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Born October 5, 1959
Athens, Ohio

American architect and artist who designed the
Vietnam Veterans Memorial

As a twenty-one-year-old architecture student at Yale University, Maya Lin won a competition to design the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, D.C. Her winning design—a long, V-shaped wall of polished black marble engraved with the names of the American soldiers killed in Vietnam—created a great deal of controversy at first. But soon after the memorial was dedicated in 1982, the American people embraced it as a powerful and moving tribute to the fallen soldiers. Since then, it has become the most visited site in Washington, D.C.

An artistic and studious young woman

Maya Ying Lin was born on October 5, 1959, in Athens, Ohio. She was raised in a household that was full of art and literature....