Anthony Athanas

Country of origin: Albania Anthony Athanas (July 28, 1911 – May 20, 2005) was a multi-millionaire Albanian-American restaurateur and philanthropist. His restaurants include Anthony's Pier 4, one of the most successful in the USA. In 1976 the National Restaurant Association named him Restaurateur of the Year.

Born in Korçë, southern Albania, then part of the Ottoman Empire, on July 28, 1911, he and his mother Evangeline traveled on a donkey to a port and emigrated to Bedford, New York in 1915–16, where his father, who was a mason, and siblings had settled. At the age of thirteen Athanas left school and worked in several restaurants until 1938, when he bought his first restaurant: Anthony's Hawthorne Café in Lynn, Massachusetts, which by the early 1950s had become the highest-grossing restaurant in Massachusetts, with profits of more than $1 million annually. In 1963, he opened Anthony's Pier 4, which by the early 1980s was grossing about $12 million annually and was the highest-grossing restaurant in the United States. His other restaurants include the Hawthorne by-the-sea Tavern in Swampscott, Massachusetts, and Anthony's Cummaquid Inn in Yarmouth Port.

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Laura Mersini-Houghton

Country of origin: Albania

Dr. Laura Mersini-Houghton (née Laura Mersini) is a theoretical physicist-cosmologist and professor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill since January 2004. Laura Mersini-Houghton received her undergraduate degree from the University of Tirana, Albania, her M.Sc. from the University of Maryland and was awarded a PhD in 2000 by the University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee.

To read more about Laura Mersini-Houghton,visit her page on Wikipedia.