A selection of Asian Pacific Islander Americans are featured here. Individuals were chosen to represent diverse backgrounds, historical periods, and achievements.
Born in Karnal, India, in 1962, Kalpana Chawla was the first woman of Indian origin to fly into space. After completing her bachelor's degree in India, She moved to the United States in 1984, earning a Master of Science in Aerospace Engineering from the University of Texas at Arlington and a Master of Science in Aerospace Engineering at the University of Colorado Boulder. Her first space flight was in 1997 on the Space Shuttle Columbia as the principal operator the robotic arm. Her second mission was also on the Columbia, as a flight engineer. During this mission, she ran twelve experiments on firefighting, alloys, and cell cultures. Tragically, Chawla and her 6 crewmates were killed during reentry when the shuttle broke up due to unknown damage to the spacecraft.
Source:
Barton, Melissa A. “Kalpana Chawla.” Great Lives from History: Asian & Pacific Islander Americans, Sept. 2021, pp. 1–3. https://napavalley.idm.oclc.org/login?url=https://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=ets&AN=153348564&site=ehost-live
Andy Fang was born to Taiwanese immigrants in the mid-1990s and grew up in San José, California. In 2013, while a student at Stanford University, he co-founded the food delivery service DoorDash with Tony Xu and Stanley Tang. The three came up with the idea in a class about combining engineering and business. Starting locally, the trio devoted themselves to coding (Andy's specialty), marketing, and adding new merchants until in less than a decade their service became not only hugely popular but worth over $3 billion. Even though their company has been incredibly successful and has lots of employees, Fang and his co-founders work as delivery drivers on a regular basis in order to maintain insight into how the company is working at all levels (Khosrowshahi).
Sources:
Chen, Joanne. "American Dreamers: Andy Fang, Co-Founder Of DoorDash, On How A Class Project Turned Into A Massive Food-Delivery Service In America." Forbes, 31 July 2022. Accessed 29 April, 2024. https://www.forbes.com/sites/joannechen/2022/07/31/american-dreamers-andy-fang-co-founder--cto-of-doordash-on-turning-a-school-project-into-feeding-america/?sh=16e8ad9134f8
Khosrowshahi, Dara. "DoorDash Co-Founder Still Delivers 10 Years Later." AP, 28 June 2023. https://napavalley.idm.oclc.org/login?url=https://research.ebsco.com/linkprocessor/plink?id=5c0a8df5-0448-32ff-8b87-2df7499d0d15
Lue Gim Gong was born in 1858 in Guangdong, China and moved to the United States in his teens, becoming a citizen in the early twentieth century. Coming from a family of farmers, he had great skill and knowledge of plants, which he was able to utilize first as a private gardener in Massachusetts and later as a fruit farmer in Florida. In addition to developing new strains of apples, tomatoes, and grapefruits, he is most famous for creating a hardy strain of Valencia Orange, named the "Lue" orange, for which he won the inaugural Silver Wilder Medal from the American Pomological Society. His work cultivating fruit that could survive the Floridian winter frosts had a massive influence on the industry and continues to this day.
Source:
Schafer, Elizabeth D. “Lue Gim Gong.” Great Lives from History: Asian & Pacific Islander Americans, Sept. 2021, pp. 1–2. https://napavalley.idm.oclc.org/login?url=https://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=ets&AN=153348754&site=ehost-live
Born in 1927 on the island of Maui, Patsy Mink was a 3rd generation Japanese American who became the first woman of color and first Asian American woman elected to to the United States Congress. Facing adversity due to her sex, race, and motherhood, she broke through barriers throughout her life, including those preventing her from taking the bar exam and practicing law. She first entered public office in 1956 as a Representative in the Territory of Hawai'i's legislature and in 1965 she was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives for Hawai'i, in which she served 12 terms. While in office, her work focused on civil rights, education, and nonviolent solutions to conflict.
Source:
Ford, Lynne, E. “Mink, Patsy Takemoto.” Encyclopedia of Women and American Politics, by Lynne E. Ford, 2nd ed., Facts On File, 2014. https://napavalley.idm.oclc.org/login?url=https://search.credoreference.com/articles/Qm9va0FydGljbGU6NDg2MDA5OQ==?aid=238545
Philip Vera Cruz was born in the Philippines in 1904. With thousands of other Filipino immigrants who came to the United States in the early twentieth century looking for work, he found a job as a farmworker. However, he also found discrimination and poverty due to oppressive, unfair labor conditions. In 1964 in Delano, California, Cruz and Cesar Chavez organized protests against grape growers. In 1966, Cruz was integral in the creation of the farmworkers union, known as the United Farm Workers Organizing Committee, (UFWOC) and became its vice-president. The union continued to strike and promote boycotts against non-union picked grapes, which concluded in 1970.
Sources:
Craig Scharlin, and Lilia Villanueva. Philip Vera Cruz : A Personal History of Filipino Immigrants and the Farmworkers Movement. University of Washington Press, 2000. https://napavalley.idm.oclc.org/login?url=https://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=e000xna&AN=1052292&site=ehost-live
Johnson, Andrea. “Chavez, Cesar (1927–1993), Labor Activist and Founder and President of the United Farm Workers of America.” The Oxford Encyclopedia of American Business, Labor, and Economic History, edited by Paul S. Boyer, 1st ed., Oxford University Press, Inc., 2013. https://napavalley.idm.oclc.org/login?url=https://search.credoreference.com/articles/Qm9va0FydGljbGU6NDgwMDg2OA==?aid=238545
Born in 1912 in Liuho, China to an engineer father and a mother who favored education for girls, Chien-Shiung Wu excelled in school, demonstrating an aptitude for math and science. After graduating high school with honors, she earned a bachelor of science degree in physics from the National Central University in Nanjing. In 1936, she travelled to the United States to attend UC Berkeley, where she received a PhD in Physics in 1940. In 1944, she joined the Manhattan Project at Columbia University, experimenting on separating uranium from its fissionable isotopes. She spent 40 years at Columbia University, being appointed to the honored position of the Michael I. Pupin Professor of Physics. Her research focused on particle physics, including groundbreaking work on beta decay using what was later known as the "Wu Experiment," in which weak interactions among decaying particles are proven to not always be symmetrical. In addition, she conducted extensive research on molecular changes in hemoglobin in sickle cell anemia.
Source:
Tang, Joyce. “Chien-Shiung Wu.” Great Lives from History: Asian & Pacific Islander Americans, Sept. 2021, pp. 1–3. https://napavalley.idm.oclc.org/login?url=https://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=ets&AN=153348930&site=ehost-live