Paul Adrien Maurice Dirac was an English theoretical physicist who is considered to be one of the founders of quantum mechanics and quantum electrodynamics. He was the Lucasian Professor of Mathematics at the University of Cambridge, a professor of physics at Florida State University and the University of Miami, and a 1933 Nobel Prize in Physics recipient.
Paul Frederic Simon is an American singer-songwriter. One of the most celebrated artists of the twentieth century, Simon's career has spanned six decades. Born in New Jersey, Simon grew up in Queens, New York City, and developed an interest in rock music in his teens.
Michael Graves was an American architect, designer, and educator, and principal of Michael Graves and Associates and Michael Graves Design Group. He was a member of The New York Five and the Memphis Group – and a professor of architecture at Princeton University for nearly forty years. Following his own partial paralysis in 2003, Graves became an internationally recognized advocate of health care design.
Tallahassee is the capital city of the U.S. state of Florida. It is the county seat and only incorporated municipality in Leon County. Tallahassee became the capital of Florida, then the Florida Territory, in 1824. In 2020, the population was 196,169, making it the eighth-largest city in the state of Florida. The population of the Tallahassee metropolitan area was 385,145 as of 2018. Tallahassee is the largest city in the Florida Big Bend and Florida Panhandle region, and the main center for trade and agriculture in the Florida Big Bend and Southwest Georgia regions.
Emmitt James Smith III is an American former professional football player who was a running back in the National Football League (NFL) for 15 seasons, primarily with the Dallas Cowboys. Among other accolades, he is the league's all-time leading rusher.
Asa Philip Randolph was an American labor unionist and civil rights activist. In 1925, he organized and led the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, the first successful African-American led labor union. In the early Civil Rights Movement and the Labor Movement, Randolph was a prominent voice. His continuous agitation with the support of fellow labor rights activists against racist, unfair labor practices, eventually helped lead President Franklin D. Roosevelt to issue Executive Order 8802 in 1941, banning discrimination in the defense industries during World War II. The group then successfully maintained pressure, so that President Harry S. Truman proposed a new Civil Rights Act and issued Executive Orders 9980 and 9981 in 1948, promoting fair employment, anti-discrimination policies in federal government hiring, and ending racial segregation in the armed services.
Carlisle Sessions Floyd was an American composer primarily known for his operas. These stage works, for which he wrote the librettos, typically engage with themes from the American South, particularly the Post-civil war South, the Great Depression and rural life. His best known opera, Susannah, is based on a story from the Biblical Apocrypha, transferred to contemporary rural Tennessee, and written for a Southern dialect. It was premiered at Florida State University in 1955, with Phyllis Curtin in the title role. When it was staged at the New York City Opera the following year, the reception was initially mixed; some considered it a masterpiece, while others degraded it as a 'folk opera'. Subsequent performances led to an increase in Susannah's reputation and the opera quickly became among the most performed of American operas.
Florida International University (FIU) is a public research university with its main campus in the neighborhood of University Park in the Westchester census-designated place in unincorporated Miami-Dade County, Florida. Founded in 1965 by the Florida Legislature, the school opened its doors to students in 1972. FIU has grown to become the third-largest university in Florida and the eighth-largest public university in the United States by enrollment. FIU is a constituent part of the State University System of Florida.
New World School of the Arts (NWSA) is a public magnet high school and college in Downtown Miami, Florida. Its dual-enrollment programs in the visual and performing arts are organized into four strands: visual arts, dance, theatre, and music.
Juan Francisco Secada Ramírez, better known as Jon Secada, is a Cuban-born American singer. He has won two Grammy Awards and sold 15 million records, making him one of the best-selling Latin music artists. His music fuses funk, soul music, pop, and Latin percussion.
Peter Nero is an American pianist and pops conductor. He directed the Philly Pops from 1979 to 2013, and has earned two Grammy Awards.
The Archdiocese of Miami is a Latin Church archdiocese of the Catholic Church in South Florida in the United States. it is the metropolitan see for the Ecclesiastical Province of Miami, which covers all of Florida.
Alonzo Smith "Jake" Gaither was an American football coach and college athletics administrator. He served as the head football coach at Florida A&M University (FAMU) for 25 years, from 1945 to 1969, compiling a record of 204–36–4. His won–loss record is among the best of any college football coach.
The Florida Gators football program represents the University of Florida (UF) in American college football. Florida competes in the Football Bowl Subdivision (FBS) of the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) and the Eastern Division of the Southeastern Conference (SEC). They play their home games in Steve Spurrier-Florida Field at Ben Hill Griffin Stadium on the university's Gainesville campus.
Jo-Michael Scheibe was the former chair of the Department of Choral and Sacred Music at the Thornton School of Music at the University of Southern California. Following an unplanned and unannounced sabbatical in Fall of 2022, Scheibe retired from his position as Professor of Choral and Sacred Music. He formerly conducted the USC Chamber Singers. In 2008, he assumed a new post as National President-Elect of the American Choral Directors’ Association. No stranger to the ACDA, Scheibe previously served as the organization’s Western Division President (1991–1993), as well as National Repertoire and Standards Chairperson for Community Colleges (1980–1989). Ensembles under his leadership have sung at six national ACDA conventions, as well as two national conventions of the Music Educators National Conference, and various regional and state conventions.
Phil Tan is a Malaysian-American music and audio engineer.
Alexander Goldstein, also credited as Aleksandr Goldshteyn and Aleksandr Goldstein in films, is a Russian–American music composer, conductor, songwriter, record producer, film producer, director, editor and is the founder of ABG World and SportMusic.com. He was born in Moscow, USSR, into a family of Bolshoi Theater Orchestra musicians.
Anthony P. Pizzo (1912-1994) was a well-respected local historian and businessman, and was internationally recognized for his attempts to preserve the Italian American and Cuban American heritage and history of Tampa, Florida, and in particular that of his home neighborhood of Ybor City. From 1982 until his death in 1994, Pizzo was the official historian of Hillsborough County, and is author of several histories, most of which celebrate the unusual multicultural makeup of early Tampa. Pizzo also served as chairman of the Hillsborough County Historical Commission from 1968 to 1980, where he oversaw and was responsible for over eighty historical markers in Tampa and Ybor City.
Carlos Rafael Rivera is an American composer based out of Guatemala. In 2014, his music score for the movie A Walk Among the Tombstones advanced for Oscar in the Best Original Score category. He has won an Emmy Award, a Grammy Award, and a Hollywood Music in Media Award for his work in Netflix miniseries The Queen's Gambit (2020) and received two additional Emmy nominations for his work in another Netflix miniseries Godless (2017).
David Adam Le Batard is a Cuban-American graphic and fine artist based in Miami, Florida, best known for murals, live painting and sculpture. He has been described as one of southern Florida's "most recognizable artists", and "almost an institution" in the art world for his wide range of media, projects and locations.
