Douglas A. Samuelson (Nevada, 1965) describes himself as “one of the Scholars who actually tried to do what President Johnson urged us to do: improve our society.” He adds, “I’ve been mostly unsuccessful at that, but at least I gave it a good try. There were a few little milestones here and there.”

Well, yes, here and there. After college at Cal – Berkeley, he moved to Washington, DC in 1975 to become a Federal policy analyst. In that role, in 1980, he played a significant analytical role in the US v. Exxon price regulation case that depended on determining when “a significant change in producing patterns” had occurred in a large oil field. The resulting verdict, over $2 billion, was the largest in the history of the Federal civil courts at the time.

In 2009 Julian Cook’s powerful baritone voice won him recognition as a Presidential Scholar in the Arts (IL).  Today he still sings, but it’s his voice as a scholar, innovator, educator, and community leader that’s earning him center stage.

Julian grew up on the south side of Chicago, a grandson of Mississippi sharecroppers who moved to Illinois in the 1940s. He always sang, but he didn’t recognize his artistry as anything special because he thought everybody could sing. His mother, grandmother, and sister always sang, and music was a big part of his church life. 

A few weeks after her high school graduation, Alice Trenholme Isaacman (1964, OR) met Alan Shepard, the first American in space, at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center. A quarter century later, she began working for the Cosmic Background Explorer (COBE) project at NASA.

Her first NASA visit was part of her national recognition as a Presidential Scholar. “That was in 1964, the very first year of Presidential Scholars,” Isaacman said. “We got the royal treatment. And I do mean the royal treatment.” Isaacman recalls shaking President Johnson’s hand, visiting the Supreme Court, and eating lunch with Senator Wayne Morse (one of just two senators to vote against the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution).

Catherine and Nicole Dekle have answered just about every identical twin question there is. 
 
“We get asked a lot whether we have ESP,” said Nicole Dekle Collins, an editor at The Wall Street Journal. “We don’t.”
 
A physician based in Atlanta, Catherine offers a plausible explanation for twin telepathy. “I remember once we were cooking in the kitchen, and I turned to Nicole and asked if she remembered this one time we went to the beach. She said she had just been thinking about that, too. But we realized it was because we had both heard fragments of a song and, because we had the same shared experiences, it brought up the same memory.”