Autodidactic Hall of Fame - Self-educated People Who've Made a Difference

Millions of people pay a king's ransom for college tuition to learn what is free for the taking when motivated by a compelling desire to learn. In the movie Good Will Hunting, Will (played by Matt Damon) chides an arrogant Ivy League student for paying a fortune for an education that would be free but for the price of a library card. Although this is absolutely valid, very few people believe it. Instead they are convinced the knowledge they could acquire on their own is secondary to paying a lot of money to an institution which will attest that they have, even if they cheated their way through the process.
Credentialism has existed for centuries in one form or another as groups with an information or knowledge advantage have tried to maintain their position of superiority with everything from guilds and associations to secret societies and esoteric languages. And even though teachers and educators have noble intentions, their position in our economy, by design is dependent upon a psychology of the scarcity of knowledge.

Whole categories of attributes from self-help to self-directed inquiry have been coined to disguise and set apart individual learning as an aberration so as not to displace the hierarchical power of educators. And yet, throughout history self-educated men and women from all walks of life and social stations have risen to the occasion of the challenges facing them. In so doing, they have set new standards for learning, which without question have raised the bar of achievement for their respective societies. But only in the latter half of the twentieth-century has the insidious notion that one must have the blessing of an institution to function in society been generally accepted without protest.

We need colleges and universities just as we need teachers and people who are enthusiastic about sharing their knowledge with others. But the idea that the only learning respectable enough for economic compensation comes from institutions, which treat it as a scarce resource, is patently absurd. The people named in the following list demonstrate this beyond doubt.



Adams, Abigail
Adams, Ansel
Alcott, Louisa May
Allen, Paul
Allen, Woody
Amos, Wally
Anderson, Hans Christian
Ando, Tadao
Angelou, Maya
Austen, Jane
Avedon, Richard
Baldwin, James
Bancroft, Hubert Howe
Banneker, Benjamin
Bartlett, John
Bell, Alexander Graham
Ben-Gurion, David
Bentley, Wilson
Bernstein, Carl
Blake, William
Bradbury, Ray
Bragg, Rick
Branson, Richard
Browning, Elizabeth Barrett
Browning, John Moses
Browning, Robert
Buchwald, Art
Burns, Robert
Cage, John
Cameron, James
Campbell, Joseph
Capote, Truman
Carnegie, Andrew
Chandler, Raymond
Chanute, Octave
Cheever, John
Christie, Agatha
Clarke, Arthur C.
Clarke, John Henrik
Clay, Henry
Clemens, Samuel
Cleveland, Grover
Cobbett, William
Conrad, Joseph
Cooper, Peter
Cornell, Ezra
Crichton, Judy
Cronkite, Walter
Davy, Humphrey
DeLibero, Shirley A.
Dell, Michael
Dickens, Charles
Disney, Walt
Douglass, Frederick
Drudge, Matt
Dylan, Bob
Eads, James Buchanan
Edison, Thomas
Einstein, Albert
Ellison, Lawrence
Faraday, Michael
Farnsworth, Philo T.
Fast, Howard
Faulkner, William
Fessenden, Reginald Aubrey
Fitzgerald, F. Scott
Foote, Shelby
Ford, Henry
Franklin, Benjamin
Frost, Robert
Fuller, R. Buckminster
Gates, Bill
Geffen, David
George, Henry
Gilman, Charlotte Perkins
Goldman, Emma
Goodall, Jane
Grasso, Richard
Greeley, Horace
Hailey, Kendal
Haley, Alex Palmer
Harriman, Pamela
Harris, Joel Chandler
Harrison, John
Harte, Bret
Heaviside, Oliver
Hemingway, Ernest
Henderson, Hazel
Henry, Patrick
Hershey, Milton
Hoffer, Eric
Honda, Soichiro
Howe, Elias
Hughes, Catherine Elizabeth
Hughes, Robert
Huizenga, Wayne
Huxley, Thomas Henry
Irving, Washington
Jennings, Peter
Jervis, John Bloomfield
Jobs, Steven
Johnson, Andrew
Kamen, Dean
Kelly, Kevin
Kerik, Bernard
Kerkorian, Kirk
Kroc, Ray
Kubrick, Stanley
Lai, Jimmy
L'Amour, Louis
Lane, Rose Wilder
Lanier, Jaron
Lauder, Estee
Lauren, Ralph
Leakey, Richard E.
Lear, William
Lebowitz, Fran
Lessing, Doris
Lincoln, Abraham
London, Jack
Luce, Clare Boothe
Major, John
Malcolm X
Marconi, Guglielmo
McCormick, Cyrus Hall
McKinley, William
Melville, Herman
Mencken, H.L.
Monaghan, Tom
Monroe, James
Morgan, Arthur Ernest
Nightingale, Florence
O'Casey, Sean
Ochs, Adolph
Poe, Edgar Allen
Pope, Alexander
Porter, Gene Stratton
Porter, William S. -- "O. Henry"
Potter, Beatrix
Ramanujan, S.
Rockefeller, John D.
Romero, John
Roosevelt, Eleanor
Rosenberg, Bill
Ross, Harold Wallace
Rove, Karl
Salinger, J.D.
Sandburg, Carl
Sanders, Colonel Harland
Sanger, Margaret
Saramago, Jose
Sarnoff, David
Sewell, Anna
Shaw, George Bernard
Siebert, Muriel
Smith, Clark Ashton
Snyder, Daniel M.
Spencer, Herbert
Spielberg, Steven
Steel, Dawn
Stone, Edward Durrell
Tarantino, Quentin
Taylor, Jeff
Taylor, Zachary
Tesla, Nikola
Thomas, R. David
Thomas, Vivian
Tolstoy, Leo
Truman, Harry
Turner, Ted
Ustinov, Peter
Van Buren, Martin
Vidal, Gore
Washington, George
Watson, Thomas J.
Westinghouse, George
Wharton, Edith
Whitman, Walt
Whittier, John Greenleaf
Wilder, Laura Ingalls
Wilson, August
Woodull, Nancy
Wozniak, Steve
Wright, Frank Lloyd
Wright, Orville
Wright, Wilbur
Yeager, Chuck