Famous Great Neck Alumni Pages include those graduates who have achieved success and prominence in their chosen field of endeavor. They are role models to past, present and future students because of their intellect, talent, creativity, skill, diligence, and commitment to excellence. They exemplify the capacity in all of us to aspire to greatness, follow our dreams and make a contribution to society. Their distinguished careers and lives are both a source of school district and community pride, and are also an inspiration to current students as well as to our individual and collective potential.
Hal Richman, a 2011 inductee in the National Jewish Sports Hall of Fame, tried out and failed to make the winless basketball team at Great Neck High School. Less than a decade later, he perfected a game he invented when he was 11 years-old that jump-started baseball's statistical revolution and made Strat-O-Matic Baseball an icon of sports history. Hal created the game at his parent's home. It uses dice and baseball player cards to recreate entire baseball seasons. He started a company in 1961 to produce the game and it spawned board games and online versions in other sports, including basketball, hockey, and football. The company celebrated its 50th anniversary in 2011. Hal is a graduate of Bucknell University where he majored in Mathematics.
David Seidler is a British-American playwright and film and television writer whose family resettled in Great Neck after the bombings in London during World War II. A stutterer as a child, he grew up to overcome a speech impediment, went on to Cornell University, and had a successful career as a writer. He wrote The Quest for Camelot, The King and I, and Tuck: The Man and His Dream for Francis Ford Coppola, another Great Neck alumnus. His greatest achievement which earned him global recognition and accolades was when he wrote the play and the screenplay for the film, The King's Speech, for which he won the Academy Award and a BAFTA for best original screenplay. David was the oldest winner of the best original screenplay Oscar.
David Baltimore graduated from Great Neck High School in 1956, received a Bachelor's Degree from Swarthmore College and a doctorate from Rockefeller University. At the age of 37, he won a Nobel Prize in 1975 for the discovery of an enzyme which has expanded the understanding of retroviruses like HIV. Dr. Baltimore has published more than 500 peer-reviewed articles, taught at MIT and Rockefeller Universities, headed the National Institutes of Health AIDS Vaccine Research Committee, and became president of CalTech University in 1997.
Kenneth Kellermann graduated from Great Neck High School as part of the class of 1955. Following high school, he earned his S.B. in physics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1959 and his Ph.D. in physics and astronomy at the California Institute of Technology. Following a lifelong dedication to researching radio astronomy, Kenneth was awarded the Bruce Medal in 2014, which is awarded by the Astronomical Society of the Pacific for outstanding lifetime contributions to the field of Astronomy. Dr Kellerman was also awarded the Helen B. Warner Prize from the American Astronomical Society (1971), the Rumford Prize from the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (1971) and the Benjamin Apthorp Gould Prize from the National Academy of Sciences (1973).
One of his many contributions to astronomy came as part of a team of scientists that created maps of galactic and extragalactic radio sources, using a series of antennas all over the world. He has played an important role in national and international science policy, serving on various committees and panels. He has also contributed to the history of radio astronomy, editing books, writing articles, and promoting the development of the National Radio Astronomy Observatory Archives.
Francis Ford Coppola was fascinated by microphones and machines as a child and created and edited 8mm home movies while growing up in Great Neck. He graduated from Great Neck High School in 1956 and attended Hofstra University where he founded the Hofstra Cinema Workshop and worked with fellow student James Caan. He received a MFA from UCLA film school. As his career evolved, he became one of the most talented and successful movie directors in the country with such hits as "Apocalypse Now," and the "Godfather" trilogy.
Bob Simon was born in the Bronx, raised in Great Neck, but belonged to the world. Simon graduated from Great Neck High School in 1958 and was a Phi Betta Kappa honors student at Brandeis University. He graduated from college in 1962 with a degree in History and went on to become a Fulbright Scholar in France and a Woodrow Wilson Scholar. His career as a correspondent for CBS News took him from London to Saigon to Tel Aviv and other locations around the globe. He was a war correspondent during conflicts in Vietnam, Grenada, Somalia, Haiti, and Israel, but his capture by Iraqi forces and 40 day imprisonment brought the most notoriety of all. Perhaps he was most well known for his tenure on 60 Minutes. Simon was killed in an automobile accident on February 11, 2015. He is survived by his partner, Francoise Simon, their daughter, Tanya, and his grandson Jack.
