Category:Famous People from Chicago
Chicago is the largest city in the American Midwest, the seat of Cook County, and the commercial capital of the Great Lakes region, built on rail freight, meatpacking, commodity futures and heavy manufacturing. The people gathered here do not cluster around a single industry the way a company town does. They arrive along three separate Chicago routes: the improvisational theater houses that have supplied American screen comedy since the 1960s, the courtrooms and law faculties that have sent Chicago lawyers to the federal bench and the cabinet since the nineteenth century, and the University of Chicago laboratories and economics departments. A fourth thread, thinner but consistent, runs through the trading floors.
Comedy, film and the improv houses
The comedy line is the densest cluster in the category. John Belushi was born in Chicago in 1949 to Albanian-American parents, attended high school in the western suburbs, and worked in the city's improvisational theater scene before joining Saturday Night Live. Harold Ramis was born in the city in 1944, went through Chicago public schools and the same improv circuit, and was later named to the Chicago Public Schools Alumni Honor Roll. Matt Walsh, a co-founder of the Upright Citizens Brigade, was born in Chicago in 1964 and still returns to perform live improv there. John Mulaney was born and raised in Chicago before writing for Saturday Night Live. Jay Chandrasekhar of Broken Lizard was also born in the city.
The filmmaking side is adjacent but distinct. John Hughes worked most often in and around Chicago, building his films around suburban teenagers and their parents. Robert Zemeckis was raised on the South Side in a Lithuanian Catholic household and cut news film at NBC in Chicago before film school. Michael Mann grew up in the city in the 1940s and 1950s and has traced his crime pictures to the police officers and criminals he knew there as a young man. Broadcast rather than film accounts for Oprah Winfrey, whose nationally syndicated program grew out of a third-rated local Chicago talk show and was broadcast from the city for its entire run.
The bench, the bar and the cabinet
Chicago's legal export record is long. Melville Fuller was educated in Maine and at Harvard but built his practice in Chicago through the Civil War and the Gilded Age before becoming Chief Justice of the United States. John Marshall Harlan II was born in Chicago in 1899 to a father who served as an alderman and twice ran for mayor. John Paul Stevens was born in the city in 1920 and served as a naval intelligence officer before a Supreme Court tenure that ran into the twenty-first century. Arthur Goldberg was born on the West Side, the youngest of eleven children of Ukrainian Jewish immigrants, and worked as a labor lawyer before reaching the Court and then the United Nations.
The executive branch draws on the same pool. Edward Levi was a professor, law dean, provost and finally president of the University of Chicago before serving as Attorney General. Merrick Garland was born in Chicago and grew up in the suburb of Lincolnwood, where his mother directed volunteer services for the Council for Jewish Elderly. Abner Mikva dated his reform politics to his encounters with the Chicago Democratic machine as a law student in the late 1940s, and went on to serve in all three branches of government. Kwame Raoul was born and raised in the city to Haitian parents and became Attorney General of Illinois. Donald Rumsfeld and Hillary Clinton were both raised in the Chicago area before national careers in Washington, and Rahm Emanuel moved between Congress, the White House and the mayor's office on the fifth floor of City Hall.
The university, the laboratories and the exchanges
Enrico Fermi emigrated from Italy in 1938 and led the University of Chicago team that produced the first self-sustaining nuclear chain reaction in December 1942, returning to the university as a professor after the war. Several members were born in the city and left it to do their scientific work. James Watson grew up on the South Side and entered the University of Chicago at fifteen, taking a degree in zoology. Martin Chalfie and H. Robert Horvitz were both born in Chicago in 1947. Bruce Beutler was born in the city in 1957 and came back for his medical degree at the university. John Hopfield was also born in Chicago before a career that crossed physics, molecular biology and neural computation.
The economics faculty is a separate concentration. James Heckman was born in Chicago and has spent most of his academic career at the university, where he directs the Center for the Economics of Human Development. Douglas Diamond has taught at the Booth School of Business since 1979. Harry Markowitz was born and raised in the city and built modern portfolio theory. Paul Alivisatos took his undergraduate degree at the university and returned as its president in 2021.
The money side is smaller but rooted in the same streets. Terry Duffy grew up in Mount Greenwood on the South Side, began in the Chicago trading pits, and leads CME Group. Sam Zell was born in the city in 1941 and ran Equity Group Investments from Chicago for his whole career, including the Tribune Company purchase that ended in bankruptcy. Eric Lefkofsky built a series of public companies from Chicago and co-manages a venture firm based there. Sam Altman was born in Chicago in 1985.
See also
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