Iranians

Iranians may refer to:

List of Iranians

This is an alphabetic list of notable people from Iran or its historical predecessors.

In the news

Christopher Hitchens

Christopher Eric Hitchens (13 April 1949 – 15 December 2011) was an English American author, essayist, orator, religious and literary critic, and journalist. Hitchens later spent much of his career in the United States and became a US citizen in 2007.

He contributed to New Statesman, The Nation, The Atlantic, London Review of Books, The Times Literary Supplement, Slate, and Vanity Fair. Hitchens was the author, co-author, editor or co-editor of over 30 books, including five collections of essays, on a range of subjects, including politics, literature, and religion. A staple of talk shows and lecture circuits, his confrontational style of debate made him both a lauded and controversial figure. Known for his contrarian stance on a number of issues, Hitchens criticized such public and generally popular figures as Mother Teresa; Bill Clinton; Henry Kissinger; Princess Diana; and Pope Benedict XVI. He was the elder brother of the conservative journalist and author Peter Hitchens.

Matt Lauer

Matthew Todd "Matt" Lauer (born December 30, 1957) is an American television journalist best known as the host of NBC's The Today Show since 1997. He is also a contributor for NBC's Dateline NBC. He was previously a news anchor for The Today Show in 1994 and anchor for WNBC in New York City and a local talk-show host in Boston, Philadelphia, Providence and Richmond. He was also host of PM Magazine (or "Evening Magazine" 1980–86) and worked for ESPN in the 1980s as a sideline reporter. In the early 1990s, Lauer hosted segments of HBO Entertainment News.

Early life

Lauer was born in New York City, the son of Marilyn Kolmer (née Gentry), a boutique owner, and Jay Robert Lauer, a bicycle-company executive. His parents divorced during his youth, and his father died in 1997. Lauer had become co-host of The Today Show, replacing longtime host Bryant Gumbel in early 1997, not long before his father's death.

Lauer's father was of Romanian Jewish heritage, as seen on the Today Show's Finding Our Roots. Lauer said, "My dad was Jewish. My mom is not. So I was not raised anything. I do feel a desire now to find something spiritual. Getting married and wanting to have kids has something to do with that."