List of Czech Americans

Many people on this list are not ethnically Czech but rather born in Bohemian/Moravian territory, of German and/or Jewish extraction.

This is a list of notable Czech Americans.

To be included in this list, the person must have a Wikipedia article showing they are Czech American or must have references showing they are Czech American and are notable.

Business

  • Ivana Trump, Moravia-born businesswoman, former model, ex-wife of Donald Trump
  • Charles Louis Fleischmann,[1] Moravia-born innovative manufacturer of yeast and other consumer food products during the 19th Century; founder of the Fleischmann Yeast Co.
  • Wanda Jablonski, Czech immigrant, journalist that founded Petroleum Intelligence Weekly in 1961, a journal which came to be known as the "bible of the oil industry", and ran it until 1988.
  • Travis Kalanick,[2][3] founder of Uber.
  • Ray Kroc,[4] founder of McDonald Empire
  • Sigmund Mandl,[5] Jewish-Moravian immigrant, founded Husky Wrench Company in Wisconsin in 1924.
  • Donald Trump Jr., son of Donald and Ivana, co-trustee of The Trump Organization with Eric.
  • Eric Trump, son of Donald and Ivana, co-trustee of The Trump Organization with Donald Jr.
  • Ivanka Trump, daughter of Donald and Ivana
  • Fred Figner, Bohemiam-born entrepreneur with North-American citizenship, coming from a Jewish family, pioneer of music recording in Brazil and South America, pioneer of record manufacturing, a great trader of writing machines in Brazil, a spiritist writer and supporter of Alan Kardec's religion/phylosophy and a great philanthropist.[6]

Creative writing

  • Miles J. Breuer, trained as physician, an early science fiction writer.
  • Theodore Dreiser, of Moravian mother, a notable American writer in the naturalism movement.
  • James Thomas Flexner, of Bohemian ancestry, one of American foremost men of letters, especially noted for his four-volume Biography of George Washington.
  • Patricia Hampl, writer; one of the founding members of the Loft Literary Center.
  • Arnost Lustig, notable writer of the Holocaust.
  • Frederic Prokosch, novelist and poet.
  • Charles Sealsfield (pseudonym of Karl Anton Postl), author of romantic novels with American backgrounds and travelogues.
  • Clifford Donald Simak, American science fiction writer.
  • Nicholas Sparks, internationally bestselling American novelist and screenwriter.
  • Joseph Wechsberg, free-lance writer associated with the New Yorker magazine.
  • Franz Werfel, famous novelist, playwright, and poet, known especially for his novel, Song of Bernadette.
  • Joanie Holzer Schirm, writer, Global Ebook Award Winner, Best Biography 2013, Czech WWII stories, Father was Czech-American physician

Dramatic art

  • Jay Manuel, creative director
  • Karen Black,[7] actress
  • Adrien Brody, film actor. His maternal grandmother was of Czech Jewish background.
  • Anna Chlumsky, actress
  • Frank Daniel, film producer, writer, director and first dean of the American Film Institute
  • Don DeFore, actor
  • Miloš Forman, film director
  • Brendan Fraser,[8] actor
  • Karl Freund, cinematographer and director
  • Bruce Glover, film actor (of part Czech descent)
  • Crispin Glover, film producer, writer, director and actor, both parents of part Czech descent
  • Teri Hatcher, actress.
  • Fanny Janauschek, famed character actress, who became famous acting in great Shakespearean parts and other famous parts
  • Jim Jarmusch, independent filmmaker
  • January Jones, actress
  • Ashton Kutcher, motion picture actor, of 5/8ths Czech descent
  • Cloris Leachman [9] Actress.
  • Francis Lederer, born Prague, Czechoslovakia, actor, leading man in Hollywood from 1933, after European stage and film experience.
  • Karl Malden, Czech mother, an actor, whose career that spanned more than seven decades, he performed in such classic films as A Streetcar Named Desire, for which he won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor.
  • Donna Murphy, actress
  • Eva Novak, born St. Louis, MO, of Bohemian ancestry, an actress, a silent screen lady; she starred as Tom Mix's love interest in ten of his westerns, including "Sky High" and "Trailin".
  • Jane Novak, born St. Louis, MO, of Bohemian ancestry, an actress; the celebrated blond beauty and a leading lady to such stars as W. S. Hart, Tom Mix, Harold Lloyd, Hobart Bosworth, W. D. Taylor, Charles Ray, etc.
  • Kim Novak, motion picture actress
  • Nancy Novotny, voice actress and radio personality
  • Ivan Passer, film director
  • Paulina Porizkova, actress and supermodel (featured in Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Edition).
  • Antonio Sabato Jr., actor and model
  • Walter Slezak, film actor
  • Maelcum Soul (1940–1986), bartender, artist's model, and actress
  • Sissy Spacek, actress, her father was of Czech origin
  • Rip Torn, film actor, first cousin of Sissy Spacek (mother of Czech descent)
  • George Voskovec, actor, writer
  • Tom Wopat, actor
  • Blanche Yurka (orig, Jurka), of Czech immigrant father, an American theatre and film actress until the late 1960s. In addition to her many stage roles, including Queen Gertrude opposite John Barrymore's Hamlet, she was also a director and playwright.
  • William Zabka, actor, producer, screenwriter, and martial artist
  • Winter Ave Zoli, actress and model

Exploration

  • Eugene Cernan, of Czech mother, Astronaut; was last man of Apollo to leave his footprints on the moon.
  • Jim Lovell, astronaut; was command module pilot of Apollo 8, man's first flight around the moon.

Government and politics

Humanities and social sciences

  • Francis Dvornik, Moravia-born, authority on Byzantine history, Slavic history and civilization.
  • Saul Friedländer, Prague-born, award-winning historian, currently a professor of history at UCLA.
  • Ales Hrdlicka, founder of American physical anthropology.
  • Paul Felix Lazarsfeld, of Moravian ancestry, founder of modern empirical sociology.
  • Richard Neustadt, of Bohemian ancestry, political scientist at Harvard; first director of J.F. Kennedy Inst. of Politics.
  • Beardsley Ruml, of Czech immigrant father, economist, devised plan to collect taxes at their source by means of a payroll deduction system, on a pay as you go basis.
  • Joseph Alois Schumpeter, Moravia-born, notable economist at Harvard University.
  • Jan Švejnar, Prague-born, notable economist.
  • Frank William Taussig, of Czech ancestry, economist and educator, credited with creating the foundations of modern trade theory.
  • Vlasta Vraz, of Czech ancestry, worked for Czech war relief and other Czech causes in Prague and US
  • René Wellek, of Czech father, founder of literary criticism and comparative literature.
  • Max Wertheimer, Czech-born psychologist who was one of the founders of Gestalt psychology.

Law

  • Louis D. Brandeis, son of Czech immigrant, Justice of US Supreme Court.
  • Paul Freund, of Bohemian ancestry, lawyer; professor of law at Harvard University; authority on public law and understanding the Supreme Court.
  • Hans Kelsen, Prague-born jurist and legal philosopher; one of the most important legal scholars of the 20th century.
  • John Roberts,[48] Chief Justice of US Supreme Court

Music

Media and publishing

  • Jim Acosta, CNN journalist
  • Meyer Berger, Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist and columnist for The New York Times.
  • Mika Emilie Leonia Brzezinski, of Czech mother, TV news journalist at MSNBC, co-host of MSNBC's weekday morning program Morning Joe.
  • Wanda Jablonski, Czech immigrant, journalist that founded ``Petroleum Intelligence Weekly´´ in 1961, journal which came to be known as the "bible of the oil industry", and ran it until 1988.
  • Edward Rosewater, founder of the daily The Omaha Daily Bee which developed into the largest and most influential newspaper on the mid-west.
  • Mike Stoklasa, cofounder of Red Letter Media and announcer of many of its videos about films. His great-grandparents were Václav Stoklasa from Chotusice and Josefa Brčková from Jestřebice.[53]
  • Jim Svejda, announcer for KUSC radio in Los Angeles, a nationally known classical music station.
  • Rosa Sonneschein,[54] born in Prostejov, Moravia, founder and editor of The American Jewess magazine – the first English-language periodical targeted to American Jewish women.
  • Jeff Zeleny, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist for CNN and the New York Times; of Czech ancestry on both sides of his family

Medicine

  • Jan Klein, immunologist, best known for his work on the major histocompatibility complex (MHC).
  • Karl Koller, Bohemia-born ophthalmologist, a discoverer of using cocaine as a local anesthetic for eye surgery.
  • Bohdan Pomahač, plastic surgeon, he led the team that performed the first full face transplant in United States and the third overall in the world
  • Peter Safar, Austrian physician of Czech descent, who is credited with pioneering cardiopulmonary resuscitation.
  • Helen Taussig, granddaughter of Czech immigrant, medical researcher at Johns Hopkins University who alerted physicians of the dangers of thalidomide

Military

  • Leopold Karpeles, Color Sergeant, recipient of Congressional Medal of Honor for heroism in 1864 during the Civil War.
  • William F. Lukes, US Navy sailor, a recipient of the Medal of Honor for his actions in the 1871 Korean Expedition.
  • Coral Wong Pietsch, of Czech mother and Chinese father, a Brigadier General in the United States Army Reserve; the first 'Asian' American woman to reach the rank of Brigadier General in the United States Army.
  • Apollo Soucek, Vice Admiral in the US Navy, who was a record-breaking test pilot during 1929–1930.
  • Henry Svehla, Army PFC., of Czech father, awarded posthumously by President Obama a Medal of Honor for his heroic action during Korean War.

Pioneer colonists

Religion

Science and technology

  • Alfred Bader, son of Czech immigrant, founder of Aldrich Chemical Company, art collector, philanthropist.
  • Thomas Cech, of Czech ancestry, Nobel Prize laureate in chemistry.
  • Carl Cori, Prague-born Nobel Prize laureate.
  • Gerty Cori, Prague born Nobel Prize laureate.
  • John C. Dvorak, of Czech ancestry, columnist and broadcaster in the areas of technology and computing.
  • Abraham Flexner, son of Czech immigrant, reformer of American medical education, founder of Institute of Advanced study, Princeton.
  • Simon Flexner, son of Czech immigrant, pathologist, founder and first director of the Rockefeller Institute (now University).
  • Václav Hlavatý, noted Czech-American mathematician, who solved some very difficult equations relating to Einstein's Unified field theory.
  • Lilli Hornig, scientist who worked on the Manhattan Project
  • Aleš Hrdlička, physical anthropologist of note; founder and the first curator of physical anthropology of the U.S. National Museum.
  • Josef Allen Hynek, of Czech ancestry, astronomer, professor, and ufologist.
  • Karl Jansky, of Czech ancestry, discoverer of radio astronomy.
  • Frederick Jelinek, pioneer of statistical methods in computational linguistics.
  • Gustav Lindenthal, Brno-born, notable civil engineer who designed the Hell Gate Bridge (1917) among other bridges.
  • Frank Malina, of Czech parents, aeronautical engineer who designed the first U. S. rocket to break the 50-mile altitude mark, becoming the first sounding rocket to reach space.
  • Mila Rechcigl, biochemist who pioneered early studies on enzyme synthesis and degradation; one of the founders and long-time President of SVU.
  • Oldrich Vasicek, mathematician, author of several financial models including Vasicek model.
  • Paul Zamecnik, of Czech ancestry, a biochemist of note, who played a central role in the early history of molecular biology.
  • Charles Zeleny, Czech-American zoologist, and professor at the University of Illinois, who made important contributions to experimental zoology, especially embryology, regeneration, and genetics.
  • John Zeleny, physicist.

Sports and acrobatics

Visual art

  • Charles Demuth, of Moravian ancestry, an artist; a notable painter who had major influence on American art by introduction of modern European movements, such as cubism.
  • Harrison Fisher, of Bohemian ancestry, a popular commercial artist and illustrator of the cover of Cosmopolitan magazine from the early 1900s through 1934; known as 'The Father of a Thousand Girls'.
  • Wanda Gág, notable American illustrator and author of Bohemian descent.
  • Leo Holub, photographer.
  • Antonín Kratochvíl, Czech-born American photojournalist.
  • Jan Matulka, painter.
  • Mario Korbel, sculptor.
  • Albin Polasek, sculptor.
  • Antonin Raymond, famed architect who explored traditional Japanese building techniques with the latest American building innovations.
  • Rudolph Ruzicka, prominent Czech-born American wood engraver, etcher, illustrator, typeface designer, and book designer.
  • Charles Sindelar, illustrator and painter.
  • Peter Sis, writer and illustrator of children's books.
  • Paul Strand, of Bohemian immigrant parents, one of the most important figures in American twentieth-century photography.
  • Ladislav Sutnar, graphic artist, considered one of the great pioneers of the modern period.
  • William Pachner, painter and illustrator

Recreation

References

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Sources

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  • Guido Kisch, In Search of Freedom. London: Edward Goldston, 1948.
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  • Miloslav Rechcigl, Jr., Czech American Bibliography. Bloomington, IN: AuthorHouse, 2011.
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