Famous People from Florida

Jacqueline Cochran (1906 - 1980), who was a pioneering figure in American Aviation, the firstwoman pilot to "go supersonic" and the first woman to fly a bomber across the Atlantic, was aFloridian.

Some of the most famous people from Florida include Academy Award winners like Sidney Poitierand Faye Dunaway, and the Nobel Prize winner George Smoot. Here we tell you about theseFloridians and some more. Let us take a look at the famed figures who call Florida their home. Wehave enlisted them in the alphabetical order.

Index

Burt Reynolds

He is an American actor, director, and producer who has won two Golden Globe awards. Born onFebruary 11, 1936, Georgia, he moved to Riviera Beach, Florida at the age of 10. As a child, he wasgood at football. His skill at the sport earned him a scholarship to the Florida State University. Dueto an injury and an accident, he had to opt out of a career in football, which he had aspired for.While studying at the Palm Beach Junior College, Watson B. Duncan was his teacher, who suggestedhim to act in a play that he would be producing. His work in plays and on television was appreciated.His role in the sitcom Evening Shade earned him an Emmy award as well as a Golden Globe. Hiscredit as a TV actor fetched him roles in low-budget films. Angel Baby was his first movie. Some ofhis notable films include The Longest Yard, Striptease, and Boogie Nights.

Cannonball Adderley

Julian Edwin "Cannonball" Adderley was born on September 15, 1928. He was a jazz altosaxophonist of world renown. He was from Tampa but migrated to New York in 1955. He met withacclaim for his musical work, in the 1950s and the '60s. His playing showed influences of the electricjazz style and the style of doubling on soprano saxophone. He gave several live performances andalso appeared on television. This Year, Walk Tall, and Work Song are some of the works thatAdderley made popular. He died in 1975. He was inducted to the Down Beat Jazz Hall of Fame. Hewas a winner of the Grammy Award in 1967.

Danell Leyva

He is a Cuban-American gymnast and the winner of Olympic Bronze in 2012. He was born onOctober 30, 1991 in Cuba. His parents defected to Miami the following year. He took part in the2006 Winter Cup. In the Junior Division of the US National Championships, he won a gold medal forFloor Exercise and Horizontal Bar and tied for a silver medal for Parallel Bars. At the 2008 JuniorNational Championships, he won the all-round, high bar, parallel bars, and pommel horse titles. Atthe age of 17, he was the youngest member of the US national Senior team. In 2011, he won the firstAll-Around US National Championship at the Senior Level. At the 2012 London Olympics, he won thebronze medal in the Men's All Around. He specializes in parallel bars and horizontal bar.

Fabiano Caruana

He is an Italian-American chess grandmaster, ranked as the world's Number 3 player. He holds the

record of being the youngest grandmaster in the history of Italy and the United States. Born on July30, 1992, in Miami, Florida, he shifted to New York at the age of four. At the age of five, his talent inchess was found out during a school chess program. To pursue a career in chess, he moved toMadrid in 2004, and to Budapest in 2007. He earned the first grandmaster title in July 2007. Withthe Elo rating of 2844 that he obtained in October 2014, he became the third highest rated player inhistory.

Faye Dunaway

An Academy Award-winning actress of the '60s, Dorothy Faye Dunaway is one of the prominentnames on the list of famous American actresses. Born on January 14, 1941 in Bascom, Florida, shewas raised in different parts of the United States and Europe. As a child, she took classes in dancingand singing. At the age of 21, she took acting classes at the American National Theater andAcademy. The Happening that was released in 1967 was her first movie. Hurry Sundown of the sameyear earned her a nomination for the Golden Globe Award for Best New Star of the Year. After abouthalf a decade from 1968, of less commercial successes, Dunaway's career soared again with filmslike Chinatown and The Towering Inferno. She continues her acting career in independent films andon television.

George Smoot

He is the only Nobel Prize winner born in Florida. Born on February 20, 1945, he graduated from aschool in Ohio. From the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, he obtained a bachelor's degree inmathematics and physics and a Ph.D. in particle physics. He worked in the field of cosmology. Forhis work on the Cosmic Background Explorer, that led to the "discovery of the black body form andanisotropy of the cosmic microwave background radiation", he Click This Link won the Nobel Prizein Physics in 2006. His work helped in taking the Big Bang theory ahead and in the development ofcosmology as a science. He is the winner of the Einstein Medal, the Oersted Medal and the USD 1million prize on Are You Smarter than a 5th Grader?.

Gloria Estefan

She is a Cuban-American singer, songwriter, actress, and entrepreneur. She was born on September1, 1957 in Cuba. But due to the Cuban revolution, her family moved to Miami, Florida. Her career insinging began in 1977, when she was a lead vocalist for the group Miami Sound Machine. The firstsingle released by this band was the song Conga released in 1985. It brought Estefan, its leadsinger, a big success. After an accident in 1990, she came back in March 1991 with her album Intothe Light. The Spanish album Mi Tierra that came out in 1993, earned her a Grammy Award. Shegave many great hits through the 1990s and the following two decades. She is the proud winner ofseven Grammy Awards, a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, and the Ellis Island CongressionalMedal of Honor. A winner of many other awards like the American Music Award for LifetimeAchievement, she is among the world's best-selling music artists of all time. She had a brief career inacting with two films that were released in 1999 and 2000. She has written two children's books.With her husband Emilio, she is quite active in the restaurant business.

Hugh Wilson

Born on August 21, 1943, in Miami, Florida, he is an American movie director, writer, and atelevision showrunner. He obtained a degree in journalism from the University of Florida in 1961. In1966, he ventured advertising, working as a copywriter and then a creative director. In 1976, hewrote for the Bob Newhart Show. The following year, he co-produced the Tony Randall Show. In

1978, he created WKRP in Cincinnati which was nominated for the Emmy Award in the Best Comedycategory. In 1988, he came up with Frank's Place, which earned him an Emmy award for BestWriting and three Emmy nominations.

Hugo Vihlen

He made a world record by crossing the Atlantic Ocean in sailboats in 1968 and 1993. He was bornon November 13, 1931, in Florida. He worked as a co-pilot for Delta Air Lines. On March 29, 1968,he set sail on a boat called April Fool. He covered 4100 miles in 84 days. In 1993, he crossed theNorth Atlantic in a boat called Father's Day. He is best-known as the single-handed sailor whocrossed the Atlantic in two small sailboats.

Jacqueline Cochran

She was born on May 11, 1906 in Muscogee, Florida. In the 1930s, Cochran began taking flyinglessons at Roosevelt Airfield, Long Island. Within a short period of three months, she could fly anairplane and earned a pilot's license in just two years. By 1938, she was considered as the bestfemale pilot in the United States. To enlist her record-breaking achievements, she was the firstwoman to break the sound barrier, the first woman to fly, the first woman to fly a bomber across theAtlantic and the first female pilot to fly a jet across an ocean. She was the proud winner of fiveHarmon Trophies for her exceptional skills as a woman pilot. She made notable contributions to theformation of the wartime Women's Auxiliary Army Camps and the Women Air force Service Pilots.She died, aged 74, in Indio, California.

Janet Reno

Born on July 21, 1938, Janet Reno was the Attorney General of the United States who served from1993 to 2001. She was one of the two Danish Americans in the cabinet. Janet Reno was born inMiami, Florida and attended a public school in Miami-Dade County, Florida. After majoring inChemistry from the Cornell University in New York, she became the President of the Woman's Self-Government Association. In 1963, she received her LL.B. from Harvard. In 1971, Reno became thestaff director of the Judiciary Committee of the Florida House of Representatives. Later, in 1993,President Bill Clinton nominated her as the Attorney General of the United States and she wasconfirmed on March 11. After her tenure, she toured the world delivering speeches about thecriminal justice system. She strongly believes in the association between the education system andcrime in a country. She feels the need for the Government to assist the juvenile courts in workingtowards solving problems of the disturbed children and adolescents of the country.

Philip Don Estridge

Born on June 23, 1937, in Jacksonville, Florida, he earned a Bachelor's degree in electricalengineering from the University of Florida. He worked at the Army where he designed a radarsystem using computers. He later worked at the NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center. In 1980, hetook charge of the IBM Entry Level Systems and started working on developing the IBM PC. Thefirst model they built was IBM PC model 5150, which was expandable and cost-effective. In 1984, hewas the Vice President at IBM. He was offered a high position in Apple, which he did not accept. He,and his wife died in an air crash on August 2, 1985. The CIO magazine has regarded him as a manwho invented the enterprise. In developing IBM's first personal computer, his thoughts weredifferent from the norm but they brought the company a huge success by increasing the computersales.

Sidney Poitier

He is an actor, director, author and diplomat, and the first African-American to win an AcademyAward for Best Actor. He was born on February 20, 1927, in Miami, Florida and raised in theBahamas. At the age of 15, he moved to Miami to stay with his brother and two years later, to NewYork City. There, he worked as a dishwasher, considered joining the Army, but landed in theAmerican Negro Theatre. Initially, he wasn't accepted by the audience. But determined to besuccessful, he devoted himself to the field. His roles in Lysistrata (theater) and No Way Out (film)brought him some success and more roles. For the 1958 film, The Defiant Ones, he was nominatedfor the Academy Award. The 1963 film Lilies of the Field earned him the Academy Award for BestActor. His most remembered role was that of Virgil Tibbs in the 1967 film In the Heat of the Night,that won five Academy Awards. He directed many films and also recorded an album called PoitierMeets Plato. He was the Ambassador of the Bahamas to Japan and the Ambassador of the Bahamasto UNESCO.

Tom Petty

Best known as the lead vocalist of Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, he is popular among theyoungsters and is one of the best-selling music artists of all time. Born on October 20, 1950 inGainesville, Florida, he was interested in rock and roll since an early age of 10. He happened tomeet Elvis Presley whom he began to admire. On seeing the Beatles, he rediscovered his love formusic and found that he wanted to be in a band. He started a band called Epics which would later becalled Mudcrutch. The band split up and Petty decided to start a solo career. Soon after, he teamedwith Mike visit here Campbell and Benmont Tench to release Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers,which became popular, especially in Britain. The albums thereafter also gained popularity. In 1989,Petty signed a contract with Warner Bros. Records. His album Wildflowers sold more than threemillion copies in the US. In 1999, Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers released Echo which was a hugehit. In 2007, Mudcrutch was formed again. Petty embarked upon a brief acting career in 1978. Thismusician, singer, songwriter, multiple instrument player, and record producer has been inducted tothe Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. He has sold over 80 million records the world over.

Wallace Amos

Wallace Amos, better known as Wally Amos, was born on July 1, 1936 and spent his childhood inTallahassee, Florida. Later he moved to Manhattan where he joined the Food Trades Vocational HighSchool. Since his young age, he was keenly interested in cooking, especially in improving his aunt'schocolate cookie recipe. After graduation, he took up a clerical job in the William Morris Agency andlater became the first African-American talent agent serving that agency. His chocolate cookies werean attraction among his friends as also his clients. On one of his friends' suggestion, Wallace Amosopened a cookie store in Los Angeles. The store was called 'Famous Amos' and it soon becamepopular throughout the United States. In 1994, he founded the 'Uncle Noname Gourmet MuffinsCompany', which focused on the production of fat-free muffins. The muffins made a huge sale acrossthe nation. Wally Amos, currently a resident of New York, is truly a self-made man.

This was a list of only a few of the famous people from Florida. They are some of the most celebratednames from this state and shall be remembered for years to come.