Gratitude to the professors, lecturers, and educators who pour their hearts into helping students learn and win. Celebrated from public work, with a cited source on every card.
53 of 1024 · celebrated from public information, cited on every card.
Founder of Khan Academy, teaching free math, science, and more to the world online
Khan Academy
He turned a set of tutoring videos for his cousins into a free, world-class school for anyone with an internet connection, and still explains a tricky derivative like a patient older brother.
Co-founder of Coursera and founder of DeepLearning.AI, teacher of machine learning to millions
Stanford University / DeepLearning.AI
His Machine Learning course helped launch the modern online-course movement and quietly taught a whole generation of engineers that AI was something they, too, could learn.
Engineering professor and creator of Learning How to Learn, among the most popular online courses ever
Oakland University
She teaches people who think they are bad at math how their own brains actually learn, giving countless anxious students permission and a method to try again.
Astrophysicist and science communicator making the cosmos feel close and personal
American Museum of Natural History
He answers a child's question about black holes with the same delight he brings to a packed lecture hall, and reminds everyone that curiosity about the universe is a birthright.
Particle physicist and broadcaster who teaches physics to the public across the UK and beyond
University of Manchester
He makes entropy and the life of stars feel like the most beautiful story ever told, and has drawn millions to physics who never thought it was for them.
Harvard political philosopher whose Justice course teaches moral reasoning to the world
Harvard University
In his Justice lectures he can hold a thousand students in a live argument about right and wrong, teaching not what to think but how to reason together in public.
Stanford neurobiologist whose Human Behavioral Biology lectures are a global teaching landmark
Stanford University
His freely posted behavioral biology lectures weave genes, hormones, and culture into one gripping human story, taught with humor and a deep insistence on evidence.
Cornell mathematician and writer who teaches the beauty of calculus and networks
Cornell University
He writes and teaches about math with such clarity and warmth that ideas like infinity and chaos feel like invitations rather than intimidations.
Creator of 3Blue1Brown, teaching mathematics through animation to millions
3Blue1Brown
His animated lessons let people finally see what a matrix or a Fourier transform is really doing, turning abstract math into something you can watch and understand.
UCLA mathematician and Fields Medalist who teaches and mentors across mathematics
University of California, Los Angeles
One of the greatest living mathematicians, he shares his thinking openly through his blog and lectures, generously teaching how hard problems are actually approached.
Penn psychologist and former teacher who teaches the science of grit and character
University of Pennsylvania
A former math teacher turned scientist, she gave students and parents a research-grounded language for perseverance and helped schools take character as seriously as content.
MIT economist and Nobel laureate teaching development economics and evidence-based policy
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
She teaches that fighting poverty is a science of careful experiments, and her freely shared courses have trained a generation to test what actually helps the poor.
Harvard economist and philosopher, Nobel laureate teaching welfare economics and justice
Harvard University
He still teaches economics and philosophy at Harvard, having reshaped how the world measures development around human freedom and dignity.
Harvard professor who teaches CS50, the world's most popular introduction to computer science
Harvard University
His CS50 turns the terror of a first programming course into an exhilarating rite of passage, and he has opened that door for millions online for free.
Stanford physicist teaching The Theoretical Minimum, real physics for anyone willing to learn
Stanford University
He built The Theoretical Minimum so that curious adults could learn genuine physics, not watered-down analogies, treating the public as capable of the real thing.
Physicist and philosopher teaching the deep ideas of physics through lectures and podcasts
Johns Hopkins University
Through his Biggest Ideas lectures and Mindscape conversations he teaches spacetime and entropy with rare rigor and honesty about what we do and do not yet know.
Evolutionary biologist and former Oxford professor for the public understanding of science
University of Oxford
As Oxford's first professor for the public understanding of science, he taught the elegance of evolution to millions of readers who left his books seeing life anew.
Harvard psychologist teaching language, cognition, and the craft of clear writing
Harvard University
He teaches how the mind and language work, and his guide to writing well is itself an act of teaching, helping scholars everywhere express ideas with clarity.
Colorado State professor of animal science and advocate teaching about autism and visual thinking
Colorado State University
She teaches animal science while showing the world how differently minds can think, and has helped countless people on the spectrum see their way of learning as a strength.
Stanford psychologist whose research on the growth mindset reshaped how teachers teach
Stanford University
Her work on the growth mindset gave teachers and students a simple, powerful idea: that ability can grow, and that how we praise effort shapes who children become.
Historian at the Hebrew University teaching the long story of humankind
Hebrew University of Jerusalem
He teaches the sweep of human history so accessibly that millions have gained a wider view of where our species came from and the choices in front of it.
Columbia physician-scientist teaching cancer, genetics, and medicine to a wide public
Columbia University
A practicing oncologist and teacher, he turned the history of cancer and the gene into books that teach patients and students alike the science with humanity.
Stanford physician and writer teaching the humane bedside practice of medicine
Stanford University School of Medicine
He teaches doctors to slow down and truly examine and listen to the patient in front of them, restoring the human touch at the center of medical education.
University of Chicago philosopher teaching ethics, law, and the capabilities approach
University of Chicago
She teaches that a good life and a just society depend on real human capabilities, and models a philosophy that engages honestly with emotions, dignity, and rights.
Princeton philosopher teaching practical ethics and our obligations to others
Princeton University
His practical ethics courses push students to take their own moral reasoning seriously, and have inspired a global movement to give more effectively to those in need.
Stanford professor emeritus, author of The Art of Computer Programming and creator of TeX
Stanford University
He still gives his beloved Christmas lectures, having taught computer science its own rigor and craft through a lifetime of patient, exacting writing.
Oxford mathematical physicist and Nobel laureate teaching the geometry of the universe
University of Oxford
Still lecturing at Oxford in his nineties, he teaches the deep geometry behind black holes and spacetime, and shows what a lifetime of fearless mathematical imagination looks like.
Stanford computer scientist teaching AI and championing human-centered artificial intelligence
Stanford University
A pioneer of modern computer vision, she teaches AI at Stanford while insisting it be built to serve human dignity, and mentors students from backgrounds long left out of the field.
London arts teacher and 2018 Global Teacher Prize winner championing arts education
Alperton Community School, UK
Teaching in one of the UK's most diverse and deprived neighborhoods, she learned greetings in dozens of languages to reach her students and won the world's top teaching prize for it.
Kenyan science teacher and 2019 Global Teacher Prize winner mentoring rural students
Keriko Secondary School, Kenya
A Franciscan friar who gives most of his salary to his poor students, he led kids from a remote village to win national science honors, proving talent is everywhere when a teacher believes in it.
Indian primary teacher and 2020 Global Teacher Prize winner who brought QR-coded textbooks to village girls
Zilla Parishad Primary School, Paritewadi, India
He learned the local language, transformed a run-down village school, and pioneered QR-coded textbooks so girls could keep learning, then shared his prize money with fellow finalists.
Science educator and TV host who taught a generation that science rules
The Planetary Society
Bill Nye the Science Guy made science joyful and hands-on for millions of kids, and he still shows up to defend evidence and wonder wherever he can.
UCL economist teaching the role of the state in innovation and public value
University College London
She teaches students and governments alike to rethink where value really comes from, championing bold public investment and a more honest account of innovation.
Philosopher and professor teaching democracy, justice, and the life of the mind
Union Theological Seminary
A spellbinding lecturer, he teaches philosophy and justice as a living, moral vocation and treats every classroom and public hall as a place to awaken the courage to think.
Economist at SOAS teaching development economics and how the world economy really works
SOAS University of London
He teaches economics without jargon, using everyday examples to help ordinary readers question received wisdom and understand the choices that shape nations.
Biochemist at UC Berkeley, 2020 Nobel laureate in Chemistry for co-developing CRISPR-Cas9 gene editing.
University of California, Berkeley
She teaches a generation of scientists that a curiosity about how RNA works can grow into a tool that rewrites what medicine can do.
Theoretical physicist and Distinguished Professor Emeritus at the University of Surrey, host of BBC Radio 4's The Life Scientific.
University of Surrey, Guildford
For decades he has made quantum physics feel welcoming on radio and television, and he taught undergraduates in an unbroken run from 1992 to 2024.
Mathematician and Scientist in Residence at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, known for making category theory approachable.
School of the Art Institute of Chicago
She teaches mathematics to art students and general readers alike, using baking and everyday analogies to dissolve the fear so many people carry about math.
Mathematician and the Charles Simonyi Professor for the Public Understanding of Science at the University of Oxford.
University of Oxford
Holding Oxford's chair for public understanding of science, he shows wide audiences the beauty and pattern hiding inside numbers, symmetry, and prime numbers.
Economist at Harvard and director of Opportunity Insights, using big data to study economic mobility.
Harvard University, Cambridge, MA
One of the youngest tenured professors in Harvard's history, he turns enormous datasets into honest lessons about which neighborhoods and schools give children a fair chance.
French economist at the Paris School of Economics and EHESS, author of Capital in the Twenty-First Century.
Paris School of Economics, Paris
He put the study of wealth and income inequality back at the center of economics, patiently teaching a global public to read the long history of who owns what.
Classicist and Professor of Classics Emerita at the University of Cambridge, often called Britain's best-known classicist.
University of Cambridge
Through books, blogs, and television she makes the ancient world argue and breathe again, insisting that the classics belong to everyone, not just the few.
Historian of Central and Eastern Europe, now Chair in Modern European History at the University of Toronto's Munk School.
University of Toronto
His teaching and writing on tyranny and freedom help ordinary readers learn the plain lessons of twentieth-century history so they are not doomed to repeat them.
Philosopher, Silver Professor of Philosophy and Law at New York University, and the New York Times Magazine's Ethicist columnist.
New York University
He teaches ethics with warmth and clarity, from lecture halls to a weekly column where he helps everyday readers reason through their hardest moral questions.
Computer scientist, Silver Professor at NYU, Turing Award winner for foundational work on deep learning.
New York University
His convolutional networks taught machines to see, and as a professor he keeps teaching openly, publishing his ideas so students everywhere can build on them.
University Professor Emeritus of computer science at the University of Toronto, 2024 Nobel laureate in Physics for neural network research.
University of Toronto
Often called the godfather of AI, he mentored the students whose work now underpins modern machine learning, and speaks candidly about its risks as well as its promise.
Physics educator and creator of the YouTube channel Veritasium, with a PhD in physics education research.
Veritasium
His PhD showed that good teaching must confront what people already misbelieve, and his Veritasium films do exactly that for millions of curious viewers.
Science communicator and co-creator of the educational YouTube channels Crash Course and SciShow.
Complexly
With Crash Course and SciShow he built free lessons that have helped millions of students, saying his goal is to be good at one thing so teachers can be good at others.
Australian high school mathematics teacher and creator of the WooTube channel, named Australia's Local Hero in 2018.
Cherrybrook Technology High School, Sydney
He started filming his classroom lessons for one sick student, and turned that kindness into free maths teaching that reaches millions while he still teaches in a public school.
Palestinian primary school teacher and winner of the 2016 Global Teacher Prize for her play-based, no-to-violence approach.
Samiha Khalil High School, Al-Bireh
Having grown up in a refugee camp shaped by violence, she built a classroom method rooted in play and trust so that frightened children can learn again.
Canadian educator and winner of the 2017 Global Teacher Prize for her work in the Inuit village of Salluit in the Arctic.
Salluit, Nunavik, Quebec
Teaching in a fly-in Arctic community, she built life-skills programs and a fitness center that gave young people, especially girls, real reasons for hope.
Pakistani teacher and winner of the 2023 Global Teacher Prize, who founded a free school in her home courtyard at age thirteen.
Zephaniah Free Education, Gujranwala
At thirteen she started teaching poor children in her own courtyard, and after decades of unpaid work her free school now educates hundreds who could not pay fees.
American educator and author who founded the Ron Clark Academy in Atlanta, a middle school and teacher-training center.
Ron Clark Academy, Atlanta, GA
He turned his own energetic classroom methods into a school where every student graduates, and where more than 160,000 teachers have come to learn how to engage kids.
Toward 1024. Every champion is real, public, and cited; anyone featured can ask to be updated or removed.
A celebration of the Teachers & Professors community, assembled entirely from public information as an act of credit and gratitude. It is not a claim of endorsement, affiliation, sponsorship, or partnership by anyone featured. Every person is real and publicly documented, with a cited source of truth on their card; we never invent a person or a claim, and we prize accuracy over speed. Anyone featured can ask to be updated or removed at any time. Names and marks belong to their owners.