- Lafayette college is not a large school.

With just under 3,000 full-time students, it is one of many small liberal arts colleges along the American east coast.

And yet...

Despite its size, Lafayette has always had an outsized impact on the world.

From Lafayette's 110 acre academic campus in Easton, Pennsylvania, numerous alumni have gone on to utilize the knowledge and skills they learned as undergraduates to forge solutions to some of the world's most complex challenges.

Because leopards... see things differently.

Throughout the school's nearly 200 year history, they have embraced these problems not as obstacles... but as challenges.

- As you learn about these amazing Lafayette alumni, there are two characteristics I love to point out to you.

One is we do liberal arts and engineering on this campus, which means we create leaders that know how to reconcile tensions.

They know how to be creative, they know how to be innovative, they know how to problem solve, and you'll see that in each and every one of these leaders.

The other thing I'd love to point out to you is this as a campus that we might be small, but we're mighty.

In a world where we often think of scale as being big and large, we're small.

But instead of doing transactions, we do relationships.

We spend the time listening and hearing and validate each other.

And it makes us better leaders when we get out into the world.

So what you're going to see here is a campus that creates leaders who know how to be creative, who know how to reconcile, and know how to make a big impact coming from a place of relationships and values.

- He was the best gift that could have been sent to Persia at the time.

He was an ember needed in a cold forest.

And there in Persia, he built many fires.

- Education is the backbone of a nation.

Nobody believed that more than Lafayette alum Samuel Jordan.

The region of Persia, current day Iran, is one of the oldest civilizations and empires in the world.

The region was, and is, a treasure trove of natural resources... and Britain and Russia noticed.

They set their eyes on Persia's coal, oil, and mineral reserves.

The Shah, Reza Shah Pahlavi, pushed for modernization, and independent sovereignty when he became monarch in 1925, excluding most foreigners.

An exception... were US missionaries.

- Throughout the 19th century, we were associated with the Presbyterian Church.

And throughout the 19th century, our curriculum did foster work that was important to the Presbyterians, including missionary work.

- in 1898, Lafayette college embarked on its own mission abroad, to Persia, with the goal of bringing comprehensive education to the region... and the school recognized there was only one man for the job.

- Some recognize Samuel Martin Jordan as one of the fathers of modern Iranian higher education.

He established the relationship that Lafayette had with Persia.

- In true Lafayette fashion, Jordan's skills and interests ran the gamut.

Not only was he captain of the football team, he studied mental philosophy, English literature, political economy, ethics, and Hebrew.

But it was his participation in Lafayette's chapter of the Young Men's Christian Association, or YMCA, that first inspired Jordan's missionary zeal.

- Many people think that colleges are disengaged from the world, and they are not, they are absolutely engaged in the world, because we understand that we are producing students for life and for careers and for success.

And in the 19th century, many of our students were preparing for careers in the clergy, to become teachers.

After graduating from Lafayette college in 1895 Jordan received his master's degree from Princeton theology seminary in 1898.

Shortly after, he picked up his family and moved to Persia to start his missionary work.

- At the time of Jordan's arrival, Iran was going through one of its darkest periods, both culturally and economically.

As a result, its educational system had been in much decline.

Jordan was sent to Persia, because there was a Presbyterian mission opening available.

The American college of Tehran had been founded by Presbyterian missionaries in 1873.

In 1898, Samuel Jordan became its director, a position he would hold for 43 years.

- Jordan actually recruited a number of Lafayette graduates to help him.

Physics instructors, English instructors, and so on and so forth.

- Together with the fellow Lafayette graduates, Jordan exported Lafayette curriculum to Persia.

- He brought an American education, and particularly a Lafayette education, to Iran, and the model for higher education in Iran.

The kind of liberal arts and engineering curriculum that we practice at Lafayette and have since the 1870s.

We did that very specifically with the Alborz college curriculum and the Abadan Institute of Technology curriculum.

- It was a very regimented, competitive academic environment.

Everybody was competing to get a better grade.

However, it wasn't a very ruthless competition.

It was very collaborative.

Being in a competitive environment and the work ethics that was instilled in the high school, helped me and has helped many other graduates.

We have a lot of different successful people that came from that school.

- Lafayette promotes an environment of inclusion and diversity where you can bring people from all different parts of the world, different races, different religions, and all of that, and have them work together productively to do something good.

- In addition to a strong interdisciplinary education was a sports education that Jordan once received and was eager to pass on.

- Sports was a very big thing.

And I think that was the reminiscence of what Jordan instilled in the college.

We had 20 or 30 basketball courts and soccer fields.

Table tennis was very big, tennis was big.

- Alumni like Dr Maseeh remark at the quality of education they received as youth.

it was holistic, progressive, and rooted in Iranian place identity.

- Wherever one finds a person of real integrity in Iran, no matter how remote a village, that person almost invariably turns out to be one of his graduates.

- The biggest impact that Alborz has had on me personally, was this exposure to smart students.

And high quality education, taught and delivered by high quality faculty.

- Through his efforts as president, teacher, and global ambassador he inspired thousands to pursue higher education - earning the 1940 Iranian decoration of the first scientific medal.

The universality of the Lafayette curriculum seemed to strike a chord in Iran, and has left an indelible mark on the nation.

- I consider myself to actually be a Lafayette alumni because when I went to undergraduate school, although that school was located 6,000 miles away from Lafayette College, the program was set up by Lafayette.

- He accomplished so much because he arrived only with one aim - to do good.

He educated many leaders who contributed to Iran's rapid evolution during the 50s, 60s and 70s.

He did this not because of any obligations, but purely out of love to serve God's children.

At my time, there were a handful of streets, named after world leaders in Tehran, where I was brought up.

But the most prominent of those streets were named after Jordan.

It was called Jordan Boulevard.

Jordan was not an Iranian, but contributed to Iran more than any other foreign born person that I've ever known.

- In the world of American football, the helmet is an icon of protection and innovation.

Today, it's a high-tech marvel, designed to shield athletes from the brutal collisions of the game.

But it wasn't always this way.

Before the invention of the helmet, head injuries and concussions plagued the game.

It was in this era that a Lafayette player would change the course of American football forever.

George Barclay was a man, who was concerned about his looks.

His nickname was The Rose.

- George Barclay, a three-sport college athlete, accidentally initiates a safety revolution by inventing a groundbreaking helmet design that transforms America's most popular sport, ultimately leaving an everlasting impact on player safety and the future of the game.

Motivated by a desire to both impress women and prevent one unfortunate hazard of full-contact sports.

- "Cauliflower ear".

The story goes that his invention of the football helmet was an effort to retain those good looks because he was getting beaten up on the football field, so he wanted to cover his ears and avoid being disfigured in that activity.

George Barclay's groundbreaking invention of the first rendition of the football helmet revolutionized the game by introducing a protective gear that became integral to the sport's safety and tradition.

Barclay's contribution was crucial because it addressed a significant safety gap in football.

Before his invention, players used knit hats for protection, but his harness-designed helmet set the benchmark for modern football helmets, ultimately reducing head injuries and concussions in the sport.

- Football was such an important part of college.

- I love the pictures of George Barclay because not only is he wearing his helmet, there's other people wearing the helmet.

So, it's kind of like it started one thing and then it continued to his other classmates and probably to other teams.

- The impact of Barclay's innovation can't be overstated, especially as it relates to Lafayette's own presence in the realm of collegiate football.

- The story of teamwork and the story of athletics is so much intertwined with the Lafayette education.

We are the kind of institution because of our relationship to sports and how that is part of our culture.

- While George Barclay's invention of the first ever football helmet led to a shift in athletics that was one of its kind, the analytical and problem solving attitude that preceded it is something that transcends generations of Lafayette students and alumni.

Recognizing this, the college has upheld an enduring commitment to the connection between athletics and education.

- It started in a small way on a practical solution on the playing field and everybody is using it today.

To me it goes to the heart of what Lafayette students do.

They find practical solutions to problems that they encounter... and then they become something big.

There's a very close symbiotic relationship to what happens on the court or on the playing field and what happens in our laboratories, what happens on our stages, what happens in our classrooms.

One thing that we are particularly proud of is that our scholar athletes are scholars and athletes.

They're student athletes.

- If you ride a train, if you make a purchase with a credit card, if you purchase a home, you're living in Allan Kirby's world.

He created or had an impact on all of those things in America, from finance, to transportation, to home insurance.

And much more.

- Allan Kirby's family had already found financial success, as co-founders of the Woolworth chain of general stores.

His family had been strong supporters of Lafayette college for years, influencing Allan's decision to attend, graduating in 1915.

And by the 1930s, the Kirby family had expanded beyond the Woolworth company, and into the world of finance.

But for the first four decades of his life, Allan had little involvement in his family's wide ranging business interests.

As his father's health began to decline Allan started managing the business interests, and by 1934, he fully took charge of his family's fortune... in the middle of the worst financial crisis in the history of the United States.

- 35, 36 is at the end of FDR's new deal, or at least the first new deal, and so things are getting better but they are not what they were in the 1920s.

Everybody has it bad, actually rural America suffers pretty intensely.

- Allan P Kirby took the immense risk of investing in a railroad corporation conglomerate millions of dollars in debt.

- Alleghany was, at the time, 99 million dollars in the red, in terms of book value.

But this was an opportunistic chance to make what for him was not a huge investment and perhaps grow something, turn around something, into a really rewarding endeavor and enterprise.

- The backbone, how goods are transported long distances still relies upon the railroad.

The origins of the railroad go back to the mid 19th century, and you know this is the network that sustains large scale businesses.

- It had been started by a couple of real estate developers from Cleveland, the Van Swearingen brothers, who thought that the railroad business could be a pretty good business.

They were horribly impacted by the crash in 1929 and the depression that followed, and lost control and so this group bought control.

- It was a long drawn out fight, in which Kirby not only acquired the Alleghany corporation but soon after took control of the C&O railway.

And when all was said and done, he controlled a 22,000 mile railroad network, one of the largest in the nation.

- Allan Kirby understood that you had to change with the times and he lived through incredibly remarkable times.

From before World War One, to the roaring 20s to the Great Depression to the Second World War, then the boom of the 50s.

Think of the arc of the 20th century.

And all during that time he understood how business engaged society and brought value to society.

- American industry had been sluggish throughout the depression.

The war changed all that, and factories came alive once more.

Kirby remained unfazed.

Now president of the Allegheny corporation, Kirby focused on innovation and organization, turning the complicated web of interests that had formed the Alleghany corporation into something immensely profitable.

- All of that spending by the federal government doesn't really bring an end to the depression.

It's not until you get to WW2, which begins, well, the formal war if you will, starts in Europe in September of 39.

The US doesn't get involved until 41, but there's a huge preparedness campaign that begins by 1940, especially after the fall of France in June of 40.

Then the role of the government in supporting the defense industries becomes huge.

- The Allegheny corporation sprung into action.

They became integral to the war effort, shifting troops and equipment across the continent.

By doing their part, the once nearly bankrupt business had become extremely profitable.

- I think it is very interesting, though that it is one of these major companies, it sees an opportunity in the 1930s to become involved in railroads as these backbones and it then evolves over time.

- After the war ended, Allegheny kept growing at a rapid pace.

Young and Kirby then set their sights on the biggest prize in railroads, the New York Central.

In a process that took almost eight years and $600,000 in advertising alone, they won control over the 10,700 mile system, even beating out the Vanderbilts for the prize.

Acquiring the New York Central railroad also meant acquiring some of the most valuable real estate in the country.

Grand Central station... the MetLife building, the Helmsley building and the Waldorf Astoria.

- Alleghany started to express an interest in New York Central as early as 1945, started buying shares, and proposed, in 1947, a merger between Alleghany and New York Central.

It was rejected by the ICC at the time.

Then it was in 1954 that Alleghany did engage in the proxy fight for control of New York Central.

- But even with so much wealth and success, Allan Kirby's greatest love was for his family.

- My grandfather was a little bit of an enigma in that some saw him as a very stern, disciplined, focused, hard charging business person.

Others, like his family, daughters and daughters in law and grandchildren, saw him as a soft, sweet, loving man.

At Christmas time, he loved nothing more than to carve the turkey and send the plates down the table.

- Allan P Kirby remained incredibly devoted to Lafayette college throughout his life.

- He was our number one alum, there was no one who enjoyed being an alumnus of this college more than Allan Kirby.

One story about him, during the New York Central fight, apparently my grandfather and Robert Young and their advisors were in a meeting that was going on, hour after hour after hour into the afternoon, and my grandfather said, you know, I've gotta go, I've gotta get to a meeting in Easton, PA. And Robert Young teased him for the rest of his life because what he had to get to Easton for was a Lafayette baseball game.

- But at the same time, he understood that a Lafayette education could be a force for good in the world, that American democracy could be a bulwark against a changing Europe that he was very concerned about.

It was about the power of the individual, the fact that American democracy uplifted the individual, gave the individual courage and the ability to enact good in the world.

Lafayette is an institution now today of 2700 students but much smaller in the earlier 20th century.

And the fact that we have two graduates, who eventually went on... to receive the Nobel Prize for Medicine and Physiology is really a remarkable achievement.

But it's even more remarkable when you realize that they were both mentored by the same faculty member, Beverly Kunkel.

- Beverly Kunkel was a professor of biology at Lafayette from 1915 to 1952.

And, indeed, Kunkel had the distinct pleasure of seeing not one, but two of his students win the Nobel Prize.

- So infinite is the wisdom of nature, so profound are her secrets that even with these powerful new weapons we cannot finish the job.

We can only make a modest and imperfect beginning.

Dr Phillip Hench.

- At the 1950 Nobel Prize award ceremony in Stockholm, Dr Phillip Hench, alongside two colleagues, received the Nobel Prize in medicine or physiology for the discovery of cortisone, a hormone that would spark a dramatic change in the medical field by providing relief to millions of people suffering from arthritis and other conditions.

- There was hundreds of thousands of years, quite honestly, of humans dealing with arthritis.

There were no medicines and it was just a matter of trying to, you know, rest and just live with it.

But it can be, you know, really debilitating pain.

So the advances we've made in medicine have really restored people's lifestyles in just an amazing way.

Phillip Hench arrived at Lafayette college in 1912 and took full advantage of the school's extra-curricular activities.

Dramatics... the soccer team... a fraternity.

He was also the alumni editor of the Lafayette and even played guitar with the ukulele club!

- It's really an amazing community where they've challenged the students to, you know, think outside of the normal realm and that's where I think like the synergies of medicine along with chemistry and how they've melded together to really change the world.

And I think that challenge lives at Lafayette.

- Hench graduated in 1916 and, after receiving his medical degree, went on to work at the Mayo Clinic, specializing in rheumatic diseases, including arthritis.

And he began to notice something interesting about some of his patients.

- We noticed that when people with the crippling type of arthritis, rheumatoid arthritis, developed pregnancy their rheumatism disappeared.

We also noticed that people who had arthritis, when they developed what the laymen called yellow jaundice their rheumatism also disappeared.

And so we decided that there was some hormonal action there that might control the disease.

- Along with his colleagues, Dr Hench spent years investigating adrenal compounds.

Eventually, Hench and his team isolated a steroid that relieved symptoms of severe arthritis when injected.

They called it 'substance x', later known as cortisone.

- Cortisone is a natural hormone that lives in our body that's involved in the inflammatory process.

And so the right types of cortisone medicines actually will dampen that process and work as what we call a strong anti-inflammatory.

- Dr Phillip Hench and his colleagues received the Nobel Prize in medicine or physiology for their work in 1950, years after Dr Hench first made his world altering discovery.

- What we've found is really innumerable uses for it.

So, not only for rheumatoid arthritis but for you know people with osteoarthritis or someone who has a muscle strain.

Even beyond the orthopedic realm, we use cortisone for lung inflammation, it's just really amazing how, you know, the development of that medicine, like what it's touched.

It's still something that's used really truly daily in my clinic.

The thought of medicine before having access to this is something hard to even think about.

He's really changed the world.

- Right now, at this very moment, as you watch these light rays strike the magnified eye, similar tiny beams of light are entering your own eyes, and it is by our eyes that we are able to gain a great part of our knowledge.

- After studying biology at Lafayette college for only three years, Haldan Keffer Hartline graduated in 1923 at the age of just 19.

After decades of research, Dr Hartline would go on to win the Nobel Prize in physiology or medicine in 1967, sharing it with two other researchers for their discoveries concerning the primary physiological and chemical visual processes in the eye.

- So, what we're looking at is a view of the human eye.

- James Dearworth, associate professor of biology, and head of the biology department at Lafayette college, who studies vision, considers Hartline a scientific hero.

- Hartline, he was the pioneer in really providing some basic understanding of how we see things.

- The impressions on the retina are carried to the brain by the optic nerve.

In this way, we see.

- While Dr Hartline majored in biology at Lafayette, he minored in geology, which, along with astronomy, became lifelong hobbies.

In biology, Hartline was taught and mentored by Professor Beverly Kunkel.

The two became close, and were even known to go on hikes and long walks together.

- I don't think he'd been in the laboratory more than a month before I began to look upon him not exactly as a student, but as a colleague - The big deal about his ideas and why he got the Nobel Prize is he developed the first techniques to be able to measure electrical responses from the optic nerve of animals.

- As soon as we get up we start to use our eyes.

Yet, how often do we give a thought to these delicate and complicated instruments, so long as they are working to our satisfaction?

- If you're looking at an object, how do you discern an object that's bright from one that is darker?

These cells literally carry that information.

These two cells, he was able to demonstrate that they exist, and they allow you to pick up a frog in a garden and discern it from the background.

And make things in the kitchen, cut vegetables.

But it was a big deal, because no one had been able to characterize these sorts of things in that way.

- Hartline earned his MD from Johns Hopkins University's school of medicine and his life's work would span several decades.

- So, this is actually a brochure of his Nobel Prize speech.

This is special because it actually is signed by Hartline.

And I believe it was actually addressed to Beverly Kunkel, and it says "your chickens have come home to roost, cordially, Keffer."

- What intrigues me about the relationship of Beverly Kunkel with his students, it is a relationship of faculty mentor to student mentee that we prize at a small college, where there is personal encouragement, interaction, investigation together, the kind of encouragement that a mentor can give to a student that inspires their lifelong passions.

John Landis was a local boy from across the river.

That was very common, folks went back and forth between Phillipsburg and Easton frequently, just walked across a free bridge designed by a Lafayette alum.

- John Landis had always excelled at school and he graduated as valedictorian from Lafayette in 1939 with a degree in engineering physics.

Like most young men of his generation, Landis joined the war effort.

- The curtain went up on June 6, 1944.

- Landis played a key role in Operation Mulberry, the construction of the artificial harbor that allowed D-Day to take place.

- The intersection of liberal arts and engineering that he experienced and learned at Lafayette could be practiced on a global scale.

- Following the war, John W Landis became deeply intrigued by the pursuit of knowledge surrounding atomic energy.

- The alert will be a warbling siren blast.

- The peace that followed the Second World War had arrived alongside fear and uncertainty, as the threat of nuclear warfare was on everybody's mind.

- Once you hear this, act fast.

- Members of the general assembly... - In December of 1953, President Dwight D. Eisenhower addressed the United Nations General Assembly on the peaceful use of atomic energy.

- Clearly if the peoples of the world are to conduct an intelligent search for peace, they must be armed with the significant facts of today's existence.

- One man who would rise to Eisenhower's challenge was John Landis, who would go on to devote his life to the peaceful use of atomic energy.

- So the idea of atoms for peace really represents both a technical perspective and a liberal arts perspective, where you are thinking in terms of politics, in terms of international relationships, in terms of strategy, but also the technology that was fast outpacing our ability to control it, to think about it in terms of its impact and purpose in the world.

- Let us face without panic the reality of our times.

- Part of Eisenhower's plan was the construction of the first non-military nuclear ship, the NS Savannah.

- Nuclear energy.

Here was a fuel ideally suited to ship propulsion.

A source of energy which measured in pounds instead of tons could send liners around the globe, deliver shiploads of cargo directly to the most distant ports.

- The world had learned to fear the destructive power of the atomic bomb.

Convincing people that atomic energy could be used for good would be a challenge.

Landis oversaw the construction of the ship's nuclear reactor.

The NS Savannah, one of only four nuclear powered cargo ships ever built, was launched in 1962.

Her voyage would last 10 years, before being decommissioned.

The Savannah now sits in Baltimore harbor, a permanent monument to the atoms for peace program.

Landis would go on to become one of the founding members of the American nuclear society and stood as an advocate for safe nuclear power for the remainder of his life.

But Landis often referred to his alma mater as the place where he gained his thirst for knowledge and compassion for humanity.

- The liberal arts empowers you to be a leader and a broader thinker in ways that that technology impacts people and societies.

- Outside of his academics, Landis was heavily involved in extracurriculars.

The historic marquis players theater troupe, student government, and a number of honor societies.

Landis's biggest takeaway from Lafayette, however, was the deep sense of passion he felt towards his community.

The Landis Center for Community Engagement is the hub for engagement activities at Lafayette.

So, we coordinate all of the engagement activities for students, faculty and staff, in collaboration with our community partner organizations.

John Landis felt that his experiences and community engagement while he was at Lafayette shaped who he became as a businessperson and as an adult, and so he decided that he was going to endow us.

- I think with a Lafayette education in that particular kind of faculty student action, something that we continue to support and encourage and tool our education to create the environment for is not just to react to problems that you are given, but to think about the problems other people have not yet thought about.

And to find solutions and to find explanations.

- We hope that our students, when they leave here and they go off to wherever they're going, that they're taking these skills and knowledge they developed here and they're using it wherever they land, and regarding their communities as a priority in their decision-making.

- There was a context where the student becomes the empowered person, to think about what are the important questions?

What are the important solutions and answers to those questions and the larger context in which that exists?

That's what the liberal arts gives you.

- President, are you ready to take the constitutional oath?

- Nixon has filled the one, two, and three jobs in his cabinet with men who may well equal the best ever to hold those positions, Henry Kissinger as secretary of state.

Kissinger's Harvard classmate, James Schlesinger, at Defense.

And now, for secretary of treasury, William Simon.

- He seemed to be one of these storm chasers.

It seemed like wherever the storm was, he was in the eye of that storm.

- William Simon first arrived in Washington in the tumultuous '70s when everything appeared to be veering off course.

Our country grappled with unprecedented inflation rates, an oil embargo, sending American citizens into a frenzy over soaring gas prices.

And the Watergate scandal, which cast a long shadow over the political landscape.

Simon graduated from Lafayette college in 1952.

Soon after, he launched his finance career, and by 1964, he became the senior partner overseeing the government and municipal bond departments at Solomon Brothers.

- A quote from Walter Wriston, who was the head of City Corp said I hope he goes to Washington because now somebody else will have a chance to make some money!

- Government doesn't produce our wealth and our prosperity, people do!

- He was not afraid to speak his mind.

And he spoke it immediately.

- And most importantly the inextricable relationship between our economic freedoms and our personal freedoms.

How, if we lose one, the other will not be far behind.

- And it was not always comfortable for some of the people in the room.

He believed what he believed and he welcomed any other comments but in the end you better know your stuff cos he did.

- At the height of the 1973 oil crisis, President Nixon assigns Simon to lead the newly established Federal Energy Administration.

- When he went to Washington, it was a whole new experience for him.

I mean, he was a municipal bond expert.

- It is with this appointment that Simon earns the title "energy czar."

- We were all in gas lines and I was just as likely to bribe somebody to give me an extra 10 bucks' worth of gas as anybody else.

- To alleviate immediate pressures, Bill Simon reduced oil consumption and bolstered fuel allocation.

He advocated for expedited energy development in Alaska, emphasized alternative energy, and championed energy self-sufficiency.

- Like it or not, a national quest for energy independence is our only sure alternative to the continuing threat of capricious price and supply instability.

- Because of Simon's fuel allocation program, he is humorously credited for both causing the gas lines and relieving public hysteria.

- So, I remember when I was here, I think it was my sophomore, junior year, Dad came out with Mom, went to a football game, came to my fraternity after for the cocktail party.

And he gets this call from the White House, because there was a strike, the coal miners were striking.

And they wanted Dad to come down and help them out, sell it.

And, you know, of course, people said what the hell does he know, you know, about coal.

I said, I don't think it has anything to do with coal.

I think it's all personalities.

And he told me the whole story.

He said, Look, I sat down with this guy, he could have probably crushed me with one hand.

And we just reasoned it out.

- His profile was very helpful I think for the psyche of the American public.

- Robin Wiessmann, class of 1975, served on the Lafayette board of trustee's committee on financial policy when Simon chaired it.

- I was very struck by the fact that Bill Simon had a very commanding presence, but he was also very playful.

My most vivid memory of him was also my first introduction to him when I walked into the finance committee meeting and he bellowed at me.

He said, Come over here, come sit down by me.

He said people think I eat them for lunch, but I don't.

And that was my introduction to Bill Simon.

- Your dad obviously had influence on all sorts of policy.

Freedom was an animating factor in that?

- Freedom was always in the background as a base.

Economic freedom, I was always taught, gives people the best chance to have a better life.

- How profits translate into food on our table... into more jobs and better jobs.

Into goods and services that we all enjoy.

- The relationship between freedom in the economy, free enterprise, and freedom in politics, the democratic process, he believed that those were closely intertwined.

- President Nixon today nominated William Simon, the Federal Energy Chief, to succeed George Shultz as Secretary of the Treasury.

- In May of 1974, Simon becomes the 63rd secretary of the treasury, gaining recognition for his efforts in combating the notorious financial crisis of the '70s.

- William Simon, who combines the unusual qualities of open-mindedness about options, yet the ability to make quick decisions, skill at handling money, which is his new job, and yes, somebody's got to have it, candor towards the press and the public.

- I think that federal spending, excessive federal spending, destroys the confidence of the American people and our ability to get control over our economy and over inflation.

And we have to restore that confidence.

- He gets an incredible piece of legislation passed called the Trade Act of 1974, it created the US Trade Representative Office.

It created a framework for globalization.

Trade really was responsible for how the world was at peace for so long, and he gets an enormous amount of credit for opening up the global trade in the last 50 years.

- Simon served as treasury secretary under two US presidents.

But when his time in office ended in 1977, William Simon was already planning his next move.

- The greatest Olympic team in the history of the United States.

- To me, one of Bill Simon's most important contributions in the nonprofit sector was his role as president of the US Olympic Committee.

- The 1979 Soviet invasion of Afghanistan caused widespread debate of whether or not the US should send athletes to the Moscow Olympics in 1980.

As treasurer, and later president, of the US Olympic Committee, all eyes were on Simon.

- And the other thing that we must do is to stand with our allies and friends and freedom loving people around the world and say we will not go to Moscow and participate in the Olympic games in your capital.

- In the name of preserving the peace and security of the United States, Simon stood with President Carter.

- I never thought he had a hard time knowing what was right and doing it.

He was just knee jerk right on it.

- Simon gave an impassioned speech to the delegates that convinced them to vote in favor of the boycott, leaving athletes from around the country distraught.

Simon subsequently served as USOC president from 1981 to 1984, presiding over the Los Angeles 1984 Olympic Games and guiding a turnaround of the USOC's financial fortunes.

- Thank you, Bill Simon... - With the profits from the Los Angeles games, he established and chaired the US Olympic Foundation.

- So, what would you say is your father's legacy?

- My father's legacy was at the end philanthropy.

Being philanthropic after he was tremendously successful and realized that the job is not to grow your capital, the job is to help others.

- For decades, the Simon foundation has equipped inner-city youth and families with the tools necessary to thrive and participate in our democracy.

- Not only did he set up his own foundation, the William E Simon foundation that continues today, he was the head of the John Olin Foundation.

- Simon's leadership in the Olin foundation, which encourages the thoughtful study of the connection between economic and political freedom, closely aligned with his own values and ideas.

- It is true that Bill Simon served in Republican administrations and I have served in Democratic administrations.

However, I think something that is similar to both of us is that we were both professionals first and not ideologues.

We were both investment bankers, both in the fixed income arena.

He was at Solomon and I was at Goldman, and we were both public sector employees during financial crises.

We both straddled the public and private sectors ably.

- I do think part of the reason why I love this college is it is a proof point that you can be small and mighty and frankly by instead of doing transactions cause you're so large, we can do relationships here and then create the kind of leaders like you and your dad that actually make big impacts.

- I was fortunate that I was in the Lafayette experience where there was that personalized attention and dialog with my professors.

So, they were enormously helpful in terms of instilling not just the intellectual inquisitiveness but the wherewithal to analyze situations and circumstances and be discerning and be discriminating about how I approach things.

The parallel yet unique journeys of William E Simon and Robin Wiessmann demonstrate how generation after generation, Lafayette leopards continue to steer the course of the United States of America.

- Every now and then, a technology or idea comes along that is so profound and so powerful and so universal that its impact changes everything.

- From scales, to punch card machines, to computing, IBM has been a leader in business machinery for over a century.

From 1967 to 1990, IBM was the world's largest corporation by market capitalization.

- The value of IBM during the later half of the 20th century is as a propagator of machines to the masses within the industrial world.

Among IBM'S most impactful contributions was the IBM PC, a project led by Lafayette alum Bill Lowe.

Bill Lowe graduated Lafayette as a physics major in 1962.

He was also a member of a fraternity, and wrote for the Lafayette newspaper.

Immediately upon graduation, Lowe joined IBM.

In 1980, Lowe organized and led the team who developed and produced the IBM personal computer.

But prior to this accomplishment, Lafayette already had a strong connection with IBM through Thomas Watson.

- Thomas Watson was the first CEO of IBM.

And he was a trustee and philanthropist for Lafayette College and helped shape Lafayette College especially in its global perspective today.

- The Lafayette experience in 1962 was uniquely regimented.

ROTC was required, and freshmen abided by specific rules and regulations.

The educational curriculum encouraged teamwork, innovation, and a big-picture mindset.

Meanwhile, since its founding, the ability to "think" has also been at the core of IBM culture.

- The trouble with most of us is that we fall down on the latter, thinking, because it's hard work for people to think.

- I would say what Lafayette brought to a lot of us is the capacity to try to think, and to think...

I hate to use the expression out of the box, but to think beyond the boundaries that we're already assuming.

- And, as Dr Nicholas Murray Butler said recently, all of the problems of the world could be settled easily if men were only willing to think.

- That kind of thinking positioned Bill Lowe to drive innovation and assemble the team who made the IBM PC a resounding success.

But they weren't the only ones building a PC.

- We started off building a computer because we couldn't afford to buy one.

- At Apple, one of IBM's fiercest competitors, Steve Jobs was making strides in personal computing.

By 1977, two iterations of the Apple personal computer had been released.

- I'm David Bradley, one of the original 12 engineers that worked on the IBM personal computer back in 1980.

IBM salesmen were the guys who sold the 360s and 370s that powered big corporations, were going into those corporations and seeing on an individual's desk not IBM 3270 terminals, but an Apple II computer or something similar.

So, they came back up through their chain and said, we need something to compete with the Apple II.

- I was leading a team for our corporation to try to solve what was the type of solutions we needed for the engineering world.

And very honestly, IBM was not prepared for that because of their focus on the business world.

- So, in the summer of 1980, Frank Carey, the CEO of IBM, convened a task force and they met to define a personal computer.

And so we hit the ground running in September of 1980 to build the IBM Personal Computer.

Bill Lowe's impact on that project was that he got it started and he got it started in a way that would lead to success.

He kept the rest of the corporation away from us, he gave us the freedom - within some boundaries - to do what we thought was best in order to do the program.

- To keep down development costs, Bill's team chose "open architecture", whereby his team could source parts from outside IBM'S orbit, using Intel's microchips for processing, and software from a small Seattle-based startup called Microsoft.

- So, we were all true believers.

We wanted to get this thing done.

I viewed the openness of the PC as the way to invite the rest of the industry to participate.

As engineers, this was a great project because it was a blank sheet of paper.

It could be whatever we thought was the best thing for it to be.

And that's great!

- It took them 40 days to build the actual motherboard.

It took them four months to build a prototype.

I mean, this is for that time an incredibly short period of time.

- Soon after its release in August of 1981, it became clear to Lowe's team that their PC was disrupting the existing market.

- I went to a tradeshow in Atlantic City, NJ.

- A monster show at which computer vendors from around the world try to make it big in the PC marketplace.

- I walk into this ballroom, and there's probably 100-200 booths of people who are selling things that work with or for the IBM PC.

I'm thinking, oh my gosh, all these people have hitched their wagon to our star and we've got a whole industry that's going here.

- And it's hard to tell just who is cloning whom.

- The IBM PC made a profound impact, and the project is credited with giving Bill Gates and Microsoft the foundation they needed to become the corporation we know today.

- Microsoft would not be a company without the relationship of IBM.

- The biggest impact of the IBM personal computer was it was now a computer that everyone could own from a company you could trust.

IBM gave you a machine that you could believe in.

And I think Bill Lowe was one of the primary instigators in getting that done.

- From global educators to innovators in athletics to pioneers of economics and finance, Nobel laureates in medicine, innovators in the field of nuclear energy and trailblazers in personal computing, Lafayette may be small, but its alumni have made a massive impact on the nation, and the world.