Famous people known for two totally unrelated accomplishments

[Hornbein]

There was a Bollywood actor who succeeded in getting elected to their legislature. Sono Bono and Al Franken, same in the USA. A porn actress in Italy, same. JD Vance was known for his book Hillbilly Elergy.

Hermann Goering gained fame as a fighter ace in WWI. Then there's OJ Simpson. The Scarsdale Diet doctor was murdered by the president of Barnard College.

 

[Hornbein]

I asked AI about this, and AI told me about Hedy Lamar. Hedy Lamar is definitely a good answer. Hedy Lamar was a famous movie star in the 1940s in America. She also co-patented the frequency hopping spread spectrum technology intended to stop torpedoes from being jammed, which later paved the way for modern Wifi, bluetooth, and GPS.

Yes a noteworthy accomplishment but she didn't get famous for that. The patent didn't have any effect and would not have brought anyone fame.

 

[Hornbein]

Please do not quote AI in PhysicsForums. I don't like its style. It bothers me. And it's against the rules.

 

[sevensages]

Yes a noteworthy accomplishment but she didn't get famous for that. The patent didn't have any effect and would not have brought anyone fame.

I think that Hedy Lamarr would have at least got onto wikipedia with her patent even if not for her career as an actress . I will leave her on the list.

By famous, I don't mean a household name that everyone knows. I just mean some media attention .

 

[sevensages]

This:

would seem to equally apply to these two:

if one were to be consistent.

Without their movie fame their political careers would not have existed.

Yeah I suppose that is arguable.

Arnold also achieved fame as a top notch bodybuilder. I suppose Arnold probably would not have been able to have his acting career without his bodybuilding. I think that Arnold was probably cast partly because of his muscles.

 

[sevensages]

I think that the best examples so far are Robert Leonard, John Wilkes Booth, Thomas Young, Benjamin Franklin, and Hedy Lamarr. Each of the two causes of fame for those five people are so extraordinarily unrelated to each other.

There are A LOT of famous people who are famous for two different things. We could probably name hundreds of such people, but almost all of our examples would be people whose first accomplishment resulting in fame enabled them to make their second accomplishment resulting in fame. I could probably name twenty professional athletes who acted in movies, but probably all of them would not have gotten cast in those movies if not for their athletic careers.

Famous people like Robert Leonard, John Wilkes Booth, Thomas Young, Benjamin Franklin, and Hedy Lamarr are rare.

 

[pines-demon]

Is philosophy and science two different fields? Because many did that.

 

[DaveC426913]

This:

"But for Sagan's science chops, there would be no book or movie."

would seem to equally apply to these two:

Arnold Schwarzenegger, Ronald Reagan

if one were to be consistent.

Without their movie fame their political careers would not have existed.

I agree. There is a pretty clear cause-effect relationship between screen celebrity and subsequent political popularity. I would disqualify Bonzo and Arnie.


However, I think the case for Sagan's disqualifiais open and shut. He was a science popularizer. He became very well known for that through his TV show Cosmos. The book and film adaptation are merely a logical extension of his TV popularity about the same subject.

 

[Hornbein]

Yeah I suppose that is arguable.

Arnold also achieved fame as a top notch bodybuilder. I suppose Arnold probably would not have been able to have his acting career without his bodybuilding. I think that Arnold was probably cast partly because of his muscles.

He was. Originally they were going to dub in all his dialog.

 

[robphy]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jesse_Ventura (wrestler, governor)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_Bradley (NBA champion, senator)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ted_Kaczynski (promising but not famous mathematician, terrorist)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jim_Simons (mathematician, Hedge fund manager/billionaire)

 

[Bandersnatch]

Marcus Aurelius - Roman emperor, stoic philosopher
Xenophon - warrior/commander, historian
Caesar - emperor, writer, dagger attractor, salad

 

[Zaciekawiony]

Charles Dodgson – widely known as a writer, author of "Alice in Wonderland" under the pseudonym Lewis Carroll. He was also a good mathematician, working in fields such as linear algebra, symbolic logic, and systems for converting votes into seats in Parliament. He wrote articles for the press on mathematical puzzles and invented the word ladder game, which is still famous today.

 

[sevensages]

Charles Dodgson – widely known as a writer, author of "Alice in Wonderland" under the pseudonym Lewis Carroll. He was also a good mathematician, working in fields such as linear algebra, symbolic logic, and systems for converting votes into seats in Parliament. He wrote articles for the press on mathematical puzzles and invented the word ladder game, which is still famous today.

That's definitely worthy of inclusion in the list and my pressing the like icon on your post

 

[Klystron]

Already mentioned but worth repeating:

A few years ago I wrote about Hedy Lamarr's multiple talents in a similar context on PF. She was an accomplished stage and film actress, a professional fashion model when that profession was relatively new, and contributed to early RADAR designs when radar was also new. Famous now for contributions to naval torpedo designs she used that knowledge to help improve certain aspects of frequncy drift in cavity magnetrons central to Allied detection abilities during and after WWII.

According to family lore -- Hedy was my mother's cousin -- she sometimes taught math and science classes using her birth name folowing her film career. Charles Dodgson (Lewis Carroll) a famous novelist also published popular poems and puzzle books, wrote papers on discrete mathematics and logic, was a popular teacher at Oxford. We probably do not honor our teachers enough.

IMS John Wilkes Booth also taught stage acting with his brother. Robert Oppenheimer taught an entire generation of physicists at UC Berkeley before and after being tapped to manage the Manhattan Engineering Project principle lab at Los Alamos and later the Atomic Energy Commision. Oppie was also an accomplished piano player, often entertaining isolated STEM professionals at Los Alamos during WWII.