Scientists, founders, makers and civic inventors with Evanston roots, past and present.
Born in Evanston in 1907 and the granddaughter of Daniel Burnham, Margaret Burnham Geddes trained at MIT and built modern houses and plans in Rhode Island.
Northwestern economist Dale Mortensen shared the 2010 Nobel for search and matching theory, which explains why jobs and jobseekers can coexist for months.
Profile of Mark Cuban, the Indiana University graduate behind Broadcast.com, ex-owner of the Dallas Mavericks, Shark Tank investor and Cost Plus Drugs.
Nobel laureate Sir Fraser Stoddart spent his later career at Northwestern in Evanston, building on the interlocked molecules behind the 2016 chemistry prize.
Materials scientist John Rogers leads Northwestern’s bioelectronics institute, where soft wireless sensors, dissolvable devices and startups are taking shape.
Northwestern chemist Chad Mirkin invented dip-pen nanolithography and spherical nucleic acids, then built companies around them. A profile of his work.
SpaceX president and COO Gwynne Shotwell was born in Evanston and earned her engineering degrees at Northwestern. A look at her path from Chrysler to rockets.
Profile of Mary Barra, who began at General Motors as a co-op student at 18 and became CEO in 2014, and of GM’s electric vehicle and Michigan plant push.
Catharine Waugh McCulloch, elected an Evanston justice of the peace in 1907, drafted the Illinois bill that gave women a vote for president in 1913.
J. Allen Hynek chaired Northwestern’s astronomy department, advised the Air Force on UFOs, coined the close encounters scale and founded a research center.
A profile of OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, born in Chicago and raised near St. Louis, from his Loopt startup to Y Combinator and the rapid spread of ChatGPT.
Dr. Isabella Garnett, born in Evanston in 1872, opened a sanitarium in 1914 and helped found Community Hospital when care for Black residents was scarce.