FAMOUS QUAKERS YOU MAY KNOW FROM HISTORY
The Quaker tradition has guided some of the world’s most respected leaders, scientists, actors, artists, and entertainers. Here are just a few:
SCIENCE
- John Dalton - Devised the atomic theory of matter in the early 1800s
- Joseph Lister - Discovered antiseptics; Listerine is named after him
- Thomas Hodgkins and Thomas Young - Inventors of the microscope
- Jocelyn Bell Burnell - Discovered the first reported pulsar; first female president of the Institute of Physics
SOCIAL ACTIVISTS
- Levi Coffin - Abolitionist whose house was a major stop on the Underground Railroad
- Susan B. Anthony - Women’s suffragist
- Bayard Rustin - Pacifist and civil rights leader of the 1960s
- Dr. Elizabeth Blackwell - First female physician in the United States, champion of women’s education
BUSINESS
- Cadbury, Fry and Rowntree -Chocolate makers
- William Allen - Founder of Allen & Hanbury pharmaceutical company
- David Ricardo - Economist who devised the law of comparative advantage
POLITICS
- Herbert Hoover - 31st President of the United States
- Thomas Paine - Author of Common Sense, influential in the American Revolution
- Betsy Ross - Credited with designing and sewing the first United States flag
- Dolley Madison - First Lady, wife of President James Madison
- Nathaniel Greene - General in the American Revolution
- Daniel Boone - Frontiersman and early organizer of Kentucky
ARTS AND ENTERTAINMENT
- Annie Oakley - Entertainer in Wild West shows
- James Dean - Actor and icon of the teenage “Rebel without a Cause”
- Edward R. Murrow - Broadcast news pioneer
- Benjamin West - American artist
- James Fenimore Cooper - American author
- Bonnie Raitt - Blues musician and singer-songwriter
- Edward Hicks - American folk painter, known for The Peaceable Kingdom
- Daisy Newman - Author of novels and non-fiction about Quakers in America