Maya Lin

The daughter of Chinese intellectuals who fled to Athens, Ohio, in the 1940s did not wait long to make her mark on American architecture.

As a college senior at Yale, Maya Lin’s design was selected for the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington. 

Lin’s design was in sharp contrast to other war memorials. The wall of granite with names of roughly 58,000 killed or declared missing in action in the war etched into the face of the stone was a somber reflection of the devastating toll of war. It was a source of controversy at the time because of the unusual design and drew protests from a group of Vietnam veterans.

The monument opened to the public on Veterans Day in 1982, after a compromise resulted in a more traditional statue of three service members holding an American flag erected near Lin’s design for the monument.

Lin went on to complete her graduate degree at Harvard University and Yale. Lin’s work over the years has been heavily influenced by nature. Her last memorial, a web-based memorial called “What Is Missing,” aims to honor the environment and the natural world. 

Lin was honored with the National Medal of Arts in 2009 and the Presidential Medal of Freedom — the nation’s highest civilian honor — in 2016 by former President Obama.

— Morgan Chalfant