Over his long career, the architect Charles A. Hausler had a major impact on the built environment of St. Paul. As the first person to hold the office of city architect, he designed many public buildings, including the three branch libraries funded by Andrew Carnegie. He also designed churches, commercial buildings, and homes in a variety of styles, including Classical Revival, Prairie School, and Art Deco.

Izaak Maurits Kolthoff was a professor of analytical chemistry at the University of Minnesota from 1927 to 1962. He published over a thousand papers, wrote more than a dozen books, and created and edited the first comprehensive treatise of analytical chemistry. He also played a key part in the development of synthetic rubber during and after World War II. He is known as the “father of modern analytical chemistry.”

William Gates LeDuc played a variety of parts in Minnesota’s transition from territory to statehood. A “jack of all trades” who never found great success in one endeavor, he counted former presidents, governors, generals, and supreme court justices among his friends by the time of his death in 1917.

Elizabeth (Betty) Wall Strohfus fell in love with flying airplanes in the 1940s and became a Women Airforce Service Pilot (WASP) during World War II. She fought for WASP veteran recognition in the 1970s, and from the 1990s until her death, she traveled across the country to tell her story and inspire others.

In the late 1850s, Carl Zierke arrived in Cottonwood County with his wife and three stepchildren. Known to some as “Dutch Charley,” he witnessed key events in the U.S.–Dakota War of 1862. His memory is preserved in two Cottonwood County place names: Dutch Charley Creek and South Dutch Charley Park.

Prince was a Minnesota-based singer, songwriter, musician, studio engineer, actor, director, dancer, and music legend. Over his nearly forty-year career, he sold more than100 million albums; he also won seven Grammys and an Oscar. He was the main creator of the Minneapolis Sound, a blending of rhythm and blues, funk, rock, pop, punk, and new wave that defined the music of the 1980s.

Pennsylvania native Dorothy Molter spent over fifty years in Northern Minnesota, where she helped to run the Isle of Pines resort and provided nursing care for those in need. From the 1950s through the mid-1980s, she made batches of homemade root beer at her cabin on Knife Lake that drew thousands of tourists, anglers, and canoeists each summer and earned her the nickname “the Root Beer Lady.”

Henry Schmidt’s dream of becoming a physician in his hometown of Westbrook, Minnesota, came true in 1910. His dream of opening a hospital, however, was postponed when he died during the 1918 influenza epidemic. Schmidt’s father was instrumental in opening Westbrook’s Henry Schmidt Memorial Hospital in 1951.

Harry Blackmun was the third Minnesotan to serve on the US Supreme Court, after Pierce Butler (associate justice, 1923–1939) and Warren Burger (chief justice, 1969–1986), and he stayed the longest: twenty-four years. He was little known outside legal circles until he wrote the decision in Roe v. Wade (1973) that established Constitutional protection of abortion.

The first licensed female pilot in North Dakota and a pioneer of aviation, Florence “Tree Tops” Klingensmith made a name for herself in air racing circuits, winning several prizes and setting records. At a time when women were expected to stay at home, Klingensmith followed her own path.