List of Indian Americans

The following is a list of Indian Americans who are famous, have made significant contributions to the American culture or society politically, artistically or scientifically, or have appeared in the news numerous times:

Academic

• Shreeram Shankar Abhyankar, mathematician, singularity theory and Abhyankar's conjecture of finite group theory
• Balamurali Ambati, physician, world's youngest doctor at age 17
• Homi K. Bhabha, post-colonial theorist at Harvard
• Mani Lal Bhaumik, inventor of excimer laser technology
• Subramanyan Chandrasekhar, Nobel Laureate in Physics, 1983
• Atul Gawande, general and endocrine surgeon , medical author, National Book Award finalist
• Dipak C. Jain, Dean of the J. L. Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University
• Aravind Joshi, computer scientist, defined the tree-adjoining grammar formalism
• Narendra Karmarkar, mathematician, inventor of Karmarkar algorithm
• Narinder Singh Kapany, engineer, called the "Father of Fiber Optics"
• Har Gobind Khorana, Nobel Prize in Physiology/Medicine (1968)
• Anil Nerode, mathematician, proved the Myhill-Nerode Theorem
• Arun Netravali, scientist, former President, Bell Labs, former CTO, Lucent
• C Kumar N Patel, developed the carbon dioxide laser, used as a cutting tool in surgery and industry
• C.K. Prahalad, leading management guru
• Raghuram Rajan, IMF Chief Economist, inaugural winner of the Fischer Black Prize
• Raj Reddy, Turing Award winner and founder of the Robotics Institute at CMU.
• Amartya Sen, The Bank of Sweden Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel, 1998
• Madhu Sudan, computer science professor at MIT, winner Rolf Nevanlinna Prize
• George Sudarshan, physicist, author - first to propose the existence of Tachyon
• Divakar Viswanath, mathematician who discovered Viswanath's constant

Arts & Entertainment

• Ravi Batra, bestselling author and economist
• Anand Bhatt, musician and producer
• Jay Chandrasekhar, actor, comedian, writer, and film director
• Anita Desai, author
• Engelbert Humperdinck, singer
• Zakir Hussain, tabla maestro
• Vijay Iyer, jazz musician and composer
• Norah Jones, singer, Grammy award winner 2003, half Indian, daughter of Ravi Shankar
• Tony Kanal, Bass player for No Doubt, two-time Grammy award winner, producer, songwriter
• Padma Lakshmi, model, actress, and author
• Zubin Mehta - conductor, New York Philharmonic Orchestra
• Ismail Merchant - film producer
• Ajay Naidu, actor
• Mira Nair, filmmaker, won the Golden Camera award at the Cannes Film Festival and nominated for an Oscar for Salaam Bombay!
• Sunil Nayar, TV writer and producer, a Producer of CSI: Miami
• Kal Penn, actor
• Hillol Ray, Poet Laureate, Author, and Songwriter, wrote "Earth Day"
• Manick Sorcar, animator, artist, and producer
• Kim Thayil, guitarist for rock group Soundgarden
• Naren Shankar, TV writer, producer and director, an Executive Producer of CSI: Crime Scene Investigation
• M. Night Shyamalan, filmmaker, actor
• Babu Subramaniam, TV series Director and Assistant Director
• Kaavya Viswanathan, novelist noted for involvement in a plagiarism scandal

Business & Industry

• Sabeer Bhatia, co-founder of Hotmail
• Amar Bose, physicist and founder of Bose Corporation
• Vinod Dham, former microprocessor boss for Intel and creator of the Pentium processor
• Rono Dutta, Former President,United Airlines,Chairman, Air Sahara
• Rajat Gupta, former Managing Director, McKinsey & Company
• Rajiv Gupta, a General Manager of Hewlett Packard
• Ajit Jain, head of National Indemnity, possible successor to Warren Buffett
• Naveen Jain, founder, former CEO, Infospace
• Sanjay Jejurikar, a Director of Windows division, Microsoft
• Vinod Khosla, general partner, venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers; co-founder, Sun Microsystems
• Indra Nooyi, President and CFO of PepsiCo
• Kanwal Rekhi, businessman and engineer, Former EVP & CTO of Novell, Venture capitalist
• Suhas Patil, founder, Cirrus Logic
• Arun Sarin, CEO of Vodafone, the largest mobile phone company in Europe
• Sanjiv Sidhu, Founder and CEO of i2 Technologies, a B2B Supply Chain integrator
• Pradeep Sindhu, Co-founder and CTO of Juniper Networks
• Rana Talwar, banker, former Group CEO of Standard Chartered Bank
• Toral Mehta, Candidate, Season 4 of NBC's superhit show, The Apprentice

Literature & Media

• Agha Shahid Ali, poet
• Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni, author
• Deepak Chopra, author and speaker
• Sumi Das, CNN national correspondent
• Dinesh D'Souza, author and conservative political commentator
• Sanjay Gupta, CNN senior medical correspondent
• Pico Iyer, author and journalist for Time Magazine, Harper's Magazine, Conde Nast Traveler, and The New York Review of Books
• Jhumpa Lahiri - writer, Pulitzer Prize winner
• Bharati Mukherjee - author
• Uma Pemmaraju, News anchor for Fox News Channel
• Ramesh Ponnuru, senior editor of National Review magazine
• Vikram Seth, poet and novelist. Also a travel writer, librettist, children's writer, biographer and memoirist
• Shauna Singh Baldwin, novelist, won the Commonwealth Writers Prize for Best Book
• Ali Velshi, business news anchor for CNN
• Fareed Zakaria, editor of Newsweek
• Chitra Ragavan, Chief Legal Affairs Correspondent at U.S. News & World Report, former NPR correspondent

Politics

• Kumar P. Barve, majority leader, Maryland House of Delegates.
• Satveer Chaudhary, first Indian American elected in Minnesota's history and the youngest State Senator in Minnesota
• Upendra Chivukula, politician, serving in the New Jersey General Assembly
• Kamala Harris, District Attorney of San Francisco, first Indian American elected as a D.A. in the country
• Bobby Jindal, Republican - former Louisiana gubernatorial candidate and current member of the U.S. Congress
• Ramesh Ponnuru, senior editor for National Review magazine
• Dalip Singh Saund, first Indian-American congressman
• Shashi Tharoor, author, Under-Secretary-General for Communications and Public Information for the United Nations

Scripps National Spelling Bee Champions

• Pratyush Buddiga, 2002
• Sai R. Gunturi, 2003
• Anurag Kashyap, 2005
• Nupur Lala, 1999
• Balu Natarajan, 1985
• Rageshree Ramachandran, 1988
• George Abraham Thampy, 2000

Sports

• Mohini Bhardwaj, first Indian American Olympic medalist, gymnastics
• Brandon Chillar, professional American football player

Others

• Kalpana Chawla, NASA astronaut (perished in the 2003 Columbia disaster)
• Neal Katyal, lawyer, Professor of Law at Georgetown University, lead counsel in the Supreme Court case Hamdan v. Rumsfeld on Guantanamo military actions
• Kavita Ramdas, President and CEO of Global Fund for Women.
• Bhagat Singh Thind, civil rights figure, lecturer, author
• Urvashi Vaid, famous gay rights activist

See also

• List of Indians

By Indians, we are referring to individuals with some portion of ancestry from the Indian Subcontinent.