

Samuel Colt (July 19, 1814 – January 10, 1862) was an American inventor and industrialist. He was the founder of the Colt's Patent Fire-Arms Manufacturing Company (now known as Colt's Manufacturing Company), and is widely credited with popularizing the revolver. Colt's innovative contributions to industry have been described by arms historian James E. Serven as "events which shaped the destiny of American Firearms." Samuel Colt was born in Hartford, Connecticut.

John Trumbull - (June 6, 1756 – November 10, 1843), was a famous American artist from the time of the American Revolutionary War. He was appointed President of the American Academy of Fine Art, a position he held for 19 years. His famous paintings include the following (articles marked * are illustrated with his painting):

The Battle of Bunker Hill; The Death of General Montgomery at Quebec, The Declaration of Independence, The Battle of Trenton, The Battle of Princeton

Homer Winslow, 1836-1910 - An American painter of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, known especially for his rich watercolor paintings of sea scenes. (American landscape, marine, and genre painter. Homer was born in Boston, where he later worked as a lithographer and illustrator. In 1861 he was sent to the battlefront as correspondent for Harper's Weekly, his work winning international acclaim.)

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (February 27, 1807 – March 24, 1882) was an American poet whose works include "Paul Revere's Ride", "A Psalm of Life", "The Song of Hiawatha", "Evangeline", and "Christmas Bells". He also wrote the first American translation of Dante Alighieri's "Divine Comedy" and was one of the five members of the group known as the Fireside Poets. Longfellow was born and raised in the region of Portland, Maine. He attended university at an early age at Bowdoin College in Brunswick, Maine. After several journeys overseas, Longfellow settled for the last forty-five years of his life in Cambridge, Massachusetts.