Traits : Mind : Education extensive

George Shirley Switzer (June 11, 1915 – March 23, 2008) was an American mineralogist who is credited with starting the Smithsonian Institution's famed National Gem and Mineral Collection by acquiring the Hope Diamond for the museum in 1958. Switzer made the arrangements when renowned New York City jeweler Harry Winston decided to donate the Hope Diamond to the Smithsonian.Switzer was also known for his analysis of Moon rocks which were brought back by NASA missions to the Moon.Today, the National Gem and Mineral Collection at the National Museum of Natural History currently contains more than 15,000 individual gems in the collection, as well as 350,000 minerals and 300,000 samples of rock and ore specimens. Additionally, the Smithsonian's National Gem and Mineral Collection houses approximately 35,000 meteorites, constituting what is considered to be one of the most comprehensive collections of its kind in the world.

Robert Luther Gauldin Jr. (born 1931) is an American composer. He is professor emeritus of Music Theory at the Eastman School of Music.

Norris Cecil Hundley, Jr. (October 26, 1935 – April 28, 2013) was an American academic, historian, and writer, best known for his 1992 book, The Great Thirst, which details the history of water usage in California from 1770 to the 1990s. Both as a historian and an academic, Hundley was renowned for inventing the professional history of water rights in the Western United States

James Leo Garrett Jr. (November 25, 1925 – February 5, 2020) was an American theologian. He held the position of Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Theology at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary in Fort Worth, Texas.

Alvin Virgil Tollestrup (March 22, 1924 – February 9, 2020) was an American high-energy particle physicist best known for his key roles in the development of the superconducting magnets for Fermilab's Tevatron and the formation of CDF.

Ralph Dana Winter (December 8, 1924 – May 20, 2009) was an American missiologist and Presbyterian missionary who helped pioneer Theological Education by Extension, raised the debate about the role of the church and mission structures and became well known as the advocate for pioneer outreach among unreached people groups. He was the founder of the U.S. Center for World Mission (USCWM, now Frontier Ventures), William Carey International University, and the International Society for Frontier Missiology.His 1974 presentation at the Congress for World Evangelization in Lausanne, Switzerland – an event organized by American evangelist Billy Graham – was a watershed moment for global mission.It was during this presentation that Winter shifted global mission strategy from a focus on political boundaries to a focus on distinct people groups. Winter argued that instead of targeting countries, mission agencies needed to target the thousands of people groups worldwide, over half of which have not been reached with the gospel message.
Billy Graham once wrote: “Ralph Winter has not only helped promote evangelism among many mission boards around the world, but by his research, training and publishing he has accelerated world evangelization."In 2005, Winter was named by Time magazine as one of the 25 Most Influential Evangelicals in America. Dr. Ray Tallman, shortly after Winter's death, described him as "perhaps the most influential person in missions of the last 50 years and has influenced missions globally more than anyone I can think of."

Donald B. Prell (July 7, 1924 – July 28, 2020) was an American World War II veteran, venture capitalist and futurist who created Datamation, the first magazine devoted solely to the computer hardware and software industry.

Morton Landers Curtis (November 11, 1921 – February 4, 1989) was an American mathematician, an expert on group theory and the W. L. Moody, Jr. Professor of Mathematics at Rice University.Born in Texas, Curtis earned a bachelor's degree in 1948 from Texas A&I University, and received his Ph.D. in 1951 from the University of Michigan under the supervision of Raymond Louis Wilder. Subsequently, he taught mathematics at Florida State University before moving to Rice. At Rice, he was the Ph.D. advisor of well-known mathematician John Morgan.Curtis is, with James J. Andrews, the namesake of the Andrews–Curtis conjecture concerning Nielsen transformations of balanced group presentations. Andrews and Curtis formulated the conjecture in a 1965 paper; it remains open. Together with Gustav A. Hedlund and Roger Lyndon, he proved the Curtis–Hedlund–Lyndon theorem characterizing cellular automata as being defined by continuous equivariant functions on a shift space.Curtis was the author of two books, Matrix Groups (Springer-Verlag, 1979), and Abstract Linear Algebra (Springer-Verlag, 1990).

Frank Everson Vandiver (December 9, 1925 in Austin, Texas – January 7, 2005 in College Station, Texas) was an American Civil War historian, the 19th president of Texas A&M University and the former president of the University of North Texas, as well as acting president of Rice University. Vandiver wrote, co-wrote, or edited 24 books, and published an additional 100 scholarly articles or reviews. One of his books was a runner-up for a National Book Award.

Robert Gravem Webb (18 February 1927 – 18 September 2018) was an American herpetologist, expert in the systematics and biogeography of reptiles and amphibians, and professor emeritus of biological science at the University of Texas, El Paso.Webb received his Ph.D. in zoology from the University of Kansas in 1960.Webb had over a hundred publications to his name. He specialized in amphibians and reptiles of the southwestern United States and Mexico.The snake Lampropeltis webbi is named after him.