William H. (William Howard) Taft

Born in Cincinnati, Ohio, in 1857, William Howard Taft built his career through the law before rising to national prominence. He graduated from Yale, practiced law in Ohio, served as a judge and as U.S. solicitor general, and later became governor-general of the Philippines and secretary of war under Theodore Roosevelt.

Taft served as the 27th president of the United States from 1909 to 1913. Although he reached the White House, he is often remembered less as a natural campaigner than as a careful administrator and legal thinker, caught in the political split between Theodore Roosevelt and the Republican Party during the 1912 election.

What made Taft truly unique was what came next. In 1921 he became chief justice of the United States, the office he had long wanted most, and served until shortly before his death in 1930. He remains the only person in U.S. history to have led both the executive branch as president and the judicial branch as chief justice.