Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute

Hermann Anton Haus was a Slovene-American physicist, electrical engineer, and Institute Professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.... Haus' research and teaching ranged from fundamental investigations of quantum uncertainty as manifested in optical communications to the practical generation of ultra-short optical pulses. In 1994, the Optical Society of America recognized Dr. Haus' contributions with its Frederic Ives Medal, the society's highest award. Haus authored or co-authored five books and published nearly 300 articles and presented his work at virtually every major conference and symposium on laser and quantum electronics and quantum optics around the world. He was awarded the National Medal of Science in 1995 and was adopted into RPI's Alumni Hall of Fame in 2007. He was grandson of Anton Haus. His Father Otto Maximilian Haus was a leading slowenian doctor against tuperculose. The tomb of his great-grandmother Marija Haus is still in Bubnjarci, Croatia.
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Robert Leo "Bobby" Farrelly, Jr. is an American film director, screenwriter and producer and one of the Farrelly brothers. Farrelly was born in... Cumberland, Rhode Island, the son of Mariann, a nurse practitioner, and Robert Leo Farrelly, a doctor. He is a graduate of Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. Bobby and his brother Peter Farrelly are known as Farrelly brothers. They have written, directed, and produced several comedy films including There's Something About Mary, Dumb and Dumber, Kingpin, Shallow Hal, Me, Myself & Irene and Stuck on You. They also conceived the Seinfeld episode "The Virgin" . In 2012, Bobby and his brother announced that the filming of the sequel to their smash hit Dumb and Dumber would begin in September 2012. He has been married to his wife Nancy since 1990. They have two children.
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Robert Charles Kennicutt, Jr. FRS is an American astronomer. He is the Plumian Professor of Astronomy at the Institute of Astronomy in the University... of Cambridge. He was formerly Editor-in-Chief of the Astrophysical Journal . His research interests include the structure and evolution of galaxies and star formation in galaxies. He received his bachelor's degree in physics from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in 1973. He was a graduate student in astronomy at the University of Washington, where he received his master's degree in 1976 and his Ph.D. in 1978. He was awarded the Dannie Heineman Prize for Astrophysics in 2007 by the American Astronomical Society. He shared the 2009 Gruber Prize in Cosmology with Wendy Freedman of the Carnegie Institution of Washington and Jeremy Mould of the University of Melbourne School of Physics, for their leadership in the definitive measurement of the value of the constant of proportionality in Hubble's Law. He was made a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2001 and appointed a Fellow of the Royal Society in 2011.
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John Erik Jonsson was a co-founder and former president of Texas Instruments Incorporated. A skillful businessman, he became mayor of Dallas, a... major factor in the creation of DFW airport and a philanthropist in later years. Erik Jonsson was born on September 6, 1901 in Brooklyn, New York. His parents, John Peter and Ellen Charlotte Jonsson, were both born in Sweden and independently migrated to the United States in the prior decade. Both were naturalized citizens. Jonsson was an only child. The family moved to Montclair, New Jersey, in 1912 where at age sixteen Jonsson graduated from Montclair High School. Jonsson was a graduate of Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute , class of 1922 earning a degree in mechanical engineering. He was an Alpha Tau Omega. Jonsson married Margaret Fonde in Knoxville, Tennessee on February 8, 1923 and together they had three children. Jonsson began his career in 1922 at Alcoa as a rolling mill apprentice, and advanced to the position of manufacturing superintendent of an Alcoa subsidiary, the Aluminum Index Company. He held the position from 1923 to 1927.
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George Michael Low, born George Wilhelm Low was a NASA administrator and 14th President of Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. He was born near... Vienna, Austria to Artur and Gertrude Burger Low, small business people in Austria. With the German occupation of Austria in 1938, four years after Artur Low's death, his family emigrated to the United States. In 1943, Low graduated from Forest Hills High School, Forest Hills, New York, and entered Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute , where he joined the Delta Phi fraternity. His education was interrupted by the war and from 1944 to 1946, in which he served in the U.S. Army. While doing so, he became a naturalized American citizen, and legally changed his name to George Michael Low. After military service Low returned to RPI and received his Bachelor of Aeronautical Engineering degree in 1948. He then worked at General Dynamics in Fort Worth, Texas, as a mathematician in an aerodynamics group. Low returned to RPI late in 1948, however, and received his Master of Science degree in aeronautical engineering in 1950. In 1949, he married Mary Ruth McNamara of Troy, New York.
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John Erik Jonsson was a co-founder and former president of Texas Instruments Incorporated. A skillful businessman, he became mayor of Dallas, a... major factor in the creation of DFW airport and a philanthropist in later years. Erik Jonsson was born on September 6, 1901 in Brooklyn, New York. His parents, John Peter and Ellen Charlotte Jonsson, were both born in Sweden and independently migrated to the United States in the prior decade. Both were naturalized citizens. Jonsson was an only child. The family moved to Montclair, New Jersey, in 1912 where at age sixteen Jonsson graduated from Montclair High School. Jonsson was a graduate of Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute , class of 1922 earning a degree in mechanical engineering. He was an Alpha Tau Omega. Jonsson married Margaret Fonde in Knoxville, Tennessee on February 8, 1923 and together they had three children. Jonsson began his career in 1922 at Alcoa as a rolling mill apprentice, and advanced to the position of manufacturing superintendent of an Alcoa subsidiary, the Aluminum Index Company. He held the position from 1923 to 1927.
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Roland Walter Schmitt is a physicist, business executive and was the sixteenth president of Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. He was born on July 24,... 1923 in Seguin, Texas to Walter L. Schmitt and Myrtle F. Schmitt. On June 2, 1951 he married Alice V. Calhoun and they had two sons: Lorenz and Brian . Alice died on July 17, 1956. He later married Claire F. Kunz on September 19, 1957; they had two children: Alice and Henry . He graduated from the University of Texas with a B.S. in physics and a B.A. in mathematics, both in 1947 and a master's degree in physics in 1948. He received a P.h.D. in physics from Rice University in 1951. He then joined General Electric as a research associate and remained with the company until his retirement in 1988. From 1978-1986, he directed the General Electric Research and Development Center in Schenectady, New York. In 1982, he was appointed senior vice president. From 1988-1993, he was president of Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. During his tenure, he oversaw a $200 million fundraising campaign and saw the addition of new degree programs and research centers.
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