A–Z index
All 973 people, filed by surname.
9 people
Martin Van Buren 1782–1862Government & PoliticsEighth president who helped build the Democratic Party machine and governed through the Panic of 1837.
Ludwig Mies van der Rohe 1886–1969Technology & BuildingDirected architecture at Illinois Institute of Technology and defined American modernist steel-and-glass buildings.
Cornelius Vanderbilt 1794–1877Business & LaborShipping and railroad magnate whose empire made him one of the wealthiest Americans in history.
Thorstein Veblen 1857–1929Ideas & MediaFounded institutional economics and coined conspicuous consumption in The Theory of the Leisure Class.Denmark Vesey 1767–1822Reform & RightsFree Black carpenter executed for organizing a large planned slave revolt in Charleston.
Paul Volcker 1927–2019Ideas & MediaBroke 1970s inflation as Federal Reserve chairman through sustained high interest rates.
Wernher von Braun 1912–1977Technology & BuildingGerman-American aerospace engineer who led the development of the Saturn V rocket that took humans to the Moon.
John von Neumann 1903–1957Science & MedicineHungarian-American mathematician and engineer whose computer architecture remains the basis of modern computing.
Kurt Vonnegut 1922–2007Arts & LettersSatirical novelist whose Slaughterhouse-Five became an anti-war classic of 20th-century literature.