Presidential Medal of Freedom recipients

Herbert Norman Schwarzkopf Jr. (, German: [ˈʃvartskɔp͡f]; August 22, 1934 – December 27, 2012) was a United States Army general. While serving as the commander of United States Central Command, he led all coalition forces in the Gulf War against Ba'athist Iraq.
Born in Trenton, New Jersey, Schwarzkopf grew up in the United States and later in Iran. He was accepted by the United States Military Academy and was commissioned as a second lieutenant in the United States Army in 1956. After a number of initial training programs, Schwarzkopf interrupted a stint as an academy teacher and served in the Vietnam War, first as an adviser to the South Vietnamese Army and then as a battalion commander. Schwarzkopf was highly decorated in Vietnam and was awarded three Silver Stars, two Purple Hearts, and the Legion of Merit. Rising through the ranks after the Vietnam war, he later commanded the 24th Mechanized Infantry Division and was one of the commanders of the invasion of Grenada in 1983.
Assuming command of United States Central Command in 1988, Schwarzkopf was called on to respond to the invasion of Kuwait in 1990 by the forces of Iraq under Saddam Hussein. Initially tasked with defending Saudi Arabia from Iraqi aggression, Schwarzkopf's command eventually grew to an international force of over 750,000 troops. After diplomatic relations broke down, he planned and led Operation Desert Storm, an extended air campaign followed by a highly successful 100-hour ground offensive, which defeated the Iraqi Army and removed Iraqi troops from Kuwait in early 1991. Schwarzkopf was presented with military honors.
Schwarzkopf retired shortly after the end of the war and undertook a number of philanthropic ventures, only occasionally stepping into the political spotlight before his death from complications of pneumonia. A hard-driving military commander, easily angered, Schwarzkopf was considered an exceptional leader by many biographers and was noted for his abilities as a military diplomat and in dealing with the press.

Edgar Dean "Ed" Mitchell (September 17, 1930 – February 4, 2016) was a United States Navy officer and aviator, test pilot, aeronautical engineer, ufologist, and NASA astronaut. As the Lunar Module Pilot of Apollo 14 in 1971 he spent nine hours working on the lunar surface in the Fra Mauro Highlands region, and was the sixth person to walk on the Moon.
Before becoming an astronaut, Mitchell earned his Bachelor of Science degree in Industrial Management from Carnegie Institute of Technology and entered the United States Navy in 1952. After being commissioned through the Officer Candidate School at Newport, Rhode Island, he served as a Naval Aviator. In 1961, he received his second bachelor's degree, in aeronautical engineering, from the U.S. Naval Postgraduate School and three years later earned his doctorate in Aeronautics and Astronautics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). From 1965 to 1966, he attended the U.S. Air Force Aerospace Research Pilot School and graduated first in his class. During this period, he served as an instructor in advanced mathematics and navigation theory for astronaut candidates.
The legacy of his post-NASA scientific and parapsychology work is carried on through the Institute of Noetic Sciences.

Henry Martin Jackson (May 31, 1912 – September 1, 1983), also known as Scoop Jackson, was an American lawyer and politician who served as a U.S. representative (1941–1953) and U.S. senator (1953–1983) from the state of Washington. A Cold War liberal and anti-Communist member of the Democratic Party, Jackson supported higher military spending and a hard line against the Soviet Union, while also supporting social welfare programs, civil rights, and labor unions.Born in Everett, Washington, to Norwegian immigrants, Jackson practiced law in Everett, after graduating from the University of Washington School of Law. He won election to Congress in 1940, and joined the Senate in 1953 after defeating incumbent Republican Party senator Harry P. Cain. Jackson supported the civil rights movement of the 1960s, and authored the National Environmental Policy Act, which helped establish the principle of publicly analyzing environmental impacts. He co-sponsored the Jackson–Vanik amendment, which denied normal trade relations to countries with restrictive emigration policies. Jackson served as chairman of the United States Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources from 1963 to 1981. He was twice an unsuccessful candidate for the Democratic Party nomination in the 1972 and 1976 presidential elections. While still serving in the Senate, Jackson died in 1983.
His political beliefs were characterized by support of civil rights, human rights, and safeguarding the environment but with an equally strong commitment to oppose totalitarianism in general and — with the start of the Cold War — Communist rule in particular. Jackson's political philosophies and positions have been cited as an influence on a number of key figures associated with neoconservatism, including Paul Wolfowitz and Richard Perle, both of whom previously served as aides to Jackson. The Seattle-based Henry M. Jackson Foundation was created in 1983 by his former colleagues and staff, as well as his widow and other family members, to further his work. In 1987, the Department of Defense gave to the Jackson Foundation a one-time, $10 million appropriation for its endowment, in honor of the Senator. To date, the Foundation has awarded over $26 million in grants to educational and non-profit institutions. Jackson also sponsored legislation to form the Foundation to Advance Military Medicine, which was later renamed in his honor at the time of his death, to the Henry M. Jackson Foundation for the Advancement of Military Medicine.

Jacques-Yves Cousteau, (, also UK: , French: [ʒak iv kusto]; 11 June 1910 – 25 June 1997) was a French naval officer, oceanographer, filmmaker and author. He co-invented the first successful open-circuit self-contained underwater breathing apparatus (SCUBA), called the Aqua-Lung, which assisted him in producing some of the first underwater documentaries.
Cousteau wrote many books describing his undersea explorations. In his first book, The Silent World: A Story of Undersea Discovery and Adventure, Cousteau surmised the existence of the echolocation abilities of porpoises. The book was adapted into an underwater documentary called The Silent World. Co-directed by Cousteau and Louis Malle, it was one of the first films to use underwater cinematography to document the ocean depths in color. The film won the 1956 Palme d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival and remained the only documentary to do so until 2004 (when Fahrenheit 9/11 received the award). It was also awarded the Academy Award for Best Documentary in 1957.
From 1966 to 1976, he hosted The Undersea World of Jacques Cousteau, a documentary television series, presented on American commercial television stations. A second documentary series, The Cousteau Odyssey, ran from 1977 to 1982 on public television stations.

Billy Frank Jr. (March 9, 1931 – May 5, 2014) was a Native American environmental leader and advocate for treaty rights. As a member of the Nisqually tribe, Frank led a grassroots campaign in the 1960s and 1970s to secure fishing rights on the Nisqually River, located in Washington state. His efforts centered around promoting cooperative management of natural resources. Frank served as the chairman of the Northwest Indian Fisheries Commission for over thirty years.During the Fish Wars, Frank organized a series of "fish-ins." These events culminated in the landmark Boldt Decision, which affirmed that Washington state tribes were entitled to fifty percent of the annual fish harvest.In recognition of his contributions, Frank was posthumously awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by President Barack Obama in November 2015. The Nisqually National Wildlife Refuge was renamed in his honor in December 2015. Billy Frank Jr. continues to be considered to be a bridge between Western and Native American societies in regards to environmental sustainability.

David Allen Hamburg (October 1, 1925 – April 21, 2019) was an American psychiatrist. He served as president of the Carnegie Corporation of New York from 1982 to 1997. He also served as the President of the Institute of Medicine, National Academy of Sciences and president of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. He had also been a member of the National Academy of Sciences since 1998. He was also a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the American Philosophical Society. He had previously been chair of the department of psychiatry at Stanford. His wife, Beatrix Hamburg, followed a similarly successful career path. Their daughter, Margaret Hamburg, is a physician who has followed their footsteps into public service becoming Commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration in 2009. His son, Eric Hamburg, is an author, attorney and film producer in Los Angeles.
Hamburg was born in Evansville, Indiana. He was awarded the Public Welfare Medal of the National Academy of Sciences in 1998, its most prestigious award, and the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1996. In 2007 he and his wife received the Rhoda and Bernard Sarnat International Award in Mental Health from the Institute of Medicine for their long careers in medicine and public service. He died in Washington, D.C., on April 21, 2019 from ischemic colitis at the age of 93.

Eugene Murphy Locke (January 6, 1918 – April 28, 1972) was an American lawyer, businessman, politician, and diplomat from Dallas, Texas, who in 1967 was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom. He was ambassador to Pakistan in 1966-1967 and deputy ambassador to South Vietnam in 1967-1968 before becoming an unsuccessful candidate for governor of Texas in 1968.

Joseph Louis Rauh Jr. (January 3, 1911 – September 3, 1992) was one of the United States' foremost civil rights and civil liberties lawyers. In his early career, he served as a lawyer in the Franklin D. Roosevelt administration and a clerk to Supreme Court justices Benjamin N. Cardozo and Felix Frankfurter. He co-founded the liberal organization Americans for Democratic Action, and was a key lobbyist for civil rights legislation from the 1940s to 1960s.
He was posthumously awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation's highest civilian honor, by President Bill Clinton on November 30, 1993.

Richard Lawrence Garwin (born April 19, 1928) is an American physicist, best known as the author of the first hydrogen bomb design.In 1978, Garwin was elected a member of the National Academy of Engineering for contributing to the application of the latest scientific discoveries to innovative practical engineering applications contributing to national security and economic growth.

James Edward Cheek (December 4, 1932 – January 8, 2010) was president emeritus of Howard University. He was born in Roanoke Rapids, North Carolina.