Eric Draper · Public domain

Ralph Baer's Jewish family fled Nazi Germany for New York in 1938, two months before Kristallnacht; he had already been expelled from school under anti-Jewish laws at fourteen. Working as an engineer at Sanders Associates in the 1960s, he built the "Brown Box" prototype that Magnavox licensed in 1972 as the Magnavox Odyssey — the first home video game console, and the reason he became known as "the Father of Video Games." He held more than 150 patents by his death in 2014 and received the National Medal of Technology in 2006.