Bill Bowerman

American track and field coach at the University of Oregon and Nike co-founder, who obsessively modified runners' shoes in search of marginal performance gains — including famously pouring rubber into a waffle iron to make a lighter sole.

Invented the Nike waffle sole — by literally pouring urethane into his wife's waffle iron — creating the lighter, more traction-providing running shoe that differentiated early Nike products, and contributed the performance-obsessed coach's perspective that made Nike's products credible to serious athletes.