Washington's most distinguished public figure was US Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas (b.Minnesota, 1898–1980), who grew up in Yakima and attended Whitman College in Walla Walla. In addition to his 37-year tenure on the Court, an all-time high, Douglas was the author of numerous legal casebooks as well as 27 other volumes on various subjects. Other federal officeholders from Washington include Lewis B. Schwellenbach (b.Wisconsin, 1894–1948), secretary of labor under Harry Truman, and Brockman Adams (b.Georgia, 1927), secretary of transportation under Jimmy Carter. Serving in the US Senate from 1945 to 1981), Warren G. Magnuson (Minnesota, 1905–89) held the chairmanship of the powerful Appropriations Committee. A fellow Democrat, Henry M. "Scoop" Jackson (1912–83) was first elected to the House in 1940 and to the Senate in 1952. Influential on the Armed Services Committee, Jackson ran unsuccessfully for his party's presidential nomination in 1976. William E. Boeing (b.Michigan, 1881–1956) pioneered Washington's largest single industry, aerospace technology.
Notable governors include Isaac I. Stevens (b.Massachusetts, 1818–62), Washington's first territorial governor; after serving as Washington's territorial representative to Congress, he died in the Civil War. Elisha P. Ferry (b.Michigan, 1825–95), territorial governor from 1872 to 1880, was elected as Washington's first state governor in 1889. John R. Rogers (b.Maine, 1838–1901), Washington's only Populist governor, was also the first to be elected for a second term. Clarence D. Martin (1886–1955) was governor during the critical New Deal period. Daniel J. Evans (b.1925) is the youngest man ever elected governor of Washington and also is the only one to have served three consecutive terms (1965–77).
Dixy Lee Ray (1914–93), governor from 1977 to 1981 and the only woman governor in the state's history, was a former head of the federal Atomic Energy Commission and a staunch advocate of nuclear power. Other notable women were Emma Smith DeVoe (b.New Jersey, 1848–1927), a leading proponent of equal suffrage, and Bertha Knight Landes (b.Massachusetts, 1868–1943), elected mayor of Seattle in 1926; Landes, the first woman to be elected mayor of a large US city, was also an outspoken advocate of moral reform in municipal government.
Thomas Stephen Foley, former Speaker of the House, was born on 6 March 1929 in Spokane.
Several Washington Indians attained national prominence. Seattle (1786–1866) was the first signer of the Treaty of Point Elliott, which established two Indian reservations; the city of Seattle is named for him. Kamiakin (b.Idaho, c.1800–80) was the leader of the Yakima tribe during the Indian Wars of 1855, and Leschi (d.1858) was chief of the Nisqualli Indians and commanded the forces west of the Cascades during the 1855 uprising; Leschi was executed by the territorial government after the uprising was suppressed.
Washington authors have made substantial contributions to American literature. Mary McCarthy (1912–1989) was born in Seattle, and one of her books, Memories of a Catholic Girlhood (1957), describes her early life there. University of Washington professor Vernon Louis Parrington (b.Illinois, 1871-1929) was the first Washingtonian to win a Pulitzer Prize (1928), for his monumental Main Currents in American Thought. Another University of Washington faculty member, Theodore Roethke (b.Michigan, 1908–63), won the Pulitzer Prize for poetry in 1953. Seattle-born Audrey May Wurdemann (1911–60) was awarded a Pulitzer Prize for poetry in 1934 for Bright Ambush. Max Brand (Frederick Schiller Faust, 1892–1944) wrote hundreds of Western novels. Norman Ramsey (b.Washington, 1915) 1989 Nobel Prize recipient for physics. Hans Georg Dehmelt (b.Germany, 1922) was a recipient of the 1989 Nobel Prize for physics as a member at the University of Washington. George Herbert Hitchings, Nobel Prize winner in medicine 1988, was born April 18, 1905 in Hoquiam, Washington.
Singer-actor Harry Lillis "Bing" Crosby (1904–77), born in Tacoma, remained a loyal alumnus of Spokane's Gonzaga University. Modern dance choreographers Merce Cunningham (b.1919) and Robert Joffrey (1930–88) are both Washington natives. Photographer Edward S. Curtis (b.Wisconsin, 1868–1952) did most of the work on the North American Indian series while residing in Seattle. Modern artists Mark Tobey (b.Wisconsin, 1890–1976) spent much of his productive life in Seattle, and Robert Motherwell (1915–91) was born in Aberdeen. Washington's major contribution to popular music is rock guitarist Jimi Hendrix (1943–70).