Famous Chemical
Engineers and Celebrities

A couple of people
here may not be Chemical Engineers, but we say close enough!

Kevin Brown

Major league pitcher.
B.S. Chemical Engineering from Georgia Tech. Won the World Series with the
Marlins in 1997. Then became one of the highest paid pitchers with the Dodgers
(via the Padres).

Frank Capra

Film director. Born
in Sicily in 1897 and immigrated to Los Angeles in 1903. Earned a degree in
Chemical Engineering before went on to the film business. Among films directed:
"It Happened One Night," "Mr. Smith Goes to Washington,"
and "It's a Wonderful Life."

Cindy Crawford

Supermodel. She was
valedictorian in her high school and had a Chemical Engineering scholarship at
Northwestern University. Spent a semester there before leaving for New York and
a modeling career.

Roberto C. Goizueta

Former chairman and
chief executive of Coca-Cola. Chemical engineering degree from Yale.

Bob Gore

The inventor of
Gore-Tex -- the lightweight, waterproof, breathable polytetrafluoroethylene
(PTFE) fabric. He was a Chemical Engineering major at the University of
Delaware when he came up with the idea of using Teflon to insulate electrical
wires back in 1957. His dad started a business based on this idea. Bob then
discovered Gore-Tex in 1969 when he was trying to make better cable insulation.
The lore was that he was trying to heat rods of the stuff to see if they would
stretch, and after days of gently tug ging on the heated rods only to have them
break, a frustrated Gore violently yanked one. To his surprise, the PTFE
suddently stretched. Soon Gore blended PTFE into fabric, and Ma and Pa Gore
field tested a Gore-Tex tent in Wyoming's Wind River Range. Hail ripped the
tent to shreds, soaking the couple. "But the fabric," insisted Mom,
"was a success." Gore-Tex finally debuted as a product in 1976.

Andrew Grove

One of the founders
of Intel. B.S. Chemical Engineering from City College of New York (1960), and
PhD Chemical Engineer from Berkeley (1963). More biographical sketch can be
found on the Intel site

Bill Koch

Industrialist. B.S.,
M.S., and Ph.D. Chemical Engineering from MIT and part of the Koch industries
family. Bankrolled and won the 1992 America's Cup in the boat America³ and sponsored a women's team in 1995. It
started out as an all-female team. Then he put in a male tactician when they
started losing, and people dubbed his boat Mighty Mary as Mostly Mary.

Dolph Laundgren

Actor who played Ivan
Drago in Rocky IV. He was a graduate student in Chemical Engineering at MIT for
a year before he got into the movie business.

Arthur D. Little

Consultant and
co-founder, with William Walker, of "Arthur D. Little, Inc.," a major
consulting firm. He coined the term "unit operations" in 1915.

Alex Lowe

One of the world's
best climbers. Had a Chemical Engineering scholarhsip at Montana State
University in Bozeman. Spent two years there. He later got a degree in Applied
Math. Lowe was killed in an avalanche on Tibet's Shishipagma on October 5,
1999.

Kevin Olmstead

World-record game
show payoff winner -- $2,180,000 from "Who Wants to be a
Millionaire?" in 2001. After acquiring B.S. and M.S. chemical engineering
degrees from Case Western Reserve University and MIT, earned a Ph.D. in
environmental engineering from the University of Michigan.

Linus Pauling

Chemist who won two
Nobel prizes -- one in Chemistry and one in Peace. He was a Chemical
Engineering undergraduate at Oregon State University when it was still the
Oregon Agricultural College. Then he got his Ph.D. in Chemistry at Caltech.

Sharon Stone

Actress. No, not an
engineer by any stretch of your imagination. But in an interview with Playboy magazine (which we read), Stone responded to
her being bright, "I had a high IQ and was predisposed to do technical
things: science, engineering, math. I'm sure a career as a chemical engineer
would have been appropriate for me, though my personality is more fitting for a
lawyer."

John (Jack) F. Welch, Jr.

Former Chairman &
CEO, General Electric Co. (The eighth Chairman and CEO in the Company's
history.) B.S. in Chemical Engineering from the University of Massachusetts
(1957) and M.S. and Ph.D. in Chemical Engineering from the University of
Illinois.