Lin, Maya

(born Oct. 5, 1959, Athens, Ohio, U.S.) U.S. architect and sculptor. The daughter of Chinese immigrants, she achieved fame in 1981 when her class assignment at Yale University won the nationwide Vietnam Veterans Memorial competition. Lin's award-winning design consisted of a polished black granite V-shaped wall inscribed with the names of the approximately 58,000 men and women who were killed or missing in action; the abstract nature of the design aroused a great deal of controversy. Her subsequent, vastly different designs include the major commissions for the Civil Rights Memorial in Montgomery, Ala. (1989), and the Women's Table at Yale (1993), as well as an earth sculpture for the University of Michigan (1994) and an extraordinary translucent clock, Eclipsed Time, installed in the ceiling of New York City's Pennsylvania Station (1994).

Lin, Maya (Ying) (1960– ) landscape architect, sculptor; born in Athens, Ohio. At age 21, and a graduate student at Yale's School of Architecture, she was the center of a major controversy when her design for a memorial to those who died in Vietnam was chosen to be erected in Washington, D.C. In 1990 her memorial to the civil rights movement was dedicated in Montgomery, Ala.