October marks the 125th anniversary of the Statue of Liberty. For more that 100 years, she has stood as a beacon of opportunity and hope, welcoming to our shores innovators and creators who have made great contributions to America. In honor of her anniversary, ACIP will highlight each day this month one of the world’s best and brightest who have helped keep America a great beacon for economic strength, opportunity and innovation.
October 31: Victor and Janie Tsao, both born in Taiwan, are the co-founders of Linksys.
October 30: Shantanu Narayen, born in India, is the CEO of Adobe Systems.
October 29: Representative Illeana Ros-Lehtinen, born in Cuba, is a member of Congress from Florida.
October 28: Vinod Khosla, born in India, co-founded Sun Microsystems.
October 27: Charles Kao, born in China, and Willard Boyle, born in Canada, were part of the team that won the 2009 Nobel Prize in Physics.
October 26: Chandrakant Patel, born in India, is a Senior Fellow at HP.
October 25: Barbara Schaal, born in Germany, is the first female vice president of the National Academy of Sciences and a member of the President's Council of Advisors on Science and Technology (PCAST).
October 24: Dr. Suhas Patil, born in India, is the founder of the semiconductor company Cirrus Logic.
October 23: Representative Albio Sires, born in Cuba, is a member of Congress from New Jersey.
October 22: Vikram Pandit, born in India, is the CEO of Citigroup.
October 21: Orkut Buyukkokten, born in Turkey, developed and programmed a social networking service, which Google later launched publicly and currently has tens of millions of users worldwide.
October 20: Hiroto Inaba, born in Japan, is an oncologist at St. Jude Children's Research Hospital in Memphis, TN.
October 19: Do Won Chang, born in South Korea, is the co-founder and CEO of Forever 21.
October 18: Naveen Selvadurai, born in India, co-founded Foursquare.
October 17: Sundar Pichai, born in India, is Senior Vice President for Google Chrome.
October 16: Representative Mazie Hirono, born in Japan, is a member of Congress from Hawaii.
October 15: Ei-ichi Negishi, born in China, won the 2010 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for research done at Purdue University.
October 14: Madeline Albright, born in then-Czechoslovakia, was the first female U.S. Secretary of State.
October 13: Antonio Perez, born in Spain, is the Chairman and CEO of Eastman Kodak Company.
October 12: Jenny Ming, born in Macau, is the president and CEO of Charlotte Russe.
October 11: Dr. Subra Suresh, born in India, is director of the National Science Foundation.
October 10: Elie Wiesel, born in Romania (then Hungary), won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1986.
October 9: Pierre Omidyar, born in France, founded eBay.
October 8: Linus Torvalds, born in Finland, founded Linux.
October 7: Indra Nooyi, born in India, is the Chairman and CEO of PepsiCo.
October 6: Steven Chen, born in Taiwan, and Jawed Karim, born in Germany, are part of the team that co-founded YouTube.
October 5: Jerry Yang, born in Taiwan, co-founded Yahoo!.
October 4: The 2011 National Medals of Science and Technology and Innovation recipients, who include:
- Shu Chien, born in China, from the University of California, San Diego;
- Rudolf Jaenisch, born in Germany, from the Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research and Massachusetts Institute of Technology;
- Srinivasa S.R. Varadhan, born in India, from New York University;
- B. Jayant Baliga, born in India, from North Carolina State University;
- C. Donald Bateman, born in Canada, from Honeywell;
- Yvonne C. Brill, born in Canada, from RCA Astro Electronics; and
- Michael F. Tompsett, born in England, from TheraManager.
October 3: Shirley Tilghman, born in Canada, is president of Princeton University.
October 2: Andy Grove, born in Hungary, co-founded Intel.
October 1: Sergey Brin, born in Russia, co-founded Google.
As Lady Liberty has so lit our past, she will need to light our future. These great scientific and innovative minds help the United States compete in the 21st century global economy – we can’t let our broken immigration system stop the next generation of talent from contributing to America just as they have!
Check back here each day to meet a new honoree who has made a difference in America!
Is there a foreign-born contributor you want to honor? Join in and tweet as part of the “Innovation Celebration” with the hashtag #IC125.
