List of Famous people born in Massachusetts, United States of America
Nathaniel Williams
Judith Merril
Judith Josephine Grossman, who took the pen-name Judith Merril around 1945, was an American and then Canadian science fiction writer, editor and political activist, and one of the first women to be widely influential in those roles.
Timothy Fuller
Timothy Fuller was a U.S. Representative from Massachusetts.
William Dwight Whitney
William Dwight Whitney was an American linguist, philologist, and lexicographer known for his work on Sanskrit grammar and Vedic philology as well as his influential view of language as a social institution. He was the first president of the American Philological Association and editor-in-chief of The Century Dictionary.
Julie Taymor
Julie Taymor is an American director and writer of theater, opera and film. Since her stage adaptation of The Lion King debuted in 1997, 24 global productions have been seen by more than 100 million people in over 100 cities in 20 countries, on every continent except Antarctica, and its worldwide gross exceeds that of any entertainment title in box office history. The Lion King also received 11 Tony Award nominations, earning Taymor Tony Awards for Best Director and Costume Designer, and was honored with more than 70 major arts awards worldwide.
Warren Rudman
Warren Bruce Rudman was an American attorney and Republican politician who served as United States Senator from New Hampshire between 1980 and 1993. He was known as a moderate centrist, to such an extent that President Clinton approached him in 1994 about replacing departing Treasury Secretary Lloyd Bentsen in Clinton's cabinet, an offer that Rudman declined.
Nathaniel Bowditch
Nathaniel Bowditch was an early American mathematician remembered for his work on ocean navigation. He is often credited as the founder of modern maritime navigation; his book The New American Practical Navigator, first published in 1802, is still carried on board every commissioned U.S. Naval vessel. In 2001, an elementary and middle school in Salem was named in his honor.
Charlie Mariano
Carmine Ugo Mariano was an American jazz alto saxophonist and soprano saxophonist.
Nancy Kelly
Nancy Kelly was an American actress in film, theater and television. A child actress and model, she was a repertory cast member of CBS Radio's The March of Time and appeared in several films in the late 1920s. She became a leading lady upon returning to the screen in the late 1930s, while still in her teens, and made two dozen movies between 1938 and 1946, including portraying Tyrone Power's love interest in the classic Jesse James (1939), which also featured Henry Fonda, and playing opposite Spencer Tracy in Stanley and Livingstone later that same year. After turning to the stage in the late 1940s, she had her greatest success in a character role, the distraught mother in The Bad Seed, receiving a Tony Award for Best Actress in a Play for the 1955 stage production and an Academy Award nomination as Best Actress for the 1956 film adaptation, her last film role. Kelly then worked regularly in television until 1963, then took over the role of Martha in the original Broadway production of Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? for several months. She returned to television for a handful of appearances in the mid-1970s.
Josiah Bartlett
Josiah Bartlett was an American physician and statesman, delegate to the Continental Congress for New Hampshire, and signatory of the Declaration of Independence. He was later Governor of New Hampshire and Chief Justice of the New Hampshire Superior Court of Judicature.