|
captivesubncuffs -> RE: what famous people have you seen / met? (11/23/2006 12:51:51 AM)
|
This really is a great post. It amuses me how different the "famous" people are that i've met compared to others. I have met a few sports stars. First was Eric Dickerson. We were on the same flight from LA to Indianapolis when he was traded to the Colts. More recently i've met Marvin Harrison and Peyton Manning, both of whom are incredibly cool, modest people. I've met a couple famous politicians, although none that i'd care to admit to! A few decades back i met the members of the band Iron Butterfly (showing my age!!!). And i also talked at length with Douglas Adams (sadly, now deceased), who wrote the "Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy" science fiction trilogy that was turned into a major movie last year; the trilogy consists, rather oddly, of five books. He was a touch odd, as one might expect of a person who writes a five volume trilogy, but i was also impressed with his intelligence and peculiar sense of humor.
I've also met a few TV and movie actors/actresses in restaurants and airports (waaaaay too much time in airports over the years), but my most memorable encounters with "famous" people are quite different. Once i met Andy Grove, one of the cofounders of the Intel Corp; i've had online chats with Steve Wozniak, cofounder of Apple Computers; and i've met several Nobel Laureates, including John Bardeen, whose work allows us all to be here on the net (he was coinventor of the transistor, for which he won the Nobel Prize in Physics; and then some years later he led a team that finally explained the remarkable phenomenon called superconductivity, which just might revolutionize the way electrical energy is delivered from the powerstations to the people and companies who use it, for which he won a second Nobel prize, making him the only person in the world to ever win two Nobel prizes in the same field), a couple fellows famous for their work in nuclear physics, and finally and most significantly, a very warm, kind gentleman named Eugene Wigner, who was the best friend of a guy named Albert Einstein. I also met another famous physicist named Archibald Wheeler, who was also a colleague of Einstein; Wheeler coined a term that is now part of our vocabulary: 'black hole.' Wheeler should have been a Nobel Prize winner, based on his many, many contributions, but he was rewarded in many other ways for his contributions to science.
And lastly, i know someone who is not truly famous in his own right, but he made a contribution to the world at large that is familiar to very many people. he was a classmate from college, a companion in the drama club, and a very close friend; and he gave the world that very annoying logo (and its derivatives) that proclaims on the front of millions and millions of personal computers around the world: "Intel Inside."
|
|
|
|
