Neha Patil (Editor)

List of Cornell University alumni

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List of Cornell University alumni

This list of Cornell University alumni includes notable graduates, non-graduate former students, and current students of Cornell University, an Ivy League university located in Ithaca, New York. Cornell counted 245,027 living alumni as of August 2008. Its alumni constitute 25 recipients of National Medal of Science and National Medal of Technology and Innovation combined, 32 MacArthur Fellows, 34 Marshall Scholars and 30 Rhodes Scholars, and Cornell is the only university with three female winners of unshared Nobel Prizes among its graduates (Pearl S. Buck, Barbara McClintock, and Toni Morrison). Many alumni maintain university ties through Homecoming's reunion weekend, through Cornell Magazine, and through the Cornell Club of New York. In 2005, Cornell ranked #3 nationwide for gifts and bequests from alumni. Alumni are known as Cornellians.

Contents

Cornellians are noted for their accomplishments in public, professional, and corporate life. Lee Teng-hui was president of Taiwan, Tsai Ing-wen was elected as the first female president of Taiwan, Mario García Menocal was president of Cuba, Jamshid Amuzegar ('50) was prime minister of Iran, Hu Shih ('14) was a Chinese reformer and representative to the United Nations, Janet Reno ('60) was the first female United States Attorney General, and Ruth Bader Ginsburg ('54) serves on the Supreme Court. Additionally, alumnus Matt Urban ('41) holds the distinction as the most decorated serviceman in United States history.

Cornellians in business include: Citigroup CEO Sanford Weill ('55), Goldman Sachs Group Chairman Stephen Friedman ('59), Kraft Foods CEO Irene Rosenfeld ('75, '77, '80), Aetna CEO Mark Bertolini ('84), S.C. Johnson & Son CEO Fisk Johnson ('79, '80, '82, '84, '86), Cargill Chairman Warren Staley ('67), Chevron Chairman Kenneth T. Derr ('59), Sprint Nextel CEO Dan Hesse ('77), Verizon CEO Lowell McAdam ('76), MasterCard CEO Robert Selander ('72), Coors Brewing Company CEO Adolph Coors II ('37), Burger King founder James McLamore ('47), Loews Corporation Chairman Andrew Tisch ('71), New York Private Bank & Trust Chairman Howard Milstein ('73), Baupost Group founder Seth Klarman ('79), Hotels.com founder David Litman ('79), Palm founder Jeff Hawkins ('79), PeopleSoft founder David Duffield ('62), Priceline.com founder Jay Walker ('77), Staples founder Myra Hart ('62), Qualcomm founder Irwin M. Jacobs ('56), Atlantic Philanthropies founder Chuck Feeney ('56), Lubna Olayan CEO Olayan Financing Company, the holding entity for Olayan Group ('77), and Tata Group CEO Ratan Tata ('62).

In medicine, alumnus Robert Atkins ('55) developed the Atkins Diet, Henry Heimlich ('47) developed the Heimlich maneuver, Wilson Greatbatch ('50) invented the pacemaker, James Maas ('66; also a faculty member) coined the term "power nap", and C. Everett Koop ('41) served as Surgeon General of the United States.

A number of Cornellians have been prominent innovators. Thomas Midgley, Jr. ('11) invented Freon, Jon Rubinstein ('78) is credited with the development of the iPod, and Robert Tappan Morris developed the first computer worm on the Internet. Eight Cornellians have served as NASA astronauts, Steve Squyres ('81) is the principal investigator on the Mars Exploration Rover Mission, and Bill Nye ('77) is well known as "The Science Guy".

In literature, Toni Morrison ('55; Nobel laureate) is well known for her novel Beloved, Pearl S. Buck ('25; Nobel laureate) authored The Good Earth, and E. B. White ('21) authored Charlotte's Web and Stuart Little. Thomas Pynchon ('59) won the National Book Award for Gravity's Rainbow. Kurt Vonnegut, author of Slaughterhouse-Five and Cat's Cradle, attended Cornell from 1940–1944 and was Assistant Managing Editor of the Cornell Daily Sun. Media personalities who have graduated from Cornell include conservative Ann Coulter ('84) and liberals Bill Maher ('78) and Keith Olbermann ('79).

Several Cornellians have also achieved critical acclaim in entertainment. Christopher Reeve ('74) played Superman, Frank Morgan was The Wizard of Oz, Jimmy Smits ('82) was in Star Wars: Attack of the Clones, and Ronald D. Moore created the 2004 remake of Battlestar Galactica. On the architectural front, alumnus Richmond Shreve (1902) designed the Empire State Building, and Raymond M. Kennedy ('15) designed Hollywood's famous Grauman's Chinese Theatre.

In education and academics, more than 150 Cornellians have served as heads of universities in the United States and around the world, including the founding president of Stanford University David Starr Jordan (1872), the president of Johns Hopkins University Steven Muller, the president of the University of Chicago Lawrence A. Kimpton and George Wells Beadle, the president of Carleton University and the University of Toronto Claude Bissell and Hermengildo B. Reyes (EE'18), co-founding President 1946 Far Eastern University in 1928 and co-founding President in 1951 University of the East. M. Carey Thomas (1877) founded Bryn Mawr College. More than 183 Cornellians have been elected members of the National Academy of Sciences and another 172 have been elected to the National Academy of Engineering, respectively.

In athletics, Cornell graduates include football legend Glenn "Pop" Warner (1894), head coach of the United States men's national soccer team Bruce Arena ('73), National Hockey League commissioner Gary Bettman ('74), Major League Baseball Commissioner Rob Manfred, six-time Stanley Cup-winning hockey goalie Ken Dryden ('69), William Larned who was one of the "Big Three of the U.S. men's (tennis) championship" and won the title seven times, and Toronto Raptors president Bryan Colangelo ('87). Alumni who played in the National Football League include Super Bowl champion Kevin Boothe, and Ed Marinaro ('71), who was also known for his television work on Hill Street Blues. Cornellians have also won numerous Olympic medals (28 Gold, 19 Silver and 8 Bronze, as of 2017).

Fictional alumni have been portrayed in several films, television shows, and books. Characters include Andy Bernard of The Office, Natalie Keener of Up in the Air, and Christina Pagniacci (portrayed by Cameron Diaz) in Any Given Sunday.

Nobel laureates

Chemistry

  • Eric Betzig (M.S. 1985; Ph.D. 1988, Applied and Engineering Physics) – Chemistry, 2014; member of the National Academy of Sciences (2015)
  • William Moerner (Ph.D. 1982, Experimental Physics) – Chemistry, 2014; Wolf Prize in Chemistry (2008); member of the National Academy of Sciences (2007)

    • Physics

  • Sheldon Lee Glashow (B.A. 1954 Physics) – Physics 1979; member of the National Academy of Sciences (1977)
  • Russell Hulse (conducted the award-winning research at Cornell's affiliated Arecibo Observatory 1974) – Physics 1993
  • John M. Kosterlitz (Postdoctoral Fellow 1973–1974) – Physics 2016; Fellow of the American Physical Society; recipient of the Maxwell Medal and Prize (1981) and the Lars Onsager Prize (2000)
  • Douglas D. Osheroff (M.S. 1971 Physics, Ph.D. 1973 Physics) – Physics 1996; MacArthur Fellow (1981); member of the National Academy of Sciences (1987)
  • Isidor Isaac Rabi (B.Chem. 1919; graduate study 1921–23, transferred) – Physics 1944; member of the National Academy of Sciences (1940)
  • David J. Thouless (Ph.D. 1958) – Physics 2016; Fellow of the Royal Society, of the American Physical Society and of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences; member of the National Academy of Sciences; recipient of the Maxwell Medal and Prize (1973), the Wolf Prize for Physics (1990), the Paul Dirac Medal (1993), and the Lars Onsager Prize (2000)
  • Steven Weinberg (B.A. 1954 Physics) – Physics 1979, National Medal of Science (1991); member of the National Academy of Sciences (1972)

    • Peace, literature, or economics

  • Pearl S. Buck (M.A. 1925 English Literature) – Literature 1938
  • Robert F. Engle (M.S. 1966 Physics, Ph.D. 1969 Economics) – Economics 2003; member of the National Academy of Sciences (2005)
  • Robert Fogel (B.A. 1948 History, Minor in Economics) – Economics 1993; member of the National Academy of Sciences (1973)
  • Toni Morrison (M.A. 1955 English, A.D. White Professor-at-Large, 1997–2003) – Literature 1993; National Humanities Medal (2000), Pulitzer Prize for Fiction (1988)
  • John Mott (B.S. 1888 Philosophy) – Peace 1946

    • Physiology or medicine

  • George Wells Beadle (Ph.D. 1930 Genetics) – Physiology or Medicine 1958; member of the National Academy of Sciences (1944)
  • Robert W. Holley (Ph.D. 1947 Organic Chemistry; Professor and Department Chair in Biochemistry, 1948–68) – Physiology or Medicine 1968; member of the National Academy of Sciences (1968)
  • Barbara McClintock (B.S. 1923 Botany, M.A. 1925 Botany, Ph.D. 1927 Cytology; Instructor in Botany, 1927–31; A.D. White Professor-at-Large, 1965–74) – Physiology or Medicine 1983; National Medal of Science (1970); MacArthur Fellow (1981); Wolf Prize in Medicine (1981); member of the National Academy of Sciences (1944)
  • Hermann Joseph Muller (graduate study 1911–12) – Physiology or Medicine 1946; member of the National Academy of Sciences (1931)
  • Jack W. Szostak (Ph.D. 1977 Biochemistry) – Physiology or Medicine 2009; member of the National Academy of Sciences (1998)

    • Heads of state

  • Jamshid Amuzegar (B.S. 1945 Engineering, Ph.D. 1951) – Prime Minister of Iran, 1977–78
  • Václav Klaus (1969, no degree) – President of the Czech Republic (2003–present), Prime Minister of the Czech Republic (1992–1997)
  • Mario García Menocal (B.S. 1888 Engineering) – President of Cuba, 1913–21
  • Lee Teng-hui (Ph.D. 1968 Agricultural Economics) – President of the Republic of China (Taiwan), 1988–2000
  • Tsai Ing-wen (LL.M. 1980) – President of the Republic of China (Taiwan) (2016), Chairperson of the Democratic Progressive Party in Taiwan and former Vice Premier

    • U.S. Supreme Court Justices

  • Ruth Bader Ginsburg (B.A. 1954 Government) – U.S. Supreme Court associate justice

    • U.S. Cabinet and cabinet-level ranks

  • Sandy Berger (B.A. 1967 Government) – National Security Advisor to President Bill Clinton, 1997–2001
  • Samuel W. Bodman (B.S. 1961 Chemical Engineering) – Deputy Secretary of Commerce, 2001–2003, Deputy Secretary of the Treasury (2004–2005), Secretary of Energy, 2005–2009; member of the National Academy of Engineering (2006)
  • Lincoln D. Faurer (attended, did not graduate) – Director, National Security Agency 1981–85
  • W. Scott Gould (A.B.) – United States Deputy Secretary of Veterans Affairs (April 9, 2009 – May 17, 2013)
  • Stephen Hadley (B.A. 1969 Government) – National Security Advisor to President George W. Bush, 2005–2009
  • Seth Harris (B.S. 1983 IRL) – Deputy Secretary of Labor (2009–2014) and Acting Secretary of Labor (January 22, 2013 – July 23, 2013)
  • Eugene K. Jones (M.A. 1908 Social Science) – Member of Franklin D. Roosevelt's Black Cabinet, Executive Secretary of the National Urban League; founder of Alpha Phi Alpha Fraternity
  • C. Everett Koop (M.D. 1941) – Surgeon General of the United States under president Ronald Reagan, 1982–89; recipient of the Tyler Prize for Environmental Achievement (1991)
  • Henry Morgenthau, Jr. (undergrad 1909–10, 1912–13, dropped out) – Secretary of the Treasury, 1934–45
  • Edmund Muskie (LL.B. 1939) – Governor of Maine, 1955–59; Senator from Maine, 1959–80; Vice Presidential Candidate, 1968; Secretary of State, 1980–81
  • Samuel Pierce (B.A. 1947, J.D. 1949; trustee, 1972–77, 1978–82) – Secretary of Housing and Urban Development under Ronald Reagan, 1981–89
  • Thomas C. Reed (B.S. 1956 Mechanical Engineering) – Secretary of the Air Force under Gerald Ford and Jimmy Carter, 1976–77
  • Janet Reno (B.A. 1960 Chemistry; professor) – Attorney General under Bill Clinton, 1993–2001
  • William P. Rogers (LL.B. 1937) – Attorney General, 1957–61, Secretary of State (1969–73), Presidential Medal of Freedom recipient, 1973
  • Louis Wade Sullivan (Medical College Resident) – Secretary of Health and Human Services under George H. W. Bush, 1989–93; founder, Dean and President of Morehouse School of Medicine
  • Nancy Sutley (B.A.) – Chair of the Council on Environmental Quality under Barack Obama (2009–2014)
  • John P. White (B.S. 1959 ILR) – United States Deputy Secretary of Defense (1995–1997)
  • Paul Wolfowitz (B.A. 1965 Mathematics and Chemistry) – Deputy Secretary of Defense under George W. Bush, 2001–05, President of the World Bank, 2005–2007

    • U.S. Governors

  • John Alden Dix (attended 1879–1882) – 38th Governor of New York, 1911–1912
  • Joseph B. Foraker (B.A. 1869) – Governor of Ohio (1886–90); Senator of Ohio (1897–1909); one of eight members of Cornell's first graduating class
  • James Benton Grant (attended 1873–1874) – Governor of Colorado, 1883–1885
  • Herbert James Hagerman (1890) – 17th Governor of the New Mexico Territory (1906–1907)
  • Philip H. Hoff (J.D. 1951) – Governor of Vermont (1963–69); first Democrat to serve in that position since the Civil War
  • Goodwin Knight (graduate study 1919–20) – Governor of California, 1953–1959
  • John T. Morrison (LL.B. degree 1890) – sixth Governor of Idaho, 1903–1905
  • Edmund Muskie (LL.B. 1939) – Governor of Maine, 1955–59; Senator from Maine, 1959–80; Vice Presidential Candidate, 1968; Secretary of State, 1980–81
  • Horace White (1887) – Member of New York State Senate, 1896–1908; Lieutenant Governor of New York, 1909–1910; 37th Governor of New York

    • U.S. Senators

  • Joseph B. Foraker (B.A. 1869) – Governor of Ohio (1886–90); Senator of Ohio (1897–1909); one of eight members of Cornell's first graduating class
  • Thomas C. Hennings, Jr. (1924) – Representative, Missouri 11th District (1935–40); Senator of Missouri (1951–60)
  • Mark Kirk (B.A. 1981 History) – Illinois 10th District, 2001–2011; Senator, 2011–2017
  • Edmund Muskie (LL.B. 1939) – Governor of Maine, 1955–59; Senator from Maine, 1959–80; Vice Presidential Candidate, 1968; Secretary of State, 1980–81
  • Chuck Robb (undergrad 1957–58, transferred) – Senator, Virginia, 1989–2001

    • U.S. Congressmen

  • John G. Alexander (J.D. 1916) – Minnesota 3rd District, 1939–41
  • Rob Andrews (J.D. 1982) – New Jersey 1st District, 1990–2014
  • Andrew Biemiller (B.A. 1926) – Wisconsin, 1945–47, 1949–51
  • Frederick Van Ness Bradley (1921) – Michigan, 1939–47
  • Abraham Lincoln Brick (undergrad) – Indiana, 1899–1908
  • Katherine Clark (J.D.) – Massachusetts, 2013–present
  • Hansen Clarke (B.F.A.) – Michigan 13th District, 2010–2013
  • Barber Conable (B.A. 1942 Medieval History, LL.B. 1948) – New York 37th District, 1965–73; 35th District, 1973–83; 30th District, 1983–85; President of the World Bank, 1986–91
  • Maurice Connolly (1897) – Iowa, 1913–15
  • Thomas Joseph Downey (B.S. 1970) – New York 2nd District, 1975–93
  • Bob Filner (B.A. 1963 Chemistry, Ph.D. 1973 History of Science) – California 50th District, 1993–2003, 51st District, 2003–2012; San Diego mayor, 21/3/12-present
  • Chris Gibson (MPA 1995, M.A. 1996, Ph.D. 1998) – New York 20th District (2011–2013), 19th District (2013–)
  • Gabrielle Giffords (M.R.P. 1996) – Arizona, 8th District, 2007–2012
  • Norman Judd Gould (M.E. 1899) – New York, 1915–23
  • Gilbert Gude (B.S. 1948) – Maryland 8th District, 1967–77
  • Edwin Arthur Hall – New York, 1939–53
  • Nan Hayworth (M.D. 1985) – New York 19th district, 2011–present
  • Joseph Clifford Hendrix (studies 1870–73; trustee) – New York, 1893–95
  • Lewis Henry (1909) – New York, 1922–23
  • Frank Horton (L.L.B. 1947) – New York 36th District (1963–73), 34th District (1973–83), 29th District, 1983–93
  • Charles Samuel Joelson (B.A. 1937, L.L.B. 1939) – New Jersey, 1961–69
  • Clarence Evans Kilburn (1916) – New York, 1940–65
  • Mark Kirk (B.A. 1981 History) – Illinois 10th District, 2001–2011; Senator, 2011–present
  • Gary Alcide Lee (graduate study 1963) – New York, 1979–83
  • Norman F. Lent (L.L.B. 1957) – New York 5th District (1971–73), 4th District, 1973–93
  • Richard Dean McCarthy (graduate study) – New York, 1965–71
  • Clement Woodnutt Miller (1946 Industrial & Labor Relations) – California, 1959–62
  • Robert J. Mrazek (B.A. 1967 Government) – New York 3rd District, 1983–93
  • James R. Olin (B.E.E. 1943) – Virginia, 1983–93
  • Richard Ottinger (B.A. 1950) – New York (1965–71, 1975–85); founder and second staff member of the Peace Corps (1961–64); Dean of Pace Law School, 1994–99
  • James Parker (1887) – New York 29th District, 1913–33
  • Edward Worthington Pattison (B.A. 1953, L.L.B. 1957) – New York, 1975–79
  • John Raymond Pillion (L.L.B. 1927) – New York, 1953–65
  • Alexander Pirnie (1924, J.D. 1926) – New York 34th District (1959–63), 32nd District, 1963–73
  • Daniel A. Reed (1898) – New York 43rd District (1919–45, 1953–59), 45th District, 1945–53
  • Henry Schoellkopf Reuss (B.A. 1933) – Wisconsin, 1955–83
  • Howard Winfield Robison (1937, law 1939) – New York, 1958–75
  • James A. Roe (School of Military Aeronautics 1917) – New York, 1945–47
  • Kurt Schrader (B.A. 1973) – Oregon 5th District, 2009–present
  • George Shiras III (1881) – Pennsylvania, 1903–05
  • Henry P. Smith III (law 1936) – New York, 1965–75
  • James H. Southard (law 1874) – Ohio, 1895–1907
  • Sam Steiger (attended two years) – Arizona, 1946–47
  • Elmer E. Studley (1894) – New York, 1933–35
  • Frank Sundstrom (1924) – New Jersey 11th District, 1943–49
  • Paul Harold Todd, Jr. (B.S. 1942) – Michigan (1965–67), CEO of Planned Parenthood, 1967–70
  • William Edgar Tuttle, Jr. (undergrad 1887–89) – New Jersey, 1911–15
  • George Ernest Waldo (undergrad 1868–70) – New York, 1905–09
  • John De Witt Warner (1872) – New York, 1891–95
  • John S. Wold (M.S. 1939) – Wyoming, 1969–71

    • Diplomats

  • Parker W. Borg (MPA 1965) – United States Ambassador to Mali (1981–1984) and United States Ambassador to Iceland (1993–1996)
  • William Brownfield (1974) – U.S. Ambassador to Chile (2002–2004), Venezuela (2004–2007), and Colombia (2007–2010)
  • Richard Burt (B.A. 1969) – United States Ambassador to Germany (1985–1989); chief negotiator of the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (rank of Ambassador); Assistant Secretary of State for European and Canadian Affairs (1983–1985)
  • Dwight L. Bush, Sr. (B.A. 1979) – businessman; United States Ambassador to Morocco (2014– )
  • Henry A. Byroade (M.S. 1940 Civil Engineering) – career diplomat serving as U.S. Ambassador to Egypt (1955–1956), South Africa (1956–1959), Afghanistan (1959–1962), Burma (1963–1968), Philippines (1969–1973), Pakistan (1973–1977)
  • Timothy M. Carney (1975–1976 Southeast Asian Studies) – United States Ambassador to Sudan (1995–1997), United States Ambassador to Haiti (1998–1999)
  • Chan Heng Chee (M.A. 1967 Government) – Singapore's Ambassador to the U.S. (1996–2012) and to Mexico (1989–1991)
  • Arthur Hobson Dean (B.A. 1921, L.L.B. 1923) – international law expert, chief U.S. negotiator at Panmunjeom, assisted with negotiations for Nuclear Test Ban Treaty, delegate to the United Nations
  • Eric S. Edelman (B.A. 1972 History) – United States Ambassador to Finland (1998–2001), United States Ambassador to Turkey (2003–2005)
  • Glenn W. Ferguson (B.A. 1950 Economics, MBA 1951) – United States Ambassador to Kenya, 1966–1969, Academic administrator
  • Robert Ford (M.A. 1940 History) – Canadian Ambassador to Colombia (1957–1959), Yugoslavia (1959–1961), Egypt and Sudan (1961–1964), the USSR (1964–1980) and Mongolia (1974–1980); a Companion of the Order of Canada
  • Daniel Fried (B.A. 1974) – career diplomat; United States Ambassador to Poland (1997–2000)
  • William vanden Heuvel (Bachelor and Law, editor-in-chief of Cornell Law Review) – U.S. Ambassador to the European office of the United Nations (1977–79) and United States Deputy Ambassador to the United Nations (1979–1981)
  • John H. Holdridge (1948–1950 Chinese language) – United States Ambassador to Singapore (1975–1978), United States Ambassador to Indonesia (1982–1986)
  • Jerome H. Holland (B.S. 1939, M.S. 1941) – First black member of the New York Stock Exchange; President of Delaware State University (1953–60) and Hampton University (1960–70); United States Ambassador to Sweden, 1970–73; chairman of the American Red Cross, 1979–85
  • Makila James ('79) – United States Ambassador to Swaziland (2012–2016)
  • Alan Keyes (undergrad 1968–69, transferred) – diplomat, U.S. Presidential candidate, 1996, 2000; U.S. Senate candidate from Maryland (1988, 1992) and Illinois (2004)
  • Edwin Jackson Kyle (M.S. 1902) – United States Ambassador to Guatemala, 1945–48; namesake of Kyle Field
  • Sol Linowitz (J.D. 1938, Trustee, 1966–95) – diplomat, ambassador, Chairman of Xerox, 1960–66; Presidential Medal of Freedom recipient, 1998
  • Simon Mbilinyi (B.Sc.) – Tanzanian Ambassador to Belgium and Luxembourg, 1985–1989; Minister of Finance (1995–1996)
  • C. Steven McGann (1975–1978 Graduate studies) – United States Ambassador to Fiji, Kiribati, Nauru, Tonga, and Tuvalu (2008–2011)
  • Cameron Munter (B.A. 1976) – United States Ambassador to Serbia (2007–2009), United States Ambassador to Pakistan (2010–2012)
  • Michael Punke (J.D. 1989) – United States Ambassador to the World Trade Organization (2011- )
  • G. Frederick Reinhardt (M.A. 1935) – career diplomat, U.S. Ambassador to South Vietnam (1955–1957),to the United Arab Republic and North Yemen (1960–1961) and to Italy (1961–1968)
  • Hu Shih (B.A. 1914) – China's Ambassador to the U.S., 1938–42; philosopher; poet
  • Willard Straight (B.Arch. 1901) – American diplomat, investment banker, publisher, World War I veteran, namesake of Willard Straight Hall
  • Sao-Ke Alfred Sze (B.A. 1901) – China's Ambassador to the U.S. and later UK; founding member of World Bank; first Chinese student to attend Cornell
  • Sandra Louise Vogelgesang – United States Ambassador to Nepal (1994–1997)

    • Judges and lawyers

  • Floyd Abrams (B.A. 1956) – co-counsel, The New York Times' "Pentagon Papers" case
  • Ronnie Abrams (B.A. 1990) – Federal Judge of the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York (2012–)
  • Simon L. Adler (LL.B. 1889) – United States District Judge of the United States District Court for the Western District of New York and New York State lawmaker
  • Barry T. Albin (J.D. 1976) – Associate Justice of the New Jersey Supreme Court (2002–)
  • Mary Donlon Alger (LL.B. 1920) – U.S. Customs Court Judge and first female editor-in-chief of the Cornell Law Quarterly and of a US law review
  • Mark J. Bennett (J.D. 1979) – Attorney General of Hawaii
  • Richard M. Berman (B.S. 1964) – Judge (1998–2012), Senior Judge (2012–) of the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York
  • Boris Bittker (B.A. 1938) – prominent professor
  • William F. Bleakley (LL.B. 1904) – New York Supreme Court Justice, first Westchester County Executive, 1936 Republican nominee for Governor of New York
  • Frederic Block (LL.B. 1959) – Judge (1994–2005), Senior Judge (2005–) of the United States District Court for the Eastern District of New York
  • Robert Boochever (B.A. 1939, J.D. 1941) – Judge (1980–1986), Senior Judge (1986–2011) of the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit; Justice (1972–1980) and Chief Justice (1975–1978) of the Alaska Supreme Court
  • Leonie Brinkema (J.D. 1976) – U.S. District Court Judge
  • George B. Clementson (LL.B. 1892) – author of The Road Rights and Liabilities of Wheelmen, the first treatise on bicycle law
  • Brian Cogan (J.D. 1979) – Federal judge of the United States District Court for the Eastern District of New York (2006–)
  • Christopher C. Conner (B.A. 1979) – Federal judge of the United States District Court for the Middle District of Pennsylvania (2002–)
  • Paul A. Crotty (LL.B. 1967) – Federal Judge, Southern District of New York
  • Leonard C. Crouch (Ph.B. 1889) – New York Supreme Court Justice; New York Court of Appeals Judge
  • William H. Cuddeback (B.A. 1874) – New York Court of Appeals Judge (1912–1919)
  • Henry White Edgerton (A.B. 1910) – Judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit (1937–1963)
  • Nancy Garlock Edmunds (B.A. 1969) – Judge of the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Michigan (1992–)
  • Harry T. Edwards (B.A. 1962 Industrial & Labor Relations) – Chief justice, U.S. Court of Appeals
  • John T. Elfvin (B.E.E. 1942 Electrical Engineering) – Federal judge of the U.S. District Court for the Western District of New York (1974–1987)
  • Dana Fabe (B.A. 1973) – Justice (1996–), Chief Justice (2000–2003, 2006–2009, 2012–2015) of Alaska Supreme Court
  • Thomas E. Fairchild (B.A. 1934) – Judge (1966–1975), Chief Judge (1975–1981), Senior Judge (1981–2007) of the United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit
  • Peter T. Farrell (B.A. 1922) – Queens County Court judge who presided over the trial of bank robber Willie Sutton
  • Phillip S. Figa (J.D. 1976) – Federal Judge of the United States District Court for the District of Colorado (2003–2008)
  • Paul L. Friedman (B.A. 1965) – Judge (1994–2009), Senior Judge (2009–) of the United States District Court for the District of Columbia
  • Charles Garside (LL.B. 1923) – New York City municipal judge, active in New York State Government
  • Nina Gershon (B.A. 1962 English) – United States Magistrate Judge of the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York (1976–1996), Judge (1996–2008) and Senior Judge (2008–) of the United States District Court for the Eastern District of New York
  • Douglas H. Ginsburg (B.A. 1970) – Chief Judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit
  • Michael Goldsmith (B.S. 1972, J.D. 1975) – leading Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act (RICO) expert and ALS advocate
  • William E. Grauer (B.A. 1971, J.D. 1974) – partner, Cooley LLP
  • Peter W. Hall (J.D. 1977) – Judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit (2004–)
  • Emily C. Hewitt (A.B. 1966) – Judge and Chief Judge of the United States Court of Federal Claims
  • Frank H. Hiscock (A.B. 1875) – Chief Judge of the New York Court of Appeals (1916–1926), Chairman of Cornell Board of Trustees, and decided the Chester Gillette murder case.
  • David N. Hurd (B.S. 1959) – Federal judge for the U.S. District Court, Northern District of New York
  • Edith Jones (B.A. 1971 Economics) – Judge, Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals
  • Barbara Milano Keenan (B.A. 1971) – Judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit (2010–), Justice of the Supreme Court of Virginia (1991–2010) and Judge of the Virginia Court of Appeals (1985–1991)
  • Gladys Kessler (B.A. 1959) – Federal judge (1994–2007), Senior Judge (2007–) for the United States District Court for the District of Columbia
  • Theodore W. Kheel (B.A. 1935, Law 1937) – attorney and labor mediator
  • H. David Kotz (J.D. 1990) – Inspector General of the SEC
  • John A. Kronstadt (B.A. 1973) – Judge of the Los Angeles County Superior Court (2002–2011),Judge of the United States District Court for the Central District of California (2011–)
  • Frederick Bernard Lacey (LL.B. 1948) – Federal judge of the U.S. District Court for the District of New Jersey
  • Lloyd Francis MacMahon (B.A. 1936, LL.B. 1938) – Federal judge of the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York (1959–1982)
  • Andrew J. McDonald (B.A.) – Associate Justice of the Connecticut Supreme Court, Member of the Connecticut Senate (2003–2011)
  • L. Londell McMillan (B.S. 1987 ILR) – entertainment attorney and publisher
  • Sherman Moreland (LL.B. 1894) – Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the Philippines (1909–1917)
  • Alison J. Nathan (B.A. 1994, J.D. 2000) – Editor-in-Chief of the Cornell Law Review; Federal judge for the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York (2011–)
  • Edward Nottingham (B.A. 1969) – United States federal judge in the United States District Court for the District of Colorado
  • Walter Chadwick Noyes (1888) – Judge, United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit
  • Edward R. O'Malley (LL.B. 1891) – former New York Attorney General and justice of the New York Supreme Court
  • Anne M. Patterson (J.D. 1983) – Associate Justice of the New Jersey Supreme Court (2011–)
  • Marsha J. Pechman (B.A. 1973) – Federal judge (1999–2011), Chief Federal judge (2011–) of the United States District Court for the Western District of Washington
  • Pamela Pepper (J.D. 1989) – Judge of the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Wisconsin (2014–)
  • Philip Perry (J.D. 1990) – General Counsel for the Department of Homeland Security
  • Cuthbert W. Pound (1887; law professor) – member of New York State Senate (1894–1895); Chief Judge of the New York Court of Appeals (1932–1934)
  • Sharon Prost (B.S. 1973) – Federal Judge (2001–2014), Chief Judge (2014–present) of the United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit
  • Leonardo Quisumbing (LL.M.) – Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the Philippines (1998–2009)
  • Aubrey Eugene Robinson, Jr. (B.A. 1943, LL.B. 1947) – Judge (1966–1982), Chief Judge (1982–1992) and Senior Judge (1992–2000) of the United States District Court for the District of Columbia
  • Robin S. Rosenbaum (B.A. 1988) – Judge, United States District Court for the Southern District of Florida
  • Max Rosenn (B.A. 1929) – Judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit
  • Barbara Jacobs Rothstein (B.A. 1960) – Judge (February 20, 1980 – September 1, 2011), Chief Judge (1987–1994) of the United States District Court for the Western District of Washington; Senior Judge of the United States District Court for the District of Columbia (September 1, 2011–)
  • Amy J. St. Eve (B.S. 1987, J.D. 1990) – Federal Judge of the United States District Court for the Northern District of Illinois (2002–)
  • Jan Schlichtmann (J.D. 1977) – civil action lawyer whose story was made into the film A Civil Action, in which Schlichtmann is played by John Travolta
  • Frederic Palen Schoonmaker (B.A. 1891) – Federal judge for the United States District Court for the Western District of Pennsylvania (1922–1945)
  • Leah Ward Sears (B.S. 1976) – Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of Georgia
  • Sang-Hyun Song (J.S.D. 1970) – Judge (2003–2015) and President (2009–2015) of the International Criminal Court
  • Jonathan R. Steinberg (B.A. 1960) – Judge of the United States Court of Appeals for Veterans Claims (1990–2005)
  • Harold Montelle Stephens (A.B. 1909) – Judge (1935–1948) and chief judge (1948–1955) on the United States Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit
  • Joseph L. Tauro (LL.B. 1956) – Federal judge for the United States District Court for the District of Massachusetts
  • Elbert Tuttle (B.A. 1918, LL.B. 1923) – Chief judge, U.S. Court of Appeals; ruled on many fundamental 1954 civil-rights cases
  • Richard C. Wesley (J.D. 1974) – Judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit (2003–)

    • Medal of Honor recipients

  • Alan Louis Eggers – Sergeant, United States Army, World War I; awarded for heroic actions near Le Catelet, France
  • Webb Hayes (attended 1873–1875)
  • Matt Urban (Matty L. Urbanowitz, B.A. 1941, History, Government) – Lieutenant Colonel, United States Army (1941–46), 60th Infantry, 9th Infantry Division, World War II; awarded for valorous actions in France and Belgium

    • Other government

  • Carol Aichele (B.A.) – Secretary of the Commonwealth, Pennsylvania (2011–2015)
  • Steve Aichele (B.A. 1970) – former Chief of Staff of Governor Tom Corbett
  • Alan A. Altshuler (B.A.) – Massachusetts Secretary of Transportation (1971–1975); former Dean of the Harvard Graduate School of Design and of the Graduate School of Public Administration at New York University; fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (1997)
  • Jane Amero (B.A. 1963) – Member of Maine Senate (1992–2000)
  • Irma Anderson (B.S. Nursing) – Mayor of the city of Richmond, California (2001–2006)
  • Patrice M. Arent ( J.D. 1981) – Member of the Utah House of Representatives (January 1, 1997 – December 31, 2002, January 1, 2011–) and the Utah State Senate (January 1, 2003 – December 31, 2006)
  • Byron M. Baer – Member of the New Jersey General Assembly (1972–1993) and of the New Jersey Senate (1994–2005)
  • Calvin Barton (1899) – Mayor of Norwalk, Connecticut (1921–1923)
  • Ruth Bascom (Master's in Social Psychology) – first female Mayor of Eugene, Oregon (1993–1996)
  • Bob Bastian (Veterinary Medicine 1963) – Member of the Pennsylvania House of Representatives (1999–2008)
  • George Bell, Jr. (LL.B., 1894), United States Army Major General who commanded the 33rd Infantry Division in World War I and later the United States VI Corps
  • George A. Blauvelt (1890) – member of the New York State Assembly (1911, 1912) and of the New York State Senate (1913, 1914)
  • Peter Bowman (B.S. 1960 Electrical Engineering) – member of the Maine Senate (2006–2010)
  • William B. Broydrick – Wisconsin politician
  • David Carlucci (B.S. 2002, ILR) – Member of the New York Senate (January 1, 2011–)
  • Nelson W. Cheney (B.A. 1899) – Member of the New York State Assembly (1916–1929) and of the New York State Senate (1930–1938)
  • Derek Chollet (B.A. 1993) – Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Security Affairs (2012–2014)
  • Parley Parker Christensen – Utah and California politician, Esperantist
  • Bruce C. Clarke – United States Army general
  • Clem S. Clarke (two years, Geology) – oilman and Republican politician from Shreveport, Louisiana
  • David S. Cohen (B.A. 1985) – Deputy Director of the CIA (2015–), Assistant Secretary for Terrorist Financing (2009–2011)
  • Ernest E. Cole (B.S. 1895) – Commissioner of Education of the State of New York, 1940–1942
  • Rhonda Cornum (Ph.D. 1980 Biochemistry and Nutrition) – former United States Army Brigadier general; former prisoner of war
  • Edwin L. Crawford – first county executive of Broome County, New York
  • Clifford W. Crouch (AAS 1965, Dairy Science) – Member of the New York State Assembly
  • Charles d'Autremont (1868–1871) – Mayor of Duluth, Minnesota
  • Samuel B. Dicker (1911) – 58th Mayor of Rochester, New York (1939–1955)
  • Elizabeth B. Drewry (Ph.D 1933) – archivist with the National Archives and director of the Franklin D. Roosevelt Presidential Library and Museum
  • Harriet Drummond (B.S. 1974) – Member of the Alaska House of Representatives (2013– )
  • Robert Flanagan (J.D. 1974) – Secretary of the Maryland Department of Transportation (2003–2007) and Member of the Maryland House of Delegates (1987–2003)
  • John Ford – Member of the New York State Senate (1896–1900)
  • Stephen Friedman (B.A. 1959; Trustee, 1993–) – Chairman of the President's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board (2005–); former assistant for economic policy to President George W. Bush (2002–04) and director of the United States National Economic Council, 2003–04; former chairman of the Goldman Sachs Group, 1990–94
  • Vincent J. Gentile (B.A.) – Member of the New York State Senate (1997–2002) and of the New York City Council (2003–2017)
  • Kim Gillan (Masters 1975) – Member of the Montana House of Representatives (1996–2004) and of the Montana Senate (2004–2012)
  • Armando Samper Gnecco (B.S. 1943 Agricultural Economy) – Minister of Agriculture of Colombia
  • Richard N. Gottfried (B.A. 1968) – Member of the New York State Assembly since 1971; more than 40 years
  • Jesse Root Grant (undergrad 1874–77, dropped out) – son of U.S. President Ulysses S Grant
  • Geoffrey Gratwick (Post-Doctoral Fellowship) – physician and Member of the Maine Senate (2012–)
  • Mark J. Green (B.A. 1967) – government consumer-affairs activist, New York Public Advocate (1994–2001)
  • Jo Handelsman (B.S. 1979) – Associate Director for Science at the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (2014- )
  • Howard Hart – Central Intelligence Agency officer
  • Isaac Herzog – Israeli politician
  • John Hillen (MBA) – 15th Assistant Secretary of State for Political-Military Affairs (2005–2007)
  • Dennis Hollingsworth (Dairy Science) – Member of California State Legislature (2000–2010)
  • Clinton T. Horton (B.A. 1898, LL.B. 1899) – Member of the New York State Assembly (1912–1914) and of the New York State Senate (1915–1916), a Justice of the New York Supreme Court (1922–1935)
  • Edward M. House (undergrad 1877–80, dropped out) – Foreign policy advisor for Woodrow Wilson and Franklin Delano Roosevelt
  • Alyson Huber (B.S.) – Member of the California State Assembly (2008–2012); judge of the Superior Court of Sacramento County in California (2012–)
  • Henry W. Jeffers (B.S. 1899) – Chairman of the New Jersey Republican State Committee (1935–1937); inventor of the Rotolactor
  • Phyllis Kahn (A.B. 1957 Physics) – Member of the Minnesota House of Representatives for more than 40 years (1973–)
  • Florence Kelley (B.A. 1882) – political and social reformer
  • Donald Kerr (B.S. 1963) – Assistant Director of the F.B.I.; former Director of Los Alamos National Laboratory
  • Akhlaqur Rahman Kidwai (Ph.D. 1950) – Governor of Bihar (1979–85, 1993–98), West Bengal (1998–1999), and Haryana (2004–2009), India
  • Stephen D. Krasner (B.A. 1963) – Director of Policy Planning at the U.S. State Department, professor of political science at Stanford University
  • Celso Lafer (Ph.D. 1970) – Foreign Minister (1992–1992, 2001–2002) and Commerce Minister (1999–1999) of Brazil
  • Gail Lavielle (B.A. English) – Member of the Connecticut House of Representatives (2011–)
  • Chih-Kung Lee (M.S. 1985, Ph.D. 1987) – Minister of Economic Affairs of the Republic of China (2016–)
  • Harold O. Levy (B.A. 1974, J.D. 1977) – Chancellor of New York City Schools 2000–2002
  • David R. Macdonald (B.S. 1952) – United States Assistant Secretary of the Treasury (Enforcement, Operations, and Tariff Affairs) (1974–1976), Under Secretary of the Navy (1976–1977), Deputy U.S. Trade Representative (1981–1983)
  • William Magee (Bachelor's 1961, Agricultural Economics) – Democratic Member of the New York State Assembly
  • Bajrakitiyabha Mahidol (LL.M. 2002, J.S.D. 2005) – Princess of Thailand
  • Stanley Makowski (attended with a certificate from ILR) – Mayor of the City of Buffalo, New York (1973–1977)
  • Kyle E. McSlarrow – Deputy Secretary of the U.S. Department of Energy
  • Daneek Miller – Member of the New York City Council from the 27th District (January 1, 2014–)
  • Wheeler Milmoe (A.B. 1917) – Member of the New York State Assembly 1934–1952 and New York State Senate 1953–1958
  • Yatarō Mishima (M.A) – 8th Governor of the Bank of Japan (1913–1919)
  • E. Blackburn Moore – Member (1933–1967), Speaker (1950–1967) of the Virginia House of Delegates
  • Sherman Moreland (B.Litt. 1892, LL.B. 1894) – Member of the New York State Assembly (1903–1907) and Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the Philippines
  • Becky Morgan (B.S. 1960) – California State Senator (1984–1993)
  • Svante Myrick (A.B. 2009) – Mayor of Ithaca, New York (2012- ); former member of Ithaca Common Council for the 4th Ward
  • Benjamin Nichols (B.S. 1946, M.S. 1949) – Cornell professor of electrical and computer engineering and Socialist mayor of Ithaca (1989–1995)
  • Kenneth Nichols (B.S., M.S. Civil Engineering) – United States Army Major General and an engineer who worked on the Manhattan Project; member of the National Academy of Engineering (1968)
  • Michael F. Nozzolio (Bachelor's ILR, Master's in Public Administration and Agricultural Economics) – former Member of the New York State Assembly (1983–1992) and the New York State Senate (1993–)
  • Iyabo Obasanjo-Bello (Ph.D. 1994) – former Nigerian Senator (2007–2011); daughter of former Nigerian President Olusegun Obasanjo
  • William O'Brien (attended 2 years, Mechanical Engineering) – Member of the Minnesota House of Representatives (1963–1967), 11th Minnesota State Auditor (1969–1971)
  • Bill O'Neill – Member of the New Mexico Legislature (2009–)
  • Shih-wei Pan (M.A. Ph.D. ILR) – former Minister of Labor of the Republic of China
  • John M. Paxton, Jr. (B.S. 1973, M.Eng. 1974) – Major General United States Marine Corps, Assistant Commandant of the Marine Corps
  • Ralph Perlman (Bachelor's) – Louisiana state budget director, 1967–1988
  • Charles Gilbert Peterson – Mayor of Lockport, New York; contractor
  • Fred B. Pitcher (B.S. 1888) – New York State Senator (1919–1922)
  • Juan Carlos Esguerra Portocarrero (LL.M. 1973) – Minister of National Defence of Colombia (1995–1997) and Justice and Law of Colombia (2011–2012); Ambassador of Colombia to the United States (1997–1998)
  • Roberto Prats (B.A. 1990 Public Political Analysis and Economics) – Senator of Puerto Rico
  • Samuel Rabin – Member of the New York State Assembly (1945–1954); New York Supreme Court Justice
  • Charlie Rodríguez (B.A. 1976 in Government and History) – 11th President of the Senate of Puerto Rico (1997–2000)
  • Martin Romualdez (B.A. 1985 Government) – Member of the House of Representatives of the Philippines (2007–)
  • Anna E. Roosevelt (did not graduate) – daughter of U.S. President Franklin Roosevelt
  • Joseph D. Scholtz (B.A. 1912) – Mayor of Louisville, Kentucky (1937–1941)
  • Martha Schrader (B.A.) – Member of the Oregon Senate (2009–2011); Clackamas County, Oregon Commissioner (2003–2009, 2012–)
  • José Serra (M.A., Ph.D. Economics) – Brazilian politician who served as a Brazil Congressman, Senator, Minister of Planning and Minister of Health, Mayor of São Paulo and Governor of São Paulo state
  • Miriam Shearing (B.A. Philosophy) – Justice of the Supreme Court of Nevada (1993–2005)
  • Samuel S. Slater ( B.L. and LL.B. 1894) – Member of the New York State Assembly (1899–1900) and of the New York State Senate (1901–1902)
  • Gayle Slossberg (B.S. 1987) – Connecticut State Senator (2005–)
  • William T. Smith (1938) – Member of the New York State Senate (1963–1986)
  • Robert Sopuck (M.S. 1975) – Member of Canadian Parliament (2010–)
  • Ellen Spiegel (B.S. 1984, Consumer Economics and Public Policy) – Member of the Nevada Assembly (2008–)
  • Karen Spilka (B.A.) – Massachusetts State Senator (2005–); Member of the Massachusetts House of Representatives (2001–2005)
  • Thomas J. Surpless (1900) – Member of the New York State Assembly (1906–1909)
  • Gaye Symington (M.B.A. 1983) – Member (1996–2009), Speaker (January 5, 2005 – January 8, 2009) of the Vermont House of Representatives
  • Mamintal A.J. Tamano (LL.M. 1958) – Filipino statesman; former Senator of the Philippines
  • Rick Taylor (Master's 1998 ILR) – Member of the Pennsylvania House of Representatives (2007–2010)
  • David William Thomas (B.A. in classical studies prior to 1900) – Louisiana journalist, attorney, professor, politician
  • Martín Travieso (Law 1903) – Member of the Puerto Rico Senate (1917–1921), Mayor of San Juan, Puerto Rico (1921–1923), 4th Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of Puerto Rico (1944–1948)
  • James S. Truman (Ph.B. 1896, LL.B. 1898) – Member of the New York State Senate (1925–1928)
  • Ting-kuei Tsay (Ph.D. 1982) – Vice-Chairman of Taiwan's Environmental Protection Administration, 2002–2004
  • Wu Tsung-tsong (M.S. 1983, Ph.D. 1987) – Minister without Portfolio, Executive Yuan, Republic of China (2016–)
  • William Wallace, Baron Wallace of Saltaire (Ph.D.) – scholar and Liberal Democrat peer
  • Andrew C. Weber – Assistant Secretary of Defense for Nuclear, Chemical & Biological Defense Programs; Obama administration
  • Roy P. Wilcox (LL.B. 1897) – Wisconsin politician
  • Henry D. Williams – Member of the New York State Assembly (1918) and of the New York State Senate (1925 – 1930)
  • Mitchell Van Yahres (B.S. 1949) – Mayor of Charlottesville, Virginia (1970–1972) and Member of the Virginia House of Delegates (1981–2005)
  • Frank L. Young (B.A. 1888) – Member of the New York State Assembly (1909–1912) and a Justice of the New York Supreme Court (1922–1930)

    • Founders

  • Richard Baker (B.S. 1988, Hotel Administration) – founder, President, and CEO of NRDC Equity Partners and Hudson's Bay Company, the owner of Saks Fifth Avenue, Gilt Groupe, Lord & Taylor, The Bay, Home Outfitters, Zellers, and Fields
  • Leo V. Berger (LL.B. 1956) – founder of Apex Marine Corporation
  • Amit Bhatia (B.S. 2001) – founder of Swordfish Investments; Vice Chairman of Queen's Park Rangers
  • Harry E. Bovay, Jr. (1936 Civil Engineering) – founder and president of Bovay Engineers, Inc. and Mid-South Telecommunications Company; member of the National Academy of Engineering (1978)
  • Wendell Brown (B.S. 1982) – co-founder of Teleo, eVoice, LiveOps, and Nularis
  • Willis Carrier (M.E. 1901) – founder of Carrier Corporation; inventor of air conditioning
  • Joseph Coors (B.Chem. 1939, Chem. E. 1940) – co-founder of Heritage Foundation
  • Mac Cummings (B.A. 2001) – co-founder of Terakeet Corporation; Director of Internet Finance
  • Tom Dinwoodie (B.S. 1978, Civil and Environmental Engineering) – Cleantech entrepreneur, inventor, and founder of SunPower Corporation Systems (formerly PowerLight Corporation)
  • Ira Drukier – hotelier and philanthropist
  • David Duffield (B.E.E. 1962, M.B.A. 1964) – co-founder of PeopleSoft and Workday
  • David Edgerton (B.A. 1947, Hotel Administration) – co-founder of Burger King Corporation
  • David Einhorn (B.A. 1991) – founder and President of Greenlight Capital; hedge fund manager
  • Chuck Feeney (B.S. 1956 Hotel Administration) – co-founder of Duty Free Shoppers Group; founder and Director of Atlantic Philanthropies; founder of General Atlantic
  • Russell W. Galbut (B.S. 1974 Hotel Administration) – co-founder of Crescent Heights, a real estate development company
  • Frank Gannett (B.A. 1898) – founder of Gannett, the largest U.S. newspaper publisher; namesake of Gannett Health Center
  • Eula Gibson (Hotel Administration) – co-Founder of Kentucky Fried Chicken
  • Paul Graham (B.A.) – co-founder of Viaweb, sold for $46.6 million to Yahoo! and became Yahoo! Stores; Lisp programmer, author
  • Leroy Grumman (M.E. 1916) – founder of Grumman Aerospace Corporation
  • Myra Hart (B.A. 1962, M.B.A. 1981, Trustee, 1999–) – one of four co-founders of Staples, Inc.; professor at Harvard Business School
  • Jeff Hawkins (B.S. 1979 Electrical Engineering) – founder of Palm, Inc. and Handspring; inventor of the Palm Pilot; member of the National Academy of Engineering (2003)
  • Christopher Hemmeter (B.S. 1962, Hotel Administration) – founder and Chairman of Hemmeter Companies
  • Irwin M. Jacobs (B.E.E. 1956) – co-founder and Chairman of Qualcomm; UCSD and MIT engineering professor, pioneer of CDMA wireless technology, philanthropist; recipient of numerous awards including National Medal of Technology and Innovation (1994), Marconi Prize (2011), IEEE Medal of Honor (2013); member of the National Academy of Engineering (1982)
  • Stephen A. Jarislowsky (B.S. 1946 Mechanical Engineering) – businessman and philanthropist; founder, Chairman, and CEO of Jarislowsky Fraser Limited
  • H. Richard Johnson (B.S. 1946 Electrical Engineering) – co-founder, President, and CEO of Watkins-Johnson Company; member of the National Academy of Engineering (1973)
  • Seth Klarman (B.A. 1979) – founder and Chairman of the Baupost Group, a noted hedge fund manager
  • Jules B. Kroll (B.A. 1963) – founder of Kroll Inc. and the modern investigations, intelligence, and security industry; responsible for tracking the assets of Jean-Claude Duvalier, Ferdinand and Imelda Marcos, and Saddam Hussein
  • David Litman (1979, 1982) – founder and CEO of Hotels.com
  • Yossi Maiman – founder and owner of the Merhav Group, shareholder of the East Mediterranean Gas Company, and former chairman, chief executive officer and president of the Ampal-American Israel Corporation
  • James McLamore (B.A. 1947, Hotel Administration) – co-founder of Burger King Corporation
  • Gary Mendell (B.S. 1979 Hotel Administration) – founder, Chairman, and CEO of HEI Hotels & Resorts
  • Robert Warren Miller (B.S. 1955, Hotel Administration) – co-founder of Duty Free Shoppers Group
  • Howard Milstein (B.A. 1973) – real estate developer, financier, and philanthropist; Chairman, President and Chief Executive Officer of New York Private Bank & Trust
  • Jeff Morgan (B.S. City and Regional Planning) – founder of Global Heritage Fund
  • Drew Nieporent (B.S. 1977 Hotel Administration) – founder of Myriad Restaurant Group
  • Franklin W. Olin (B.C.E. 1886) – founder of Olin Corporation; gave gift to build Olin Hall in memory of his son Franklin W. Olin, Jr.
  • John M. Olin (B.S. 1913 Chemistry) – founder of John M. Olin Foundation, President, Olin Corporation; namesake of Olin Library
  • Spencer Truman Olin (B.S. 1921 Mechanical Engineering) – industrialist and philanthropist; an executive of the Olin Corporation; Republican Party leader
  • Peter Busch Orthwein (1968, MBA 1969) – co-founder and Chairman of Thor Industries
  • Nathaniel A. Owings – founding partner of Skidmore, Owings and Merrill (SOM)
  • Harris Rosen (B.S. 1961 Hotel Administration) – founder of Rosen Hotels and Resorts; major donor of Rosen College of Hospitality Management (which was renamed due to his major donation)
  • Rob Ryan (B.A. 1969) – founder and Chairman of Ascend Communications
  • William Sanders (B.S. 1964) – founder of LaSalle Partners (later merged to form Jones Lang LaSalle); founder and Chairman of Security Capital Group Incorporated; former Chairman of the National Association of Real Estate Investment Trusts (NAREIT)
  • Leonard Schleifer (B.S. 1970) – founder and CEO of Regeneron
  • Seth M. Siegel (B.S. 1974, J. D. 1978) – founder of The Beanstalk Group
  • Robert F. Smith (B.S. Chemical Engineering) – investor; founder, chairman and CEO of Vista Equity Partners; ranked by Forbes in 2015 as 268th richest man in America, and the second wealthiest African-American
  • Elmer Ambrose Sperry – founder of Sperry Corporation, known for his invention of Gyrostabilizer and the Gyrocompass; recipient of John Fritz Medal (1927) and Elliott Cresson Medal from the Franklin Institute (1929)
  • Clarence W. Spicer (Engineering student) – founder of what is now Dana Holding Corporation; engineer, inventor, known for invention of Universal joint; inductee into the Automotive Hall of Fame
  • Michael Tien (B.S. 1972 Electrical Engineering) – founder and Chairman of the apparel retail company G2000
  • Robert V. Tishman (1937) – founder of Tishman Speyer Properties
  • Robert I. Toll (B.A. 1966) – co-founder of Toll Brothers
  • Deena Varshavskaya – founder and CEO of Wanelo
  • Jay Walker (B.S. 1977 Industrial Relations) – founder of Priceline.com; founder and chairman of Walker Digital
  • Colston Warne (Bachelor's 1920, Master's 1921 Economics) – co-founder of the Consumers Union and its Consumer Reports monthly magazine and served as its president for 43 years; Professor of Economics at Amherst College (1930–1969)
  • Sanford I. Weill (B.A. 1955 Government) – former Chairman and CEO of Citigroup; founder of Shearson Loeb Rhoades, sold for $930 million to American Express; namesake of Weill Cornell Medical College
  • David F. Welch (Ph.D. 1985 Electrical Engineering) – co-founder, President of Infinera Corp; member of the National Academy of Engineering (2016)
  • Justin DuPratt White (1890) – co-founder of White & Case law firm; trustee of the Cornell University Board of Trustees (1928–1939)
  • Robin Wolaner (B.S. 1975 Industrial and Labor Relations) – founder of Parenting Magazine
  • John Zimmer (B.S. 2006 Hotel Administration) – co-founder and COO of Zimride; co-founder and President of Lyft

    • Chairpersons, CEOs, executives

  • Lou Abin (B.S. 1992, School of Hotel Administration) – owner at TAO Group
  • Al Bernardin (1952) – creator of the McDonald's Quarter Pounder; former Vice President of Product Development for McDonald's
  • Mark Bertolini (MBA 1984) – CEO and President of Aetna
  • Jeffrey Bleustein (B.S. 1960, B.M.E 1961) – Chairman and former CEO of Harley Davidson
  • Val A. Browning (B.S. 1917) – President of Browning Arms Company
  • Howard J. Bruschi (B.S. and M.S. Electrical Engineering) – retired Senior Vice President and Chief Technology Officer at Westinghouse Electric Company; member of the National Academy of Engineering (2008)
  • Walton E. Burdick (B.S. 1955, ILR) – Senior Vice President of IBM
  • Walter S. Carpenter, Jr. (undergrad 1906–09, dropped out) – President (1940–48) and Chairman (1948–62) of DuPont
  • Abby Joseph Cohen (B.A. 1973 Economics and Computer Science, trustee) – partner and Senior Investment Strategist of Goldman Sachs; President of Global Markets Institute (GMI), Goldman Sachs
  • Jennie Chua (B.S. 1971, Hotel Administration) – CEO of Capitaland Residential, former CEO of Raffles Holdings
  • Heather Cho (B.S. 1999, Hotel) – former VP of Korean Air, fired after Nut Rage incident
  • Adolph Coors II (B.A. 1907) – second President of Coors Brewing Company
  • Pete Coors (B.S. 1969 Industrial Engineering) – executive of Coors Brewing Company; Senatorial candidate, 2004
  • Luciano Coutinho (Ph.D. Economics) – President of the Brazilian Development Bank (BNDES)
  • Eric Daniels (B.A. 1973) – former CEO of Lloyds Banking Group
  • Alonzo G. Decker, Jr. (B.S. 1929 Electrical Engineering) – former president, CEO and the chairman of the board of Black & Decker; known for developing power tools for use in the home, including the first cordless electric drill
  • Kenneth T. Derr (B.S. 1959 Mechanical Engineering, M.B.A. 1960, trustee) – Chairman and CEO of Chevron, 1989–99
  • Dave Dombrowski (undergrad 1974–75, transferred) – President, CEO, and General Manager of the Detroit Tigers
  • E. Linn Draper Jr. (Ph.D. 1970) – former Chairman, President, and Chief Executive Officer of American Electric Power Company; member of the National Academy of Engineering (1992)
  • Jennifer Dulski (B.A., MBA) – President and Chief Operating Officer of Change.org
  • Leon Kraig Eskenazi (M.Sc. 1980) – partner and Managing Director of IGNIA Partners L.L.C.; former President of Mars Inc. in Latin America
  • Reggie Fils-Aimé (B.S. 1983 Applied Economics) – President and COO of Nintendo of America (2006–)
  • Stephen Friedman (B.A. 1959; trustee, 1993–) – Chairman of The Goldman Sachs Group, 1990–94; Chairman of the President's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board (2005–); former assistant for economic policy to President George W. Bush (2002–04); director of the United States National Economic Council, 2003–04
  • Robert F. Gilkeson (B.S. 1939 Electrical Engineering) – President (1965–1970), President and CEO (1970–1971), CEO and Chairman (1971–1982) of PECO Energy Company; member of the National Academy of Engineering (1978)
  • Martin Goland (B.S. 1940 Mechanic Engineering) – President of Southwest Research Institute (1959–1997); member of the National Academy of Engineering (1967)
  • Harvey Golub (attended 1956–1958) – President (1991–1993), Chairman and CEO (1993–2001) of American Express; Chairman of the Board at the Campbell Soup Company (2004–2009); Chairman of the American International Group (AIG) (2009–2010); Chairman of the Board of Advisors of Miller Buckfire (2011–)
  • Byron Grote (Ph.D. 1981 Quantitative Analysis) – Chief Financial Officer of BP
  • Raj Gupta (M.S. 1969 Operations Research) – CEO and president of Rohm and Haas
  • Robert Harrison (B.A. 1976 Government) – CEO of the Clinton Global Initiative and Chairman of the Cornell University Board of Trustees; Rhodes Scholar
  • Dan Hesse (MBA 1977) – CEO of Sprint Nextel
  • Matthew Hiltzik (B.S. 1994, ILR) – President and CEO of Hiltzik Strategies, a strategic consulting and communications firm
  • D. Brainerd Holmes (B.S. 1943 Electrical Engineering) – best known for directing NASA's manned spaceflight program from September 1961 to June 1963; President of Raytheon (1976–1986) and Chairman of Beechcraft; member of the National Academy of Engineering (1977)
  • F. Kenneth Iverson (1946, Aeronautical Engineering) – President of Nucor Steel (1967–1998); inductee into the American Metal Market Steel Hall and the American National Business Hall of Fame; recipient of the National Medal of Technology and Innovation (1991) and member of the National Academy of Engineering (1994)
  • Frederick G. Jaicks (B.S. 1940 Mechanical Engineering) – Chairman and CEO of Inland Steel Company; member of the National Academy of Engineering (1979)
  • Robert D. Kennedy (B.S. 1954 Mechanical Engineering) – Chairman, president and chief executive officer of Union Carbide (1986–1995)
  • Shaygan Kheradpir (Bachelor's, Master's and Doctorate 1979–1987 Electrical Engineering) – CEO of Juniper Networks
  • Ken Jautz (B.A.) – Executive Vice President of CNN; former foreign correspondent for the Associated Press; former CNN bureau chief in Germany
  • Herbert Fisk Johnson, Jr. (B.A. 1922 Chemistry) – President of S. C. Johnson & Son; benefactor and namesake of the Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art on campus
  • Herbert Fisk Johnson III – 5 Cornell degrees 1979–86 – CEO of S. C. Johnson & Son; benefactor and Trustee Emeritus of Cornell
  • Samuel Curtis Johnson, Jr. (B.A. 1950 Economics) – Chairman of S. C. Johnson & Son; benefactor and co-namesake of the S.C. Johnson Graduate School of Management
  • Thomas W. Jones (B.A. 1969, M.R.P. 1972, trustee) – Principal of TWJ Capital LLC
  • Paul L. Joskow (B.A. 1968) – President of the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation since 2008, economist
  • Charles F. Knight (1957, MBA 1959) – Chairman of Emerson Electric Company
  • Helen Johnson-Leipold (B.A. 1978 Psychology) – billionaire businesswoman; Chairman of Johnson Financial Group, Chairman and CEO of Johnson Outdoors
  • Winnie Johnson-Marquart (B.S.) – President of the Johnson Family Foundation
  • James F. Lardner (B.S. 1946 Mechanical Engineering) – vice president in manufacturing systems and technologies at Deere & Company; member of the National Academy of Engineering (1985)
  • Douglas Leone (B.S. 1979 Mechanical Engineering) – venture capitalist and a partner at Sequoia Capital; billionaire
  • Oscar G. Mayer, Jr. (1934) – Chairman of Oscar Mayer
  • Lowell McAdam (M.E. 1976) – Chairman and CEO of Verizon
  • Walter J. McCarthy, Jr. (Mechanical Engineering 1949) – Chairman and CEO of Detroit Edison Company; member of the National Academy of Engineering (1984); the ship MV Walter J. McCarthy Jr. was renamed in his honor
  • Peter C. Meinig (B.M.E 1962) – Chairman and CEO of HM International, LLC
  • Jon R. Moeller (B.S. 1986, MBA 1988) – CFO of Procter & Gamble
  • James C. Morgan (B.M.E., M.B.A) – CEO (1977–2003), Chairman (1987–2009) of Applied Materials; recipient of IEEE Robert N. Noyce Medal (2010), Semiconductor Industry Association's Robert N. Noyce Award (2006); National Medal of Technology and Innovation (1996)
  • Thomas Murphy (B.S. 1945) – former Chairman and CEO of Capital Cities/ABC, Inc.; Television Hall of Fame, NATPE Lifetime Achievement Award (1996)
  • Lubna Olayan (B.S. 1977) – CEO of the Olayan Financing Company, the holding entity for the Olayan Group's operations in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and the Middle East
  • William D. Perez (B.A. 1969 Government) – CEO of Wm. Wrigley, Jr. Company, CEO of Nike, Inc., 2004–06
  • Joseph N. Pew, Jr. (M.E. 1908) – Vice President (1912–1947) and Chairman (1947–1963) of Sun Oil Company; founder of The Pew Charitable Trusts; namesake of Pew Engineering Quad
  • Georges Plassat – Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Carrefour
  • Lewis Platt (B.S. 1964 Mechanical Engineering) – CEO of Hewlett-Packard (1992–99); Chairman of Boeing, 2003–05
  • Robert Purcell – Chairman of Cornell Board of Trustees (1968–1978)
  • Justin Rattner (B.S. 1970 Electrical Engineering, M.S. 1972 Computer Science) – Chief Technology Officer of Intel, ABC News Person of the Week for his work on the ASCI Red system (fastest computer in the world, 1996–2000), R&D Magazine's "Scientist of the Year", 1989
  • Bruce S. Raynor (B.S. 1972 Industrial & Labor Relations) – President of UNITE HERE
  • Kevin Reilly (B.A. 1984) – President of NBC Entertainment, 2004–present
  • Irene Rosenfeld (B.S. 1975, M.S. 1977, Ph.D 1980) – CEO and Chairwoman of Kraft Foods
  • Frank Rosenfelt (LL.B. 1950) – former CEO of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM) Studio
  • Jon Rubinstein (B.S. 1978, M.Eng 1979) – CEO of Palm, Inc., Apple SVP 1997–2006; member of the National Academy of Engineering
  • Demir Sabancı (MBA 1999) – Turkish entrepreneur, venture capitalist, and philanthropist
  • Joe Saddi (MBA 1983) – Chairman of Booz & Company
  • Robert Selander (B.S. 1972) – President and CEO of MasterCard (1997–2010)
  • Nancy M. Schlichting (M.B.A. ) – President and CEO of Henry Ford Health System (2003–)
  • Michael R. Sfat (B.S. 1943, M.S. 1947 Chemical Engineering) – President of Bio-Technical Resources; member of the National Academy of Engineering (1994)
  • Steven Sinofsky (B.A. 1987) – President of Windows and Windows Live Engineering at Microsoft
  • Charles E. Sporck (B.M.E. 1950) – microelectronics pioneer; co-founded the Semiconductor Industry Association; CEO and President of National Semiconductor (1967–1991)
  • Warren Staley (M.B.A. 1967) – Chairman and CEO of Cargill, America's largest private company; member of President's Export Council under George W. Bush
  • Kyung-Bae Suh (M.B.A. 1987) – Chairman, CEO and owner of AmorePacific Corporation
  • Peter Swerling (B.A. 1949 Economics) – radar theoretician; member of the National Academy of Engineering (1978) for contributions to detection and estimation of random processes and their applications to radar systems
  • Larry Tanenbaum (B.S. 1968) – Chairman of Maple Leaf Sports & Entertainment
  • Ratan Tata (B.Arch. 1962) – Chairman of Tata Group, India's wealthiest business group, 1991–2012
  • Walter C. Teagle (B.S. 1899, Trustee, 1924–54) – President and Chairman of Standard Oil of New Jersey (now ExxonMobil); namesake of Teagle Hall
  • Myron Charles Taylor (LL.B. 1894) – Chairman and CEO of U.S. Steel (1932–38); namesake of Taylor Hall; Medal for Merit recipient
  • Andrew Tisch (B.S. 1971, Hotel Administration) – Chairman of Loews Corporation
  • James S. Tisch (B.A. 1975) – CEO of Loews Corporation
  • Fred Tomczyk (B.S. 1977) – CEO of TD Ameritrade; former president and chief executive officer of London Life Insurance Company
  • Arnold Tremere – Executive Director, Government Official (Canadian International Grains Institute)
  • Rick Tsai (Ph.D 1981) – CEO of Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company
  • Richard F. Tucker (B.S. 1950 Chemical Engineering) – vice chairman of the Mobil Corporation, president and CEO of Mobil Oil Corporation; member of the National Academy of Engineering (1987)
  • Harold Uris (B.S. 1925, Trustee 1967–1972) – real estate investor and builder; namesake of Uris Hall
  • Sophie Vandebroek (Ph.D.) – Chief Technology Officer of Xerox and President of Xerox Innovation Group (2006–)
  • Barry Weiss – Chairman and CEO of Island Def Jam and Universal Motown Republic
  • Mark Whitacre – COO of Cypress Systems (Ph.D. Nutritional Biochemistry)
  • Lynton Wilson ( M.A. Economics) – President and CEO of Redpath Industries Ltd. (1981–1988); Vice-Chairman of the Bank of Nova Scotia; at various times President, COO, CEO, and Chairman of the Board of BCE Inc. (1990–2000); President and CEO of BCE Inc. (1992–1993); Chairman of Nortel Networks (2000–2005); Chairman of CAE Inc.; Chancellor of McMaster University (2007–2013); Officer of the Order of Canada; recipient of honorary degrees from six Canadian universities
  • Dennis Woodside (B.S. 1991) – CEO of Motorola Mobility; President of Google America
  • Robert D. Ziff (J.D. 1992) – co-CEO of Ziff Brothers Investments
  • Stephen Zinser – American-born, London-based hedge fund manager who co-founded the European Credit Management, a financial firm based in London and served as its CEO

    • Mathematics, statistics and operations research

  • John B. Bell (M.S. 1977, Ph.D. 1979) – mathematician and the head of the Center for Computational Sciences and Engineering at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory; recipient of the Sidney Fernbach Award (2005) and SIAM/ACM prize (2003), member of the National Academy of Sciences (2012) and fellow of SIAM (2009)
  • James O. Berger (Ph.D. 1974) – statistician, Professor of Statistics at Duke University and Director of the Statistical and Applied Mathematical Sciences Institute since 2002; Fellow of the American Statistical Association and member of the National Academy of Sciences (2002); recipient of the Guggenheim Fellowship, the COPSS Presidents' Award (1985) and the R. A. Fisher Lectureship
  • Robert E. Bixby (Ph.D. 1972) – Noah Harding Professor Emeritus of Computational and Applied Mathematics at Rice University; member of the National Academy of Engineering (1997)
  • Lawrence D. Brown (Ph.D. 1964; professor) – statistician, Miers Busch Professor of Statistics at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania; member of National Academy of Sciences and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences; president of Institute of Mathematical Statistics (1992–1993)
  • T. Tony Cai (Ph.D. 1996) – statistician; Dorothy Silberberg Professor at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania; Fellow of Institute of Mathematical Statistics (2006); recipient of COPSS Presidents' Award (2008)
  • George F. Carrier (M.A. 1939, Ph.D. 1944) – mathematician, known for the modeling of fluid mechanics, Combustion, and Tsunamis, T. Jefferson Coolidge Professor of Applied Mathematics Emeritus at Harvard University, recipient of the National Medal of Science (1990), Otto Laporte Award (1976), Theodore von Karman Medal (1977), Timoshenko Medal (1978), Fluid Dynamics Prize (APS) (1984); member of the National Academy of Sciences (1967) and of the National Academy of Engineering (1974)
  • Chia-Kun Chu (M.M.E. 1950) – applied mathematician, Fu Foundation Professor Emeritus of Applied Mathematics at Columbia University
  • Julian Cole (B.S. Engineering) – applied mathematician who was on faculty at Caltech, UCLA and RPI and served as department chair at UCLA; member of the National Academy of Sciences (1976) and of the National Academy of Engineering (1976); fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and of the American Physical Society
  • Gérard Cornuéjols (Ph.D. 1978) – IBM University Professor of Operations Research at the Carnegie Mellon University and former editor-in-chief of Mathematics of Operations Research; recipient of Frederick W. Lanchester Prize (1977)， the Fulkerson Prize (2000), the George B. Dantzig Prize (2009) and the John von Neumann Theory Prize (2011), member of the National Academy of Engineering (2016)
  • Elbert Frank Cox (Ph.D. 1925 Mathematics) – first black person in the world to receive a Ph.D. in mathematics; professor and department head at Howard University
  • Brenda J. Dietrich (Ph.D. 1986) – member of the National Academy of Engineering (2014); IBM Fellow and Fellow of the Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences (INFORMS)
  • Benson Farb (B.A.) – mathematician at the University of Chicago and a fellow of the American Mathematical Society (2012)
  • William F. Friedman (B.S. 1914 Genetics) – cryptologist, member of the Military Intelligence Hall of Fame
  • Stephen Gelbart (B.A. 1967, professor) – American-Israeli mathematician; Nicki and J. Ira Harris Professorship at the Weizmann Institute of Science, President of the Israel Mathematical Union (1994–1996), fellow of the American Mathematical Society (2013)
  • Arthur Geoffrion (B.M.E. 1960, M.I.E. 1961) – James A. Collins Chair in Management Emeritus at University of California, Los Angeles, President (1997) and Fellow (2002) of the Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences; member of the National Academy of Engineering (1998)
  • Robert Ghrist (M.A. 1994, Ph.D. 1995) – mathematician known for his work on topological methods in applied mathematics; the Andrea Mitchell Penn Integrating Knowledge Professor at the University of Pennsylvania (2008–)
  • Alston Scott Householder (M.A. 1927) – mathematician and inventor of the Householder transformation and of Householder's method; president of the Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics (SIAM) and of the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM)
  • Iain M. Johnstone (Ph.D. 1981) – statistician, Stanford University Statistics Professor and president of the Institute of Mathematical Statistics, recipient of the Guy Medal (silver 2010, bronze 1995) and COPSS Presidents' Award (1995), member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the National Academy of Sciences (2005)
  • Harry Kesten (Ph.D. 1958) – mathematician best known for his work in probability, most notably on random walks and percolation theory; recipient of the Brouwer Medal (1981), the George Pólya Prize (1994) and the Steele Prize (2001), member of the National Academy of Sciences (1983) and of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences and fellow of the American Mathematical Society
  • Nancy Kopell (A.B. 1960) – Studies dynamics of the nervous system; MacArthur Fellow (1990), Guggenheim Fellowship (1984); member of the National Academy of Sciences and fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences
  • Jon Lee (B.A. 1981, Ph.D. 1986) – mathematician and operations researcher, the G. Lawton and Louise G. Johnson Professor of Engineering at the University of Michigan
  • Lee Lorch (B.A. 1935) – mathematician, contributed to fields of summability theory and Fourier analysis; early civil rights activist
  • William L. Maxwell (B.M.E. 1957, Ph.D. 1961) – Andrew Schultz Jr. Professor Emeritus of Industrial Engineering at Cornell University; member of the National Academy of Engineering (1998) and fellow of the Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences (2002)
  • Henry Louis Rietz (Ph.D. 1902) – mathematician, actuarial scientist, and statistician who served as the President of the Institute of Mathematical Statistics and of the Mathematical Association of America
  • Gerald Sacks (Ph.D. 1961, Assistant and Associate Professor 1962–67) – mathematical logician; holds a joint appointment at Harvard University as a Professor of Mathematical Logic and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology as a Professor Emeritus; known for his contributions in recursion theory
  • Neil Sloane (Ph.D. 1967) – mathematician; creator and maintainer of the On-Line Encyclopedia of Integer Sequences; AT&T Fellow (1998), IEEE Fellow, American Mathematical Society Fellow; member of the National Academy of Engineering; recipient of Lester R. Ford Award (1978), the Chauvenet Prize (1979), the IEEE Richard W. Hamming Medal (2005), the Mathematical Association of America's David P. Robbins award (2008)
  • Robert J. Vanderbei (Ph.D. 1981 Applied Mathematics) – mathematician and Professor of Operations Research and Financial Engineering at Princeton University; fellow of the American Mathematical Society (2013)
  • Samuel S. Wagstaff, Jr. (Ph.D. 1970) – mathematician and computer scientist known for the Wagstaff prime; professor of computer science and mathematics at Purdue University
  • Grace Wahba (B.A. 1956) – statistician at the University of Wisconsin–Madison; member of the National Academy of Sciences (2000), fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the American Statistical Association, and the Institute of Mathematical Statistics
  • Lawrence M.Wein (B.S. 1979) – Jeffrey S. Skoll Professor of Management Science at Stanford University; member of the National Academy of Engineering (2009)
  • Ward Whitt (Ph.D. 1969 Operations Research) – Wai T. Chang Professor of IEOR at Columbia University and was on the faculty of Stanford University and Yale University; member of the National Academy of Engineering, recipient of John von Neumann Theory Prize (2001) and Frederick W. Lanchester Prize (2003)
  • Norbert Wiener (graduate study 1910–1911, transferred) – mathematician; founder of the study of cybernetics; recipient of Bôcher Memorial Prize (1933) and National Medal of Science (1963)
  • John Wesley Young (A.M. 1901, Ph.D. 1904)) – professor, head (1911–1919) and chair (1923–1925) of the Mathematics Department at Dartmouth College, President of the Mathematical Association of America (1929–1930); known for axioms of projective geometry and the Veblen–Young theorem

    • Physics

  • Andreas J. Albrecht (B.A. 1979) – Distinguished Professor and Chair of the Physics Department at the University of California, Davis; Fellow of the American Physical Society, of the Institute of Physics (UK), and of the American Association for the Advancement of Science
  • Thomas Appelquist (Ph.D. 1968) – theoretical particle physicist at Yale University; recipient of the Sakurai prize (1997), fellow of American Academy of Arts and Sciences and of the American Physical Society
  • Arthur Ashkin (Ph.D. 1952 Nuclear Physics) – pioneer in Optical tweezers; member of the National Academy of Engineering (1984) and the National Academy of Sciences (1996), recipient of the Harvey Prize (2004)
  • David Awschalom (Ph.D. 1982) – Condensed matter experimental physicist known for his work in spintronics in semiconductors, Liew Family Professor in Molecular Engineering at the University of Chicago; member of the National Academy of Sciences (2007) and the National Academy of Engineering, fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, recipient of Oliver E. Buckley Condensed Matter Prize (2005) and Agilent Europhysics Prize by the European Physical Society (2005)
  • William A. Bardeen (A.B. 1962) – theoretical physicist at Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory; recipient of the Sakurai prize (1996), fellow of the American Physical Society (1984) and of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (1998), member of the National Academy of Sciences (1999)
  • Samuel Jackson Barnett (Ph.D. 1898) – physicist, known for Barnett effect in electromagnetism; professor of physics and department chairman at University of California at Los Angeles; repeated nominee of the Nobel Prize in Physics; fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences
  • Gordon Baym (B.A. 1956) – Professor Emeritus at University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign; Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and member of the National Academy of Sciences, recipient of the Hans A. Bethe Prize (2002) and Lars Onsager Prize (2008)
  • Malcolm Beasley (B.E.P. 1962, Ph.D. 1968) – physicist and President of the American Physical Society (2014); Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and member of the National Academy of Sciences (1993)
  • Carl M. Bender (B.A. 1964) – Wilfred R. and Ann Lee Konneker Distinguished Professor of Physics at Washington University in St. Louis; Fellow of the American Physical Society
  • Allen Boozer (Ph.D. 1970) – theoretical plasma physicist at the Department of Applied Physics and Applied Mathematics, Columbia University; recipient of the Hannes Alfvén Prize (2010) and fellow of the American Physical Society (1982)
  • Kenneth Bowles (PhD 1955) – Jicamarca Radio Observatory, UCSD Pascal
  • Peter A. Carruthers (Ph.D. 1961; professor) – physicist, leader of the theoretical division of Los Alamos National Laboratory (1973 – 1980), professor of physics and department chairman at the University of Arizona; co-founder of Santa Fe Institute
  • David Ceperley (Ph.D. 1976 Physics) – theoretical physicist at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign; member of the National Academy of Sciences (2006), fellow of the American Physical Society (1992) and of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (1999)
  • Moses H. W. Chan (M.S. 1969, Ph.D. 1974) – Evan Pugh Professor at Pennsylvania State University; recipient of the Fritz London Memorial prize (1996), member of the National Academy of Sciences (2000) and fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (2004)
  • Susan Coppersmith (M.S. 1981, Ph.D. 1983 Physics) – Robert E. Fassnacht and Vilas Professor of Physics at the University of Wisconsin, Madison and Professor of Physics at the University of Chicago; member of the National Academy of Sciences (2009), fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (2006) and of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (1999)
  • Predrag Cvitanović (Ph.D. 1973) – nonlinear dynamics theoretical physicist; Fellow of the American Physical Society and recipient of the Alexander von Humboldt Prize (2009)
  • Mandar Madhukar Deshmukh (Ph.D. 2002) – Indian physicist specialising in nanoscale and mesoscopic physics; received the India's highest science and technology award, Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar Prize for Science and Technology, in 2015
  • Paul Ginsparg (Ph.D. 1981 Physics) – Professor of Physics and Computing & Information Science at Cornell University, known for the development of the arXiv e-print archive; fellow of the American Physical Society, MacArthur Fellow (2002)
  • Gerald J. Dolan (Ph.D. 1973) – solid state physicist who received the Oliver E. Buckley Condensed Matter Prize in 2000
  • Herbert Grove Dorsey (Ph.D. 1908; professor) – physicist; invented the first practical fathometer, a water depth measuring instrument for ships
  • Mildred Dresselhaus (postdoc) – applied physicist; Institute professor and professor of physics and electrical engineering (emerita) at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology; recipient of National Medal of Science (1990), Enrico Fermi Award (2012), Kavli Prize in Nanoscience (2012), Presidential Medal of Freedom (2014), IEEE Medal of Honor (2015), Oliver E. Buckley Condensed Matter Prize (2008); member of the National Academy of Sciences (1985) and the National Academy of Engineering (1974)
  • Helen T. Edwards (B.S. 1957, M.S., Ph.D. 1966 Physics) – leading scientist for the design and construction of the Tevatron at the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory; member of the National Academy of Engineering; recipient of the USPAS Prize for Achievement in Accelerator Physics and Technology (1985), E. O. Lawrence Award (1986), MacArthur Foundation Fellowship (1988), the National Medal of Technology and Innovation (1989)
  • Martin M. Fejer (B.A. Physics) – applied physicist at Stanford University, known for his work on nonlinear and guided-wave optics; member of the National Academy of Sciences (2016) and fellow of the Optical Society of America and of the IEEE
  • Daniel S. Fisher (B.A. 1975 Math and Physics) – Applied physicist at Stanford University; member of the National Academy of Sciences (2015)
  • Matthew P. A. Fisher (B.S. 1981 Engineering Physics) – Theoretical condensed matter physicist at the University of California, Santa Barbara; recipient of the Alan T. Waterman Award (1995) and Oliver E. Buckley Condensed Matter Prize (2015); fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (2003) and member of the National Academy of Sciences (2012)
  • Roswell Clifton Gibbs (B.A. 1906, M.A. 1908, Ph.D. 1910, Chairman of the Department of Physics 1934–1946) – President of the Optical Society of America (1937–1938) and Fellow of the American Physical Society
  • Laura Greene (M.S. 1980, Ph.D. 1984) – Experimental condensed matter physicist; President of the American Physical Society (2017), member of the National Academy of Sciences (2006) and fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (1997), the American Association for the Advancement of Science (1996) and the American Physical Society (1993)
  • Kenneth Greisen (Ph.D. 1942; Professor Emeritus of Physics) – pioneer in the study of cosmic rays; Manhattan Project participant; first chair of High Energy Astrophysics Division of the American Astronomical Society; member of the National Academy of Sciences (1974)
  • Marshall G. Holloway (Ph.D. 1938 Physics) – member of the National Academy of Engineering (1967) for design, construction, and testing of nuclear weapons
  • Roman Jackiw (Ph.D. 1966) – professor at the MIT Center for Theoretical Physics, known for Adler–Bell–Jackiw anomaly and Jackiw–Teitelboim gravity; member of the National Academy of Sciences, Guggenheim Fellow and Fellow of the American Physical Society; Dirac Medallist
  • Harry Kroger (Ph.D. 1962) – physicist and electrical engineer
  • James A. Krumhansl (Ph.D. 1943; professor) – physicist; President of the American Physical Society (1989–1990)
  • Harry J. Lipkin (1942) – Israeli theoretical physicist specializing in nuclear physics and elementary particle physics; received the Wigner Medal in 2002
  • Andrea Liu (Ph.D. 1989) – Hepburn Professor of Physics at the University of Pennsylvania; fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and member of the National Academy of Sciences (2016)
  • Robert E. Marshak(Ph.D. 1939) – physicist, known for his contributions in weak interaction; he and his student George Sudarshan were the first to propose the V-A theory of Weak Interactions; served as chairperson of Physics Department at Rochester University, president of City College of New York, and the University Distinguished Professor at Virginia Tech; president of American Physical Society (1982–1983); fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and member of the National Academy of Sciences; recipient of three Guggenheim Fellowships, the Humboldt Award of the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation, and J. Robert Oppenheimer Memorial Prize
  • Boyce McDaniel (Ph.D. 1943, professor 1946–1985) – Manhattan Project physicist and synchrotron designer; member of the National Academy of Sciences
  • Ernest Merritt (B.S. Mechanical Engineering, M.A. Physics; Professor, Dean of Graduate School 1909–1914, Chair of the Physics Department 1919–1935) – physicist, co-founder (1893) and co-editor (1893–1913) of the journal Physical Review, first Secretary, then President (1914–1916) of the American Physical Society, member of the National Academy of Sciences (1914)
  • Francis Charles Moon (Ph.D. 1967 Mechanical Engineering) – Joseph C. Ford Professor of Engineering Emeritus at Cornell University; member of the National Academy of Engineering (1996) for his experimental research in chaotic and nonlinear dynamics and development of superconducting levitation devices
  • David Robert Nelson (A.B., 1972, M.S., 1974, Ph.D., 1975, Physics) – Arthur K. Solomon Professor of Biophysics and Professor of Physics and Applied Physics at Harvard University; MacArthur Fellow (1984), recipient of Guggenheim Fellowship and Oliver E. Buckley Condensed Matter Prize (2004), member of the National Academy of Sciences, fellow of the American Physical Society, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences
  • Edward Leamington Nichols (B.S. 1875, professor) – founder of the Physical Review, member of the National Academy of Sciences, president of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (1907) and the American Physical Society (1907–08)
  • Perley G. Nutting (Ph.D. 1903) – founder of Optical Society of America and its first president (1916–1917)
  • Gerard K. O'Neill (Ph.D. 1954) – physicist and space activist
  • John Perdew (M.S., Ph.D.) – theoretical condensed matter physicist; member of the National Academy of Sciences (2011)
  • Michael Peskin (Ph.D. 1978) – theoretical physicist and Professor in the theory group at the SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory; known for Peskin–Takeuchi parameter; fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences
  • Ward Plummer (Ph.D. 1967) – professor of Physics at Louisiana State University; member of the National Academy of Sciences (2006)
  • Hubert Reeves (Ph.D. 1960) – astrophysicist
  • Floyd K. Richtmyer (A.B. in 1904, Ph.D. 1910; Professor of Physics) – President of Optical Society of America (1920); recipient of the Louis E. Levy Medal of the Franklin Institute for the study of X-rays (1929); member of the National Academy of Sciences (1932)
  • Albert Rose (A.B. 1931, Ph.D. 1935) – physicist, known for his contributions to TV video camera tubes and originating the concept of Detective quantum efficiency; Fellow of IEEE and of the American Physical Society and member of the National Academy of Engineering (1975); recipient of SMPTE's David Sarnoff Gold Medal(1958), IEEE Morris N. Liebmann Memorial Award (1946), IEEE Edison Medal (1979)
  • Michael Roukes (Ph.D. 1985) – experimental physicist, nanoscientist, and the Robert M. Abbey Professor of Physics, Applied Physics, and Bioengineering at the California Institute of Technology
  • Stephen Shenker (Ph.D. 1980) – theoretical physicist on string theory and a professor at Stanford University, former director of the Stanford Institute for Theoretical Physics; MacArthur Fellow (1987), Fellow of American Physical Society (2003), the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (2006), member of the National Academy of Sciences (2015), recipient of Lars Onsager Prize (2010)
  • Ernest J. Sternglass (B.S. 1944, Ph.D. 1948) – physicist, alerted the world to dangers of nuclear war
  • J. J. Sakurai (Ph.D. 1958) – Japanese-American particle physicist and theorist who independently discovered the V-A theory of weak interactions while as graduate student at Cornell; the Sakurai Prize of the American Physical Society is named in his honor
  • Leonard Susskind (Ph.D. 1965) – theoretical physicist, Felix Bloch professor of theoretical physics at Stanford University, and director of the Stanford Institute for Theoretical Physics; "father of string theory"; member of the National Academy of Sciences (2000) and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences; recipient of the Sakurai Prize (1998), Pomeranchuk Prize (2008)
  • Ted Taylor (Ph.D. 1956 Theoretical Physics) – Director of Project Orion and designer of many small nuclear weapons
  • C. Bruce Tarter (Ph.D.) – Theoretical physicist; Director Emeritus of the University of California Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory who led the Laboratory between 1994–2002; fellow of the American Physical Society and the American Association for the Advancement of Science, recipient of the Roosevelts Gold Medal Award for Science (1998), National Nuclear Security Administration Gold Medal for Distinguished Service (2002), the U.S. Department of Energy Secretary's Gold Award (2004)
  • Maury Tigner (Ph.D. 1964) – Hans A. Bethe Professor of Physics Emeritus at Cornell University; fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and member of the National Academy of Sciences (1993)
  • Donald L. Turcotte (M.S. 1955 Aerospace Engineering) – distinguished professor emeritus at the University of California, Davis; member of the National Academy of Sciences (1986)
  • Ralph Walter Graystone Wyckoff (Ph.D. 1919) – crystallographer, pioneer of X-ray crystallography; member of the National Academy of Sciences and foreign member of the Royal Society

    • Astronomy, astrophysics and space physics

  • Joseph A. Burns (Ph.D. 1966, professor) – planetary scientist; fellow of the AGU and the AAAS
  • Christopher Chyba (Ph.D. 1991) – Professor of Astrophysical Sciences and International Affairs at the Woodrow Wilson School, Princeton University; MacArthur Fellow (2001)
  • William Coblentz (M.S. 1901, Ph.D. 1903) – physicist notable for his contributions to infrared radiometry and spectroscopy; member of the National Academy of Sciences (1930)
  • Bruce T. Draine (M.S. 1975, Ph.D. 1978) – astrophysicist at Princeton University who also served as Chair of the Princeton's Department of Astrophysical Sciences from 1996 to 1998; recipient of Dannie Heineman Prize for Astrophysics (2004); member of the National Academy of Sciences (2007)
  • Frank Drake (B.A. 1952 Engineering Physics; Professor of Astronomy, 1964–84) – SETI researcher, known for the Drake equation; member of the National Academy of Sciences (1972)
  • Lennard A. Fisk (A.B. 1965 Physics) – Thomas M. Donahue Distinguished University Professor of Space Science at the University of Michigan; member of the National Academy of Sciences (2003)
  • William E. Gordon (Ph.D. 1953 EE; faculty member, 1953–1965) – father of the Arecibo Observatory; physicist and astronomer; Member of the National Academy of Sciences (1968) and National Academy of Engineering (1975); Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (1986); recipient of Arctowski Medal from the National Academy of Sciences; Dean of Science and Engineering, Dean of Natural Sciences, and Provost and Vice President of Rice University
  • Peter Goldreich (B.S. 1960, Ph.D. 1963) – astrophysicist, Lee A. DuBridge Professor of Astrophysics & Planetary Physics at Caltech; member of the National Academy of Sciences and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences; numerous awards and honors including Gold Medal of the Royal Astronomical Society (1993), National Medal of Science (1995), Grande Médaille (2006), and Shaw Prize (2007); Asteroid 3805 Goldreich is named after him
  • Isabel Martin Lewis (A.B. 1903, A.M. 1905) – eclipse expert, popularizer of astronomy; first woman hired by the United States Naval Observatory
  • Gerald Neugebauer (B.A. 1954 Physics) – astronomer, one of the founders of the infrared astronomy, co-discoverer of the Becklin-Neugebauer Object; Robert Andrews Millikan Professor of Physics, Emeritus at Caltech; director of the Palomar Observatory (1980–1994); member of National Academy of Sciences, the American Philosophical Society, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, fellow of the Royal Astronomical Society, California Scientist of the Year (1986); recipient of the Rumford Prize (1986), Henry Norris Russell Lectureship (1996), the Herschel Medal (1998), the Bruce Medal (2010)
  • Marcia Neugebauer (B.A. 1954 Physics) – Space physicist, Senior Research Scientist at Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), known for direct measurements of the solar wind; president of the American Geophysical Union (AGU) and Editor-in-Chief of its journal Reviews of Geophysics; fellow of American Geophysical Union, recipient of Arctowski Medal (2010)
  • Stanton J. Peale (M.S. 1962, Ph.D. 1965) – astrophysicist, planetary scientist; recipient of Newcomb Cleveland Prize (1979), James Craig Watson Medal (1982) and Brouwer Award (1992), member of the National Academy of Sciences (2009)
  • Judith Pipher (Ph.D. 1971) – astrophysicist and observational astronomer known for her contributions in infrared astronomy for the development of infrared detector arrays in space telescopes; an inductee of the National Women's Hall of Fame (2007)
  • Vera Rubin (M.A. 1951) – astronomer known for contributions to the study of dark matter; member of the National Academy of Sciences; recipient of numerous of awards and honorary D.Sc. degrees for her achievements, including the National Medal of Science
  • Irwin I. Shapiro (B.A. Mathematics) – astrophysicist, known for Shapiro time delay and 3832 Shapiro; Timken University Professor at Harvard University, director of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics (1982–2004); member of the National Academy of Sciences and Guggenheim Fellow; recipient of numerous awards including Albert Einstein Medal from the Albert Einstein Society (1994)
  • Paul L. Schechter (B.A. 1968) – astrophysicist and observational cosmologist, known for Schechter Luminosity Function and Press–Schechter formalism; William A. M. Burden Professor of Astrophysics at MIT; member of the National Academy of Sciences (2003)
  • Gerald Schubert (B.E.P and M.A.E. 1961, Engineering Physics and Aeronautical Engineering) – Geophysicist and Professor Emeritus of Earth, Planetary, and Space Sciences at UCLA; member of the National Academy of Sciences (2002), fellow of the American Geophysical Union (1975) and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (2001)
  • Steven Soter (Ph.D. 1971) – astrophysicist known for 2014 Primetime Emmy Award (for writing of Cosmos)
  • Steven Squyres (B.A. 1978 Geology, Ph.D. 1981 Planetary Science; Goldwin Smith Professor of Astronomy) – astronomer, principal science investigator for the Mars rovers Spirit and Opportunity, fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, recipient of Harold C. Urey Prize from the American Astronomical Society, the Benjamin Franklin Medal, Carl Sagan Memorial Award, the Wernher von Braun Award from National Space Society, the Space Science Award from American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics
  • David J. Stevenson (M.S. 1972, Ph.D. 1976) – Marvin L. Goldberger Professor of Planetary Science at Caltech; fellow of the Royal Society and a member of the National Academy of Sciences (2004); recipient of H. C. Urey Prize (1984)

    • Chemistry

  • John D. Baldeschwieler (B.S. 1956 Chemical Engineering) – chemist, known for molecular structure and spectroscopy; J. Stanley Johnson Professor and Professor of Chemistry, Emeritus at Caltech; member of the National Academy of Sciences, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the American Philosophical Society; recipient of National Medal of Science (2000)
  • Stephen J. Benkovic (Ph.D. 1963) – chemist, known for the discovery of enzyme inhibitors; Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (1984); member of the National Academy of Sciences (1985) and the American Philosophical Society (2002); recipient of Christian B. Anfinsen Award (2000), Benjamin Franklin Medal in Life Science (2009), Ralph F. Hirschmann Award in Peptide Chemistry(2010), National Medal of Science (2010), NAS Award in Chemical Sciences (2011)
  • Eric Betzig (M.S. 1985; Ph.D. Applied and Engineering Physics 1988) – recipient of the 2014 Nobel Prize in chemistry
  • Arthur M. Bueche (Ph.D. 1947 Physical Chemistry) – member of the National Academy of Sciences (1971) and of the National Academy of Engineering (1974) for contributions to polymer chemistry and leadership of highly significant scientific projects; the Arthur M. Bueche Award of the National Academy of Engineering is named in his honor
  • Cynthia J. Burrows (Ph.D. 1982) – Distinguished Professor of Chemistry and Chair of the Department of Chemistry at the University of Utah; Editor-in-Chief of Accounts of Chemical Research; member of the National Academy of Sciences (2014) and fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (2009)
  • Orville L. Chapman (Ph.D. 1957) – organic chemist at the University of California, Los Angeles; member of National Academy of Sciences (1974)
  • Harry Coover (M.S. 1943, Ph.D. 1944) – prolific product inventor, notably cyanoacrylate adhesives (Super Glue); member of the National Inventors Hall of Fame and of the National Academy of Engineering (1983); recipient of National Medal of Technology and Innovation (2010)
  • F. Fleming Crim (Ph.D. 1974) – John E. Willard and Hilldale Professor at the University of Wisconsin–Madison; member of the National Academy of Sciences (2001), fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (1995) and of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (1998); recipient of Irving Langmuir Award (2006)
  • Paul G. Gassman (Ph.D. 1960) – chemist best known for his research in the field of organic chemistry and his service as president of the American Chemical Society (1990); member of the National Academy of Sciences (1989) and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (1992)
  • Walter Kauzmann (B.A. 1937) – chemist and professor emeritus of Princeton University; fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (1963) and member of the National Academy of Sciences (1964)
  • William Francis Hillebrand (studied between 1870–1872) – chemist who served as president of the American Chemical Society in 1906 and was an elected member of the National Academy of Sciences (1908)
  • Neil L. Kelleher (M.S., Ph.D. 1997) – biochemist, known for mass spectrometry, top-down proteomics and the development of the fragmentation technique of wlectron-capture dissociation; Walter and Mary Elizabeth Glass Professor of Chemistry, Molecular Biosciences, and Medicine at Northwestern University
  • Martha L. Ludwig (B.A, Ph.D.) – biochemist, recipient of Garvan-Olin Medal of the American Chemical Society (1984) and Distinguished Faculty Achievement Award from the University of Michigan (1986), Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (2001), Member of the National Academy of Sciences (2003) and the Institute of Medicine (2006), J. Lawrence Oncley Distinguished University Professor of Biological Chemistry at the University of Michigan
  • Walter McCrone (B.S. 1938 Chemistry, Ph.D. 1942 Organic Chemistry) – leading expert in microscopy, best known for work on the Shroud of Turin and the Vinland map
  • Fred McLafferty (Ph.D. 1950; Peter J. W. Debye Professor of Chemistry) – chemist, known for McLafferty rearrangement reaction observed with mass spectrometry; member of the National Academy of Sciences
  • Alexander Dounce (Ph.D. 1935) – biochemist, inventor of the Dounce homogenizer
  • Thomas Midgley, Jr. (M.E. 1911) – inventor of Freon and tetraethyllead; member of the National Academy of Sciences (1944)
  • Samuel Wilson Parr (M.S. 1895) – chemist, known for his discovery of alloy illium; President of the American Chemical Society (1928); founder of Parr Instrument Company
  • Sarah Ratner ('24 Chemistry) – biochemist who received Garvan–Olin Medal in 1961; member of the National Academy of Sciences (1974) and fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (1974)
  • Eugene G. Rochow (B.S. 1931, Ph.D. 1935) – inorganic chemist; awarded the Perkin Medal
  • Thressa Stadtman (B.S. 1940, M.S. 1942) – biochemist known for the discovery of selenocysteine; member of the National Academy of Sciences (1981) and fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (1982)
  • Ching W. Tang (Ph.D. 1975) – physical chemist and the Doris Johns Cherry Professor of Chemical Engineering at the University of Rochester; Known for his work on Organic LED, member of the National Academy of Engineering and recipient of the Wolf Prize in Chemistry (2011)
  • Edward C. Taylor (B.A. 1946, Ph.D. 1949) – Chemist and author of over 450 scientific papers and 52 U.S. patents; A. Barton Hepburn Professor of Organic Chemistry and department chairman at Princeton University; inventor of the most successful new and broadly effective anticancer drug pemetrexed (brand name Alimta); recipient of numerous awards including the 2006 Heroes of Chemistry Award from the American Chemical Society for his work on the discovery and development of Alimta "that has led to the welfare and progress of humanity"
  • Benjamin Widom (Ph.D. 1953; Goldwin Smith Professor of Chemistry 1954–) – physical chemist; awarded the Boltzmann Medal; member of the National Academy of Sciences and fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences

    • Computer science and computer engineering

  • Scott Aaronson (B.S. 2000 Computer Science) – theoretical computer scientist and faculty member in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology; recipient of Alan T. Waterman Award (2012) and PECASE (2010)
  • Chandrajit Bajaj (M.S. 1983, Ph.D. 1984 Computer Science) – Professor of Computer Science at the University of Texas at Austin; ACM Fellow (2009), Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (2008)
  • Richard Blahut (Ph.D. 1972) – former chair of the Electrical and Computer Engineering Department at the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign; fellow of the IEEE (1981) and member of the National Academy of Engineering (1981), recipient of the IEEE Alexander Graham Bell Medal (1998)
  • Allan Borodin (Ph.D. 1969 Computer Science) – Canadian-American computer scientist who has been on faculty since 1969, served as department chair from 1980 to 1985, and became University Professor in 2011 at the University of Toronto; member of the Royal Society of Canada, recipient of CRM-Fields-PIMS prize; fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (2011) and ACM (2014)
  • Edmund M. Clarke (M.S. 1974, Ph.D. 1976) – winner of the 2007 Association for Computing Machinery A.M. Turing Award; winner of the IEEE Computer Society Harry H. Goode Memorial Award; member of the National Academy of Engineering (2005)
  • Richard W. Conway (B.S. 1954 BME, Ph.D. 1958 Mathematics Genealogy) – Emerson Electric Company Professor of Manufacturing Management Emeritus at Cornell University; known for his contributions and leadership in the area of scheduling theory, simulation methodology, and simulation software for manufacturing; member of the National Academy of Engineering (1992)
  • Robert L. Cook (M.S. 1981 Computer Graphics) – Academy Award for creation of RenderMan rendering software; member of the National Academy of Engineering (2009) and fellow of the Association for Computing Machinery (1999)
  • Susan B. Davidson (B.A. 1978 Mathematics) – Weiss Professor of Computer and Information Science at University of Pennsylvania; ACM Fellow (2001)
  • Tom DeMarco (B.E.E.) – software engineer and early developer of structured analysis in the 1970s; member of the ACM and fellow of the IEEE; recipient of the Warnier Prize for "Lifetime Contribution to the Field of Computing" (1986), and the Stevens Award for "Contribution to the Methods of Software Development" (1999); author of over nine books and 100 papers on project management and software development
  • Cynthia Dwork (Ph.D. 1983 Computer Science) – Distinguished Computer Scientist at Microsoft Research; fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, member of the National Academy of Engineering and the National Academy of Sciences; recipient of Dijkstra Prize (2007), the PET Award for Outstanding Research in Privacy Enhancing Technologies (2009)
  • Lauren Elliott (attended 3 years, transferred) – video game designer, internet entrepreneur, publisher and inventor; co-designer of the Carmen Sandiego game series, which remains the best-selling edutainment game in history
  • Emad A. Elsebakhi (Ph.D. 2004 Computer Science, Minor in Economics and Statistics) – Principal Scientist at Lexis Nexis, Elsevier Inc.; faculty member in Mathematics and Computer Science at the Mansoura University, Egypt; member of the ACM and fellow of the IEEE; recipient of the numerous awards for Lifetime Contribution to the Field of Big Data Science/Analytics and Predictive Modeling; author of over 100 papers on large-scale machine learning and big data analytics in healthcare and biomedicine, business and finance; oil and gas industries; and software development
  • Pedro Felipe Felzenszwalb (B.S. 1999 Computer Science) – ACM Grace Murray Hopper Award winner (2013)
  • Zvi Galil (Ph.D. 1975) – computer scientist, specialized in design and analysis of algorithms, graph algorithms and string matching; fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and ACM, member of the National Academy of Engineering; honorary Doctor of Mathematics from the University of Waterloo
  • Sanjay Ghemawat (B.S. 1987) – Google Senior Fellow; member of the National Academy of Engineering (2009), recipient of ACM-Infosys Foundation Award in the Computing Sciences (2012)
  • Andrew C. Greenberg (B.S. 1979) – co-creator of the massively successful early computer game Wizardry
  • Donald P. Greenberg (B.C.E. 1958, Ph.D. 1968) – computer graphics pioneer and educator; member of the National Academy of Engineering (1991), fellow of ACM (1995)
  • Barbara J. Grosz (B.S. 1969) – Higgins Professor of Natural Sciences and former dean of Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard University; member of the American Philosophical Society (2003), the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (2004), and the National Academy of Engineering (2008), fellow of the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence (1990), the American Association for the Advancement of Science (1990), and the Association for Computing Machinery (2004)
  • Jerrier A. Haddad (B.S. 1945 Electrical Engineering) – Fellow of IEEE and of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, member of the National Academy of Engineering (1968)
  • Morton Heilig (1943) – early virtual reality pioneer, inventor
  • William Higinbotham (graduate study) – developer of Tennis for Two, 1958, one of the earliest video games
  • Neil Immerman (Ph.D. 1980) – theoretical computer scientist, recipient of Gödel Prize for Immerman–Szelepcsényi theorem (1995), ACM Fellow and Guggenheim Fellow
  • Ravindran Kannan (Ph.D.) – computer scientist, principal researcher at Microsoft Research India; William K. Lanman Jr. Professor of Computer Science and Professor of Applied Mathematics at Yale University; recipient of Knuth Prize (2011)
  • Randy Katz (B.A. 1976) – computer scientist, developed the redundant array of inexpensive disks (RAID) concept for computer storage; distinguished professor of the Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at University of California, Berkeley; fellow of the ACM and the IEEE, member of the National Academy of Engineering and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences; recipient of IEEE James H. Mulligan, Jr. Education Medal (2010)
  • Dan Klein (B.A. 1998 Math, CS, Linguistics) – computer scientist at the University of California, Berkeley; recipient of the Grace Murray Hopper Award (2006)
  • Jon Kleinberg (B.S. 1993, Professor of Computer Science) – MacArthur Fellow (2005), researcher of combinatorial network structure; member of the National Academy of Engineering (2008)
  • Dexter Kozen (Ph.D. 1977 Computer Science; Joseph Newton Pew, Jr. Professor in Engineering) – theoretical computer scientist who was elected the ACM fellow (2003), Guggenheim Fellow (1991) and fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (2008)
  • Jai Menon (M.S. 1989, Ph.D. 1992) – winner of InformationWeek Global CIO 50 (USA, 2009), NASSCOMM IT Innovation Award 2006, Director of Technology, Bharti Enterprises, 30+ patents (Rich Media), Implemented innovative S1 contract with IBM for Bharti Airtel
  • Ruby B. Lee (B.A. 1973) – Forrest G. Hamrick Professor in Engineering at Princeton University; fellow of the ACM (2001) and of the IEEE (2002)
  • Roy Levien (graduate studies 1986–1989 in Neurobiology and Behavior) – among the top 60 all-time most prolific inventors in the world, with over 380 issued US patents and more than 1,260 US patent applications
  • Marc Levoy (B.Arch. 1976, M.S. 1978 Architecture) – developed technology and algorithms for digitizing 3D objects that led to the Digital Michelangelo Project
  • Steven H. Low (B.S. 1987 Electrical Engineering) – Professor of the Computing and Mathematical Sciences Department and the Electrical Engineering Department at the California Institute of Technology; IEEE Fellow (2008)
  • Douglas McIlroy (B.E.P. 1954) – inventor of the pipes and filters architecture of Unix and the concept of software componentry; member of the National Academy of Engineering (2006)
  • Marshall Kirk McKusick (B.S. Electrical Engineering) – Computer scientist, known for his extensive work on BSD
  • Kurt Mehlhorn (Ph.D. 1974) – theoretical computer scientist; vice president of the Max Planck Society and director of the Max Planck Institute for Computer Science; foreign member of the National Academy of Engineering, ACM Fellow; recipient of numerous other awards and honors including Leibniz Prize (1987), Konrad Zuse Medal (1995), EATCS Award (2010), Paris Kanellakis Award (2010), and so on
  • Thomas W. Parks (B.S., M.S., Ph.D. Electrical Engineering) – Professor Emeritus of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Cornell University, known for his contributions to digital signal processing; member of the National Academy of Engineering (2010)
  • Christopher Ré (B.S. 2001) – computer scientist on the faculty of Stanford University; MacArthur Fellow (2015)
  • Edward Reingold (Ph.D.) – computer scientist in the fields of algorithms, data structures, and calendrical calculations who was elected a Fellow of the ACM (1996)
  • Michael Reiter (M.S. 1991, Ph.D. 1993 Computer Science) – Lawrence M. Slifkin Distinguished Professor of Computer Science at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill; former Professor of Electrical & Computer Engineering and Computer Science at Carnegie Mellon University; ACM Fellow (2008) and IEEE Fellow (2014)
  • Jason Rohrer (B.S. 2000) – independent video game designer
  • Tim Roughgarden (Ph.D. 2002) – computer scientist at Stanford University; recipient of the Grace Murray Hopper Award (2009) and the Gödel Prize (2012)
  • Daniela L. Rus (Ph.D.) – Andrew and Erna Viterbi Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science (EECS) at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology; former Professor of the Computer Science at Dartmouth College; MacArthur Fellow (2002), Fellow of the ACM (2014), IEEE (2009), and AAAI (2009), member of the National Academy of Engineering
  • Sartaj Sahni (Ph.D. 1973) – computer scientist at the University of Florida; fellow of IEEE (1988) and of the ACM (1996); fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science
  • Fred B. Schneider (B.S. 1975 Computer Science and Electrical Engineering) – Samuel B Eckert Professor of Computer Science at Cornell University; fellow of the American Association for Advancement of Science (1992), the ACM (1995) and the IEEE (2008), member of the National Academy of Engineering (2011)
  • Raimund Seidel (Ph.D. 1987) – German and Austrian theoretical computer scientist known for the Kirkpatrick–Seidel algorithm, who is serving as the Director of Leibniz Center for Informatics at Schloss Dagstuhl (2014–)
  • Amit Singhal (Ph.D. 1996) – Google search guru who heads Google's core ranking team and is a senior vice president at Google Inc.; Google Fellow, Fellow of the ACM; member of the National Academy of Engineering
  • Steven Sinofsky (B.S. 1987) –Microsoft computer engineer, president of Windows division, 2009-2012.
  • George Stibitz (Ph.D. 1930 Mathematical Physics) – one of the fathers of the modern first digital computer; member of the National Academy of Engineering, inductee to the National Inventors Hall of Fame; recipient of Harry H. Goode Memorial Award (1965), IEEE Emanuel R. Piore Award (1977), IEEE's Computer Pioneer Award for First Remote Computation (1982)
  • John A. Swanson (B.S. 1962, M.S. 1963) – founder of ANSYS and John Fritz Medal winner; member of the National Academy of Engineering (2009)
  • Robert Woodhead – co-creator of the massively successful early computer game Wizardry; co-founder of AnimEigo
  • Padmasree Warrior (M.S., Chemical Engineering) – Chief Technical Officer at Cisco
  • Jennifer Widom (M.S. 1985, Ph.D. 1987) – Fletcher Jones Professor of Computer Science and Electrical Engineering at Stanford University; member of the National Academy of Engineering (2005) and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (2009), ACM Fellow (2005)

    • Engineering, Material Science

  • Mark G. Adamiak (B.S., M.S. Electrical Engineering) – Chief Application Architect at GE Digital Energy; member of the National Academy of Engineering (2012) and a Fellow of the IEEE
  • John F. Ahearne (B.S. 1957, M.S. 1958 Engineering Physics) – former commissioner and chairman of the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission; member of the National Academy of Engineering (1996) and fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and of the American Physical Society
  • David T. Allen (B.S. 1979 Chemical Engineering) – Melvin H. Gertz Regents Chair in Chemical Engineering, McKetta Department of Chemical Engineering, University of Texas at Austin; member of the National Academy of Engineering (2017)
  • Arsham Amirikian (1923 Civil Engineering) – member of the National Academy of Engineering (1980) for "Contributions to the design and construction of floating structures, dry docks, shore installations, and other facilities for the U.S. Navy"
  • Kenneth E. (Ken) Arnold (B.S. 1964 Civil Engineering) – member of the National Academy of Engineering (2005)
  • William Howard Arnold (B.A. 1951 Chemistry and Physics) – nuclear physicist and former President of Westinghouse Nuclear International, Westinghouse Electric Corporation; member of the National Academy of Engineering (1974)
  • Manson Benedict (B.S. Chemistry) – nuclear engineering pioneer and chemist on Manhattan Project and MIT Professor, recipient of William H. Walker Award (1947), Perkin Medal (1966), Robert E. Wilson Award (1968), Enrico Fermi Award (1972), National Medal of Science (1975), John Fritz Medal (1975), fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (1952), member of the National Academy of Sciences (1956) and of the National Academy of Engineering (1967)
  • Joel S. Birnbaum (B.S. Engineering Physics) – Member of the National Academy of Engineering (1989) and the Royal Academy of Engineering; Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the IEEE, and the ACM
  • Ralph Bown (M.E., M.M.E., Ph.D.) – electrical engineer, radar expert; recipient of IEEE Medal of Honor (1949) and IEEE Founders Medal (1961)
  • Joseph E. Burke (Ph.D. Ceramic Science) – ceramics scientist at General Electric; member of the National Academy of Engineering (1976)
  • Oliver Ellsworth Buckley (Ph.D. 1914) – electrical engineer known for his contributions to the field of submarine telephony, President (1940–1951) and Chairman (1951–1952) of Bell Labs; member of the National Academy of Sciences and fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the American Physical Society and the American Institute of Electrical Engineers; recipient of the IEEE Edison Medal (1954); the Oliver E. Buckley Condensed Matter Prize is named in his honor
  • Jack E. Cermak (Ph.D. 1959 Engineering Mechanics) – wind tunnel innovator and pioneer of wind engineering, University Distinguished Professor Emeritus at Colorado State University; member of the National Academy of Engineering (1973)
  • William J. Chancellor (M.S. and Ph.D.) – Professor Emeritus at the University of California, Davis and member of the National Academy of Engineering (2005)
  • Young-Kai Chen (Ph.D. 1988) – Director of the Communication Science Research Department at Bell Laboratories, Alcatel-Lucent; member of the National Academy of Engineering (2004) and Fellow of IEEE (1998) and of Optical Society of America (2011)
  • Hsien K. Cheng (M.S. 1950, Ph.D. 1952 Aeronautical Engineering) – distinguished professor emeritus of aerospace and mechanical engineering at the University of Southern California; member of the National Academy of Engineering (1988)
  • Andrew R. Chraplyvy (M.S. 1975, Ph.D. 1978) – known for his contributions to the development of high-capacity optical fiber communication systems; member of the National Academy of Engineering (2002), Marconi Prize recipient (2009)
  • Walker Lee Cisler (Class of 1922, Mechanical Engineering) – President of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers (1960–1961), founding member of the National Academy of Engineering; fellow of the IEEE; recipient of Hoover Medal (1962), IEEE Edison Medal (1965) and John Fritz Medal (1967)
  • Frederick J. Clarke (M.S. 1940 Civil Engineering) – Chief of Engineers of the United States Army Corps of Engineers (1969–1973), member of the National Academy of Engineering
  • Robert E. Cohen (B.S. 1968) – Raymond A. (1921) and Helen E. St. Laurent Professor of Chemical Engineering at Massachusetts Institute of Technology; member of the National Academy of Engineering (2010), fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (2015) and of the American Physical Society (2004)
  • Harold Craighead (Ph.D. 1980) – Charles W. Lake Professor of Engineering at Cornell University; member of the National Academy of Engineering (2007)
  • John P. Craven ('46 Civil Engineering) – pioneer of spying at sea who served as Chief Scientist of the Special Projects Office of the United States Navy; member of the National Academy of Engineering (1970)
  • Philip Dalton (B.S. 1924) – US Naval Reserve officer and inventor of the E6B analog computer
  • Edward Andrew Deeds (graduate studies) – engineer, inventor and industrialist, co-founded Delco
  • Gregory Deierlein (B.S. 1981) – John A. Blume Professor of Engineering at Stanford University; membef of the National Academy of Engineering (2013)
  • Jackson L. Durkee (M.S. 1947 Civil Engineering) – member of the National Academy of Engineering (1995) for origination and development of innovations in fabrication and erection engineering of long-span bridges
  • Lester F. Eastman (B.S. 1953, M.S. 1955, Ph.D. 1957 Electrical and Computer Engineering) – John L. Given Professor Emeritus of Engineering at Cornell University; member of the National Academy of Engineering (1986) and fellow of the American Physical Society and IEEE
  • Daniel C. Edelstein (B.S., M.S., Ph.D.) – IBM Fellow and member of the National Academy of Engineering (2011)
  • Heinz Erzberger (Ph.D. Electrical Engineering) – Senior Advisor (IPA) at NASA Ames Research Center; member of the National Academy of Engineering (2010)
  • William Littell Everitt (E.E. 1922) – electrical engineer and radar pioneer; fellow and president (1945) of Institute of Radio Engineers, fellow of AIEE, founding member of the National Academy of Engineering, member of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the American Society for Engineering Education, the Acoustical Society of America; recipient of IEEE Medal of Honor (1954), IEEE James H. Mulligan, Jr. Education Medal (1957)
  • Herbert S. Fairbank (B.S. Civil Engineering 1910) – helped plan and design the United States Interstate Highway System
  • James A. Fay (Ph.D. 1951) – professor emeritus of Mechanical Engineering at Massachusetts Institute of Technology; member of the National Academy of Engineering (1998)
  • Gerard F. Fox (B.S. 1948 Civil Engineering) – structural engineer; member of the National Academy of Engineering (1976)
  • George Georgiou (M.S. 1983, Ph.D. 1987 Chemical Engineering) – Laura Jennings Turner Chair in Engineering at the University of Texas, Austin; member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (2015), National Academy of Inventors (2015), National Academy of Medicine (2011), National Academy of Engineering (2005), Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (2004), etc.
  • Bancroft Gherardi, Jr. (M.E. 1893, M.M.E 1894) – electrical engineer, known for pioneering work in developing the early telephone systems in the United States; member of National Academy of Sciences, fellow of the American Institute of Electrical Engineers and served as its president from (1927 – 1928); recipient of IEEE Edison Medal (1932)
  • Tom Giallorenzi (B.S. Engineering Physics, M.S., Ph.D. Applied Physics) – Senior Scientist at Naval Research Laboratory; member of the National Academy of Engineering (1992)
  • James Gillin (B.S. 1947, Ph.D. 1951 Chemical Engineering) – chemical engineer and president of MSD-AGVET Division of Merck and Co.; member of the National Academy of Engineering (1991)
  • Richard J. Goldstein (B.S. 1948, Mechanical Engineering) – Regents' and James J. Ryan Professor at the University of Minnesota; member of the National Academy of Engineering (1985)
  • Richard E. Goodman (B.S. 1955 Geology, M.S. 1958 Civil Engineering and Economic Geology) – Professor Emeritus of Geological Engineering at the University of California, Berkeley, member of the National Academy of Engineering (1991)
  • David Goodyear (B.S. 1973 Civil Engineering, M.S. 1974 Structural Engineering) – Chief Bridge Engineer and Senior Vice President at T.Y. Lin International; member of the National Academy of Engineering (2013)
  • Meredith Gourdine (B.S. 1953) – Olympic silver medalist (1952), engineer and physicist, known for air pollution control, non-contact printing; member of the National Academy of Engineering (1991), inductee into the Engineering and Science Hall of Fame (1994)
  • Carol K. Hall (B.A. 1967) – Camille Dreyfus Distinguished University Professor at the North Carolina State University; member of the National Academy of Engineering (2005)
  • R. John Hansman Jr. (B.A. 1976 Physics) – T. Wilson Professor of Aeronautics and Astronautics at Massachusetts Institute of Technology; member of the National Academy of Engineering (2013)
  • Edwin L. Harder (B.S. 1926 Electrical Engineering) – former senior consultant and manager at Westinghouse Electric Corporation and inventor with 66 approved patents; member of the National Academy of Engineering (1976)
  • Howard R. Hart, Jr. (B.S. 1952 Engineering Physics) – former staff member at GE Corporate Research and Development; member of the National Academy of Engineering (1991)
  • Abraham Hertzberg (M.S. 1949) – Professor Emeritus of Aeronautics and Astronautics at University of Washington; member of the National Academy of Engineering (1976)
  • George R. Hill III (Ph.D. 1946 Chemistry) – chemist; a world authority on coal; served as the dean of the College of Mines and Mineral Industries at the University of Utah from 1966–1972; member of the National Academy of Engineering (1989)
  • Raymond J. Hodge (M.S. 1948 Civil Engineering) – member of the National Academy of Engineering (1983)
  • David A. Hodges (B.E.E. 1960) – professor, Department Chair, and Dean, Professor Emeritus at the University of California, Berkeley; Member of the National Academy of Engineering; IEEE Fellow; recipient of ASEE's Benjamin Garver Lamme Award (1999), IEEE's James H. Mulligan, Jr. Education Medal (1997), and IEEE Morris N. Liebmann Memorial Award (1983)
  • Emerson C. Itschner (graduate degree 1926 Civil Engineering) – Lieutenant General and Chief of Engineers of the United States Army Corps of Engineers (1956–1961)
  • Dugald C. Jackson (postgraduate student and instructor in Electrical Engineering 1885–1887) – professor and department chair of Electrical Engineering of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology from 1907–1935; recipient of IEEE Edison Medal (1938); president of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (1937–1939)
  • Stephen M. Jenks (B.S. 1923 Mechanical Engineering) – Executive Vice-President for Engineering and Research (1959–1966) at U.S. Steel; member of the National Academy of Engineering (1968)
  • James C. Keck (B.S. 1947, Ph.D. 1951) – Ford Professor of Engineering at Massachusetts Institute of Technology; member of the National Academy of Engineering (2002)
  • Thomas J. Kelly (B.S. 1951 Mechanical Engineering) – known as the Father of Lunar Module; member of the National Academy of Engineering (1991)
  • Edward J. Kramer (B.S. 1962 Chemical Engineering) – Samuel B. Eckert Professor of Material Science and Engineering at Cornell University and professor of Materials and Chemical Engineering at the University of California, Santa Barbara; member of the National Academy of Engineering (1989)
  • Robert S. Langer (B.S. 1970 Chemical Engineering) – leading figure in biochemical engineering and science, David H. Koch Institute Professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology; author of over 1060 granted or pending patents and 1,300 scientific papers; founder of multiple technology companies; member of the National Academy of Sciences, the National Academy of Engineering and the Institute of Medicine, recipient of more than 220 major awards including Gairdner Foundation International Award (1996), Charles Stark Draper Prize (2002), National Medal of Science (2006), National Medal of Technology and Innovation (2011), Kyoto Prize (2014), Queen Elizabeth Prize for Engineering (2015), Wolf Prize in Chemistry (2013), $3 million Breakthrough Prize in Life Sciences (2014)
  • David M. Lederman (B.S., M.S. and Ph.D. Aerospace Engineering) – pioneer of Artificial Heart; member of the National Academy of Engineering (2002)
  • Ann L. Lee (B.S. Chemical Engineering) – Senior Vice President at Genentech; member of the National Academy of Engineering (2007)
  • Sidney Leibovich (Ph.D. 1965 Theoretical and Applied Mechanics) – Samuel B. Eckert Professor Emeritus of Mechanical Engineering at Cornell Univeristy; member of the National Academy of Engineering (1993)
  • George W. Lewis (B.S. 1908, M.S. 1910 Mechanical Engineering) – Director of Aeronautical Research at the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA); member of the National Academy of Sciences; recipient of Daniel Guggenheim Medal (1936), ASME Spirit of St. Louis Medal (1944); Medal for Merit (1948)
  • Edwin N. Lightfoot (B.S., Ph.D. Chemical Engineering) – known for his research in Transport Phenomena, member of the National Academy of Engineering (1979) and of the National Academy of Sciences (1995), E. V. Murphree Award (1994), recipient of the National Medal of Science (2004)
  • Joseph C. Logue (B.S. 1944, M.S. 1949 Electrical Engineering) – retired IBM Fellow and Director of Packaging Technology at IBM Thomas J. Watson Research Center; member of the National Academy of Engineering (1983)
  • James J. Markowsky (M.S. Thermal Engineering, Ph.D. Mechanical Engineering) – Executive Vice President-Power Generation at American Electric Power Service Corporation; member of the National Academy of Engineering (1999) for development and deployment of high-efficiency, low-emissions coal technologies including pressurized, fluidized bed plants
  • William McGuire (M.S. 1947 Civil Engineering) – Professor Emeritus of Civil and Environmental Engineering at Cornell University; member of the National Academy of Engineering (1994)
  • Larry V. McIntire (B.S. 1966, M.S. 1966 Chemical Engineering) – Wallace H. Coulter Chair Emeritus at Georgia Institute of Technology; member of the National Academy of Engineering (2001)
  • Harold Mirels (Ph.D. 1953 Aeronautical Engineering) – member of the National Academy of Engineering (1986) and fellow of the American Physical Society
  • Umesh Mishra (Ph.D. 1984) – professor of Electrical & Computer Engineering at the University of California, Santa Barbara; member of the National Academy of Engineering (2009) and the National Academy of Inventors (2015), fellow of IEEE
  • Linn F. Mollenauer (B.S. 1959 Engineering Physics) – Bell Labs Fellow at Lucent Technologies; fellow of the Optical Society of America, the American Physical Society, IEEE, and the American Association for the Advancement of Science, member of the National Academy of Inventors (1993) for his contributions to the realization of soliton-based, ultra-high-capacity lightwave communication
  • L. David Montague (B.S. 1956 Mechanical Engineering) – member of the National Academy of Engineering (1991) for his engineering leadership in the development of offensive and defensive missile systems
  • Franklin Kingston Moore (B.S. 1944 Mechanical Engineering, Ph.D. 1949 Aeronautical Engineering) – Joseph C. Ford Professor Emeritus of Mechanical Engineering at Cornell University; member of the National Academy of Engineering (1984)
  • Richard Moore(Ph.D. 1951) – Remote sensing pioneer, Fellow of American Association for the Advancement of Science (1993), Life Fellow of IEEE, Member of National Academy of Engineering (1989), recipient of Australia Prize for Remote Sensing (1995), Remote Sensing Award from Italian Center (1995), IEEE Centennial Medal (1984), Distinguished Achievement Award of IEEE Geoscience and Remote Sensing Society (1982) and Outstanding Technical Achievement Award of IEEE Oceanic Engineering Society (1978)
  • Yasuo Mori (Fulbright scholar 1959–1960) – Professor Emeritus at Tokyo Institute of Technology; Max Jakob Memorial Award recipient and member of the National Academy of Engineering (1986)
  • A. Stephen Morse (B.S. 1962 Electric Engineering) – Dudley Professor of distributed control and adaptive control in electrical engineering at Yale University; member of the National Academy of Engineering (2002)
  • Edward I. Moses (B.S., Ph.D.) – member of the National Academy of Engineering (2009) and fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science
  • Sanford Alexander Moss (Ph.D.) – aviation engineer and inventor; the first to use a turbocharger on an aircraft engine; an inductee to the National Aviation Hall of Fame (1976); recipient of Howard N. Potts Medal (1946) and Collier Trophy (1940)
  • Paul M. Naghdi (B.S. 1946 Mechanical Engineering) – former professor of Mechanical Engineering at the University of California, Berkeley and member of the National Academy of Engineering (1984)
  • Venkatesh Narayanamurti (Ph.D. 1965 Physics) – Benjamin Peirce Professor of Technology and Public Policy, former dean (1998–2008) of the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences at Harvard University; member of the National Academy of Engineering (1992)
  • Priscilla Nelson (Ph.D. 1983 Geotechnical Engineering) – Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Provost and Senior Vice President for Academic Affairs (2005–2008) of New Jersey Institute of Technology; Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science
  • James J. O'Brien (B.S. 1951 Civil and Environmental Engineering) – member of the National Academy of Engineering (2012) for development of standards of practice for computerized scheduling of construction projects and capital programs
  • John Ochsendorf (B.S. 1996) – Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering at Massachusetts Institute of Technology; MacArthur Fellow (2008)
  • Franklin F. Offner (B.A. 1933 Chemistry) – Professor Emeritus of Biomedical Engineering and Biophysics at Northwestern University; member of the National Academy of Engineering (1990)
  • Arthur A. Oliner (Ph.D. 1946 Physics) – Professor Emeritus of Electrophysics at Polytechnic Institute of New York University; member of the National Academy of Engineering (1991) for contributions to the theory of guided electromagnetic waves and antennas
  • Thomas D. O'Rourke (B.S. 1970 Civil Engineering; Thomas R. Biggs Professor, Civil & Environmental Engineering) – Geotechnical engineer; President of Earthquake Engineering Research Institute (2002–2004); fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, member of the National Academy of Engineering
  • Jorj O. Osterberg (Ph.D. 1940) – Stanley F. Pepper Professor of Civil Engineering, Emeritus at Northwestern University; member of the National Academy of Engineering (1975)
  • Alfred L. Parme (Civil Engineering graduate) – structural engineer; member of the member of the National Academy of Engineering (1974)
  • Stephen M. Pollock (B.S. 1957 Engineering Physics) – Herrick Emeritus Professor of Manufacturing at the University of Michigan; member of the National Academy of Engineering (2002)
  • John Prausnitz (B.S. 1950) – applied physical chemist, known for developed molecular thermodynamics; chemical engineering professor at UC Berkeley since 1955; member of the National Academy of Sciences, the National Academy of Engineering and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences; recipient of the National Medal of Science
  • Rowland W. Redington (Ph.D. 1951) – member of the National Academy of Engineering (1986) for pioneering development of advanced computed tomography scanners and magnetic resonance imaging systems for medical applications
  • Eli Reshotko (M.S. 1951 Mechanic Engineering) – Kent H. Smith Professor Emeritus of Engineering at Case Western Reserve University; member of the National Academy of Engineering (1984)
  • Paul V. Roberts (Ph.D. 1966 Chemical Engineering) – environmental engineer, former C.L. Peck, Class of 1906 Professor in the School of Engineering at Stanford University; member of the National Academy of Engineering and the Swiss Academy of Sciences
  • Harris J. Ryan (Class of 1887) – electrical engineer; professor, first at Cornell University (1888–1905) and later at Stanford University (1905–1931); known for his contributions to high voltage power transmission; President of the American Institute of Electrical Engineers (1923–1924); member of the National Academy of Sciences and recipient of IEEE Edison Medal (1925)
  • Harvey W. Schadler (B.S. 1954 Physical Metallurgy) – Technical Director at GE Corporate Research and Development; member of the National Academy of Engineering (1991)
  • Judith A. Schwan (M.S. 1950 Physical Chemistry) – member of the National Academy of Engineering (1982) for innovations in the development of color photographic films and processes, and leadership in the development of photographic products
  • Al Seckel – creator of the Darwin Fish
  • Surendra P. Shah (Ph.D.) – Walter P. Murphy Professor Emeritus of Civil and Environmental Engineering at Northwestern University; member of the National Academy of Engineering (2006)
  • David H. Shepard (B.E.E. 1945) – inventor, known for the first optical character recognition device, first voice recognition system and the Farrington B numeric font used on credit cards
  • Arthur M. Squires (Ph.D. 1947 Physical Chemistry) – University Distinguished Professor, Emeritus at Virginia Tech; member of the National Academy of Engineering (1977)
  • George W. Sutton (B.S. 1952 Mechanic Engineering) – member of the National Academy of Engineering (1994) for his contributions to ballistic missile re-entry, lasers, medical devices, imaging systems, and aero-optics
  • Peter Swerling (A.B. 1949 Economics) – radar theoretician known for Swerling Target Models; member of the National Academy of Engineering and fellow of Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE)
  • James M. Symons (B.S. 1954 Civil Engineering) – Cullen Distinguished Professor of Civil Engineering Emeritus at the University of Houston; member of the National Academy of Engineering (1994)
  • Robert W. Tkach (M.S. 1979, Ph.D. 1982) – known for his contributions to research and development of terabit/second optical-fiber communication systems and networks; member of the National Academy of Engineering (2009), Marconi Prize recipient (2009)
  • Edwin L. Thomas (Ph.D. 1974) – former head of the Department of Materials Science and Engineering at MIT, dean of the George R. Brown School of Engineering at Rice University; member of the National Academy of Engineering (2009)
  • James S. Thorp (B.S. 1959, M.S. 1961, Ph.D. 1962) – Hugh P. and Ethel C. Kelly Professor Emeritus & Research Professor at Virginia Tech; recipient of Benjamin Franklin Medal (2008), member of the National Academy of Engineering (1996)
  • Neil E. Todreas (B.S. 1957, M.S. 1958 Mechanical Engineering) – Korea Electric Power Company (KEPCO) Professor of Nuclear Engineering & professor of Mechanical Engineering, Emeritus at MIT; member of the National Academy of Engineering (1988)
  • A. Galip Ulsoy (M.S. 1975 Mechanical Engineering) – C.D. Mote Jr. Distinguished University Professor Emeritus of Mechanical Engineering at the University of Michigan; member of the National Academy of Engineering (2006)
  • William J. Wilgus (correspondence student, 1883–1885) – designer and chief engineer for the building of Grand Central Terminal, 1902–1913
  • George Winter (Ph.D. 1940) – Class of 1912 Professor Emeritus of Engineering and Chairman (1948–1970) of Structural Engineering Department at Cornell University; member of the National Academy of Engineering (1970)
  • David C. Wisler (M.S. 1965 Aerospace Engineering) – member of the National Academy of Engineering (2004) "For advancing the understanding of multistage compressor flows and improving product blading designs"
  • Bertram Wolfe (Ph.D. 1954 Nuclear Physics) – vice president of GE and manager of its Nuclear Energy Division, 32nd president (1986–1987) and Fellow of the American Nuclear Society; member of the National Academy of Engineering (1980)
  • Jerry Woodall (Ph.D. 1982) – inventor and scientist, best known for his invention of the first commercially viable heterojunction material GaAlAs for red LEDs used in automobile brake lights and traffic lights, CD and DVD players, TV remote controls and computer networks; recipient of National Medal of Technology and Innovation (2001); member of the National Academy of Engineering (1989)
  • Joseph A. Yura (M.S. 1961) – professor emeritus at the University of Texas at Austin; member of the National Academy of Engineering (2000)

    • Industrial and labor relations

  • Francine D. Blau (B.S. 1966 Industrial and Labor Relations) – Cornell University economics professor and affiliate of the National Bureau of Economic Research, first woman to receive the IZA Prize in Labor Economics
  • Sara Horowitz (B.A. 1984 ILR) – labor lawyer; MacArthur Fellow (1999)
  • Randi Weingarten (B.S. 1980 Labor Relations) – President of the United Federation of Teachers

    • Biological sciences (biology, ecology, botany, nutrition, biophysics, biochemistry)

  • Margaret Altmann – biologist
  • Bruce Ames (B.A. 1950 Chemistry/Biochemistry) – biochemist, Professor of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology at the University of California, Berkeley; inventor of Ames test; member of National Academy of Sciences, fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences; recipient of Charles S. Mott Prize (1983), Gairdner Foundation International Award (1983), Tyler Prize for Environmental Achievement (1985), AIC Gold Medal (1981), Japan Prize (1997), National Medal of Science (1998), Thomas Hunt Morgan Medal (2004)
  • George W. Archibald (Ph.D. 1975) – ornithologist, co–founder of the International Crane Foundation; MacArthur Fellow (1984), inaugural winner of the 2006 Indianapolis Prize
  • George Francis Atkinson (B.A. 1885) – botanist and mycologist, President of the Botanical Society of America (1907) and member of the National Academy of Sciences (1918)
  • Stephen Moulton Babcock, developed the "single-grain experiment" (in 1907–11) which led to the development of nutrition as a science
  • Fred Baker (B.S. 1870, Civil Engineering) – macalologist, founder of the Scripps Institution of Oceanography
  • Robert C. Baker (B.S. 1943; professor) – inventor of the chicken nugget
  • Ian T. Baldwin (Ph.D. 1989) – ecologist; founding director of the Max Planck Institute for Chemical Ecology; member of the National Academy of Sciences (2013)
  • Harlan Parker Banks (Ph.D. 1940) – paleobotanist who served as president of the Botanical Society of America (1969); member of the National Academy of Sciences (1980)
  • Nathan Banks (B.S. 1889, M.S. 1890) – entomologist noted for his work on neuroptera, megaloptera, hymenoptera, and acarina; Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (1922)
  • May Berenbaum (Ph.D. 1980) – entomologist, fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and member of the National Academy of Sciences (1994), recipient of the Tyler Prize for Environmental Achievement (2011) and the National Medal of Science (2014)
  • Adam Bogdanove (Ph.D. 1997) – plant pathologist, known for discovering the modularity of TAL effectors in 2009 and since revolutionizing DNA targeting
  • Frank E. Buck – Canadian horticulturalist
  • Donald Caspar (B.A. 1950) – structural biologist known for his works on the structures of biological molecules, particularly of the tobacco mosaic virus; Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and of the Biophysical Society (2000), member of National Academy of Sciences (1994)
  • Ralph Vary Chamberlin (Ph.D 1905) – prolific taxonomist, fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science
  • T. T. Chang (M. Sc. 1954) – prominent Chinese agricultural and environmental scientist who was a recipient of the Tyler Prize for Environmental Achievement (1999) and member of the National Academy of Sciences (1994)
  • Vera Charles (B.A. 1903) – pioneer USDA mycologist
  • Xuemei Chen (Ph.D. 1995) – professor of plant cell and molecular biology at the University of California, Riverside; fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (2011) and member of the National Academy of Sciences (2013)
  • Jonathan J. Cole (Ph.D. 1982) – limnologist; member of the National Academy of Sciences (2014) and fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (2010), the American Geophysical Union (2011) and the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) (2001)
  • Kenneth Stewart Cole (Ph.D. 1926) – biophysicist who was a pioneer in the application of physical science to biology, recipient of National Medal of Science (1967); member of the National Academy of Sciences (1956)
  • John Henry Comstock (B.S. 1874; professor) – pioneer in entomology research and education
  • Martha Constantine-Paton (Ph.D. 1976) – neuroscientist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology; fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (2013)
  • Robert Corey (Ph.D. 1924) – biochemist known for his role in discovery of the α-helix and the β-sheet, professor of structural chemistry at Caltech (1949–1968); recipient of Guggenheim Fellowship, member of the National Academy of Sciences
  • Raymond B. Cowles (Ph.D. 1928) – herpetologist who studied thermal ecology of reptiles
  • Nancy L. Craig (Ph.D. 1980 Biochemistry) – professor of molecular biology and genetics in the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine and investigator with the Howard Hughes Medical Institute; member of the National Academy of Sciences (2010)
  • Roy Curtiss (B.S. 1956) – professor (1983–2005) and Chairman (1983–1993) of Department of Biology, Washington University, St. Louis, Professor of Genomics, Evolution, & Bioinformatics at Arizona State University (2005–2015); member of the National Academy of Sciences (2001)
  • Robert E. Davis (Ph.D. 1967 Plant Pathology) – plant pathologist at United States Department of Agriculture; member of the National Academy of Sciences (2005)
  • Milislav Demerec (Ph.D. 1923 Genetics) – geneticist and long serving director of the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory; member of the National Academy of Sciences (1946)
  • Winfried Denk (Ph.D. 1989 Physics) – director of the Max Planck Institute of Neurobiology; recipient of the Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz Prize (2003), the Kavli Prize (2012) and The Brain Prize (2015), member of the National Academy of Sciences (2013) and of the Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters
  • Raymond J. (Ray) Deshaies (B.S. 1983) – Professor of Biology at Caltech; member of National Academy of Sciences (2016); fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (2011) and the American Association for the Advancement of Science (2007)
  • Keith Downey (Ph.D. 1961) – inventor of canola oil
  • Arthur Rose Eldred (B.S. 1916 Agriculture) – America's first Eagle Scout (1912), agriculturalist
  • Alfred E. Emerson (B.S., M.S., Ph.D.) – biologist who was Professor of Zoology at the University of Chicago (1929–1962) and served as President of the Ecological Society of America (1941) and of the Society of Systematic Zoology (1958); member of the National Academy of Sciences (1962)
  • Erwin Engst (B.S. 1941) – Agricultural specialist who assisted in developing China's agriculture and social economy
  • W. Hardy Eshbaugh (B.A.) – botanist, known for his research on chili peppers and the discovery and description of a new species, Capsicum tovarii; Professor Emeritus of Botany at Miami University; Fellow of American Association for the Advancement of Science
  • Alice Catherine Evans (B.S. 1909, Bacteriology) – microbiologist, known for demonstrating that bacillus abortus caused Brucellosis; first female president of the Society of American Bacteriologists; Inducted into the National Women's Hall of Fame, 1993
  • Howard Ensign Evans (M.S., Ph.D.) – entomologist; fellow of the National Academy of Sciences, recipient of the William J. Walker Prize of the Boston Museum of Science (1967) and the Daniel Giraud Elliot Medal from the National Academy of Sciences (1976)
  • Margaret Clay Ferguson (Ph.D. 1901) – first female president of the Botanical Society of America (1929) who served as professor of botany and head of the department at Wellesley College
  • Robert J. Fletterick (Ph.D. 1970 Physical Chemistry) – structural biologist at the University of California, San Francisco; member of the National Academy of Sciences (2010)
  • Adriance S. Foster (B.S. 1923) – first plant anatomist at the University of California, Berkeley, two-time recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship and president of the Botanical Society of America (1954)
  • Louis Agassiz Fuertes (B.A. 1897; lecturer 1923–?) – ornithologist and illustrator
  • Douglas J. Futuyma (B.S. 1963) – evolutionary biologist and a distinguished professor of Ecology and Evolution at Stony Brook University; fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (1985) and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, member of the National Academy of Sciences (2006)
  • Arthur Galston (B.S. 1940 Botany) – botanist and bioethicist; fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences
  • Mary Lou Guerinot (B.S. 1975 Biology) – molecular geneticist at Dartmouth College; member of the National Academy of Sciences (2016)
  • Irwin Gunsalus (B.A. 1933, M.A. 1937, Ph.D. 1940) – biochemist known for discovery of lipoic acid; fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the American Academy of Microbiology, member of the National Academy of Sciences, recipient of the Selman A. Waksman Award in Microbiology
  • Jo Handelsman (B.S. 1979) – Howard Hughes Medical Institute Professor and Frederick Phineas Rose Professor of Molecular, Cellular and Developmental Biology at Yale; pioneer in metagenomics (a term she coined)
  • Alan Hastings (B.S. 1973, M.S. 1975, Ph.D. 1977) – theoretical ecologist at the University of California, Davis; Robert H. MacArthur Award recipient (2006), fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and member of the National Academy of Sciences (2015)
  • Sheng-Yang He (Ph.D. 1991) – plant biologist at Michigan State University; member of the National Academy of Sciences (2015)
  • Alan G. Hinnebusch (Postdoctoral Fellow) – geneticist; member of the National Academy of Sciences (2015) and fellow of the American Academy of Microbiology, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences
  • Richard L. Hoffman (M.S. Entomology, 1959) – internationally recognized expert of millipedes and Appalachian natural history
  • John Hopfield (Ph.D. 1958) – biophysicist and neuroscientist, known for his invention of Hopfield network; faculty member at University of California, Berkeley (physics), Princeton University (physics), California Institute of Technology (Chemistry and Biology), Howard A. Prior Professor of Molecular Biology at Princeton, President of the American Physical Society (2006); member of the National Academy of Sciences, the American Philosophical Society, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences; recipient of the Oliver Buckley Prize (1969), Harold Pender Award (2002), Dirac Medal (2002), Albert Einstein World Award of Science (2005); MacArthur Fellow (1983)
  • Romeyn Beck Hough – botanist famous for his specimens of American trees
  • Richard L. Huganir (Ph.D. 1982) – neuroscientist at Johns Hopkins University; member of the National Academy of Sciences (2004) and the National Academy of Medicine (2011), fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (2001) and of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (2004)
  • Otto Frederick Hunziker (B.S. 1900, M.S. 1901 Agriculture) – pioneer in the American and international dairy science and industry, as both an educator and a technical innovator
  • Andre T. Jagendorf (B.A. 1948, Faculty 1966–) – plant physiologist; member of the National Academy of Sciences (1980)
  • Alison Jolly (B.A. 1955) – primatologist, pioneer in study of the lemur
  • Fotis Kafatos (B.A. 1961 Zoology) – biologist; founding president of the European Research Council; recipient of Robert Koch Prize (Gold, 2010), member of the National Academy of Sciences (1982) and of the European Academy of Sciences and Arts (2007), fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (1980) and of the Royal Society of London (2003)
  • Peter Kareiva (Ph.D. 1981) – evolutionary biologist; Director of the Institute of the Environment and Sustainability at the University of California, Los Angeles; member of the National Academy of Sciences (2011) and fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (2007)
  • William Tinsley Keeton (Ph.D 1958) – zoologist; became a well-known and popular professor at Cornell, namesake of William Keeton House
  • Peter S. Kim (A.B. 1979 Chemistry) – Professor of Biochemistry at Stanford University (2014–present); President of Merck Research Laboratories (2003–2013); member of the National Academy of Sciences, the Institute of Medicine, the National Academy of Engineering (2016) and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences; fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the American Academy of Microbiology, the Biophysical Society
  • C. C. Li (Ph.D. 1940) – Chinese-American population geneticist and human geneticist who was elected Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and of the American Statistical Association, and served as President of the American Society of Human Genetics (1960)
  • Susan Marqusee (B.A. 1982 Physics and Chemistry) – Eveland Warren Endowed Chair Professor of Biochemistry, Biophysics, and Structural Biology at the University of California, Berkeley; member of the National Academy of Sciences (2016)
  • Leonard A. Maynard (Ph.D. 1915 Chemistry) – nutritionist who served as a faculty member at Cornell for his entire career; member of the National Academy of Sciences (1944)
  • Alton Meister (M.D. 1945) – biochemist who pioneered in the study of glutathione metabolism and served as President of the American Society of Biological Chemists (1977); member of the National Academy of Sciences (1969) and fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences
  • Robert L. Metcalf (Ph.D. 1942) – entomologist who served as President of the Entomological Society of America (1958); member of the National Academy of Sciences; fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences]
  • Emmeline Moore (B.A. 1905, Ph.D. 1916) – pioneer biologist and fisheries scientist who was first woman to be elected as President of the American Fisheries Society (AFS); the Emmeline Moore Prize of AFS was established in her honor
  • Veranus Alva Moore (B.S. 1887; Professor of Veterinary Medicine 1896–1908, Dean of Vet School, 1908–29) – bacteriologist and pathologist; President of the American Society for Microbiology (1910)
  • Roger Morse (B.S. 1950, M.S. 1953, Ph.D. 1955; professor) – apiculture author, teacher, researcher
  • June B. Nasrallah (Ph.D.) – plant biologist at Cornell University; member of the National Academy of Sciences (2003)
  • Roger Payne (Ph.D. 1961) – biologist and environmentalist, known for the discovery of whale song among humpback whales; founder and president of Ocean Alliance; MacArthur Fellow (1984)
  • Ronald L. Phillips (Postdoctoral Fellow) – biologist and Regents Professor Emeritus at the University of Minnesota; recipient of the Wolf Prize in Agriculture (2006/2007); member of the National Academy of Sciences (1991)
  • Mila Rechcigl (B.S., M.N.S, Ph.D.) – biochemist, nutritionist, cancer researcher; past President of the Czechoslovak Society of Arts and Sciences; Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) and of the American Institute of Chemists (AIC)
  • Lynn M. Riddiford (Ph.D. 1961) – biologist at the University of Washington; member of the National Academy of Sciences (2010)
  • Gene E. Robinson (B.S. 1977, Ph.D. 1986) – entomologist and director of the Carl R. Woese Institute for Genomic Biology at the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign; member of the National Academy of Sciences (2005), fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences
  • A. Catharine Ross (M.S. 1972 Nutritional Science, Ph.D. 1976) – Professor and Occupant of Dorothy Foehr Huck Chair and Department Head at Pennsylvania State University; member of the National Academy of Sciences (2003)
  • Rodney Rothstein (Postdoctoral Fellow 1977–1979) – geneticist at Columbia University; fellow of the American Society for Microbiology (2007), the American Association for the Advancement of Science (2008) and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (2011), member of the National Academy of Sciences (2015)
  • Pedro A. Sanchez (B.S. 1962, M.S. 1964, Ph.D. 1968 Soil Science) – recipient of World Food Prize (2002), MacArthur Fellow (2003), fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and member of the National Academy of Sciences
  • William H. Schlesinger (Ph.D. 1976 Ecology and Systematics) – biogeochemist, President of Cary Institute; Dean of the Environment and Earth Sciences at Duke University; President of the Ecological Society of America (2003–2004); member of the National Academy of Sciences (2003), fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the American Geophysical Union, the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), the Ecological Society of America, and the Soil Science Society of America
  • Karl Patterson Schmidt (B.A. 1916) – herpetologist; Guggenheim Fellowship recipient (1932) and member of the National Academy of Sciences (1956)
  • Amita Sehgal (Ph.D. 1983 Cell Biology and Genetics) – molecular biologist and chronobiologist at the University of Pennsylvania; member of the National Academy of Sciences (2016)
  • Robert Shope (B.A. 1951 zoology, MD 1954) – arbovirologist who discovered hundreds of viruses and advised on emerging infectious diseases
  • Theobald Smith (B.Phil 1881) – microbiologist and pathologist who discovered the causes of several infectious and parasitic diseases, and anaphylaxis; member of the National Academy of Sciences (1908)
  • Philip Edward Smith (Ph. D. 1912, Anatomy) – endocrinologist who demonstrated function of pituitary gland by performing hypophysectomies in rats; member of the National Academy of Sciences (1939)
  • George F. Sprague (Ph.D. 1930 Genetics) – geneticist who served as president of the American Society of Agronomy (1960) and was inducted into the Agricultural Research Service (ARS) Science Hall of Fame (1990); Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and member of the National Academy of Sciences, recipient of the Wolf Prize in Agriculture (1978)
  • George Streisinger (B.S. 1950) – molecular biologist known as first person to clone a vertebrate(zebra fish); Guggenheim Fellowship recipient and member of the National Academy of Sciences
  • Karel Svoboda (B.A. 1988 Physics) – neuroscientist at Howard Hughes Medical Institute; member of the National Academy of Sciences (2015)
  • David W. Tank (Ph.D. 1983 Physics) – Henry L. Hillman Professor in Molecular Biology at Princeton University; The Brain Prize recipient (2015); member of the National Academy of Sciences (2001)
  • Stanley Temple (B.S. 1968, M.S. 1970, Ph.D. 1972) – avian ecologist
  • James Tiedje (M.S. 1966, Ph.D. 1968) – Distinguished Professor and the director of the NSF Center for Microbial Ecology (CME) at Michigan State University, president of the American Society for Microbiology (2004–2005); member of the National Academy of Sciences (2003)
  • William Trelease (B.S. 1880) – botanist, entomologist, explorer, writer and educator who served as the founding President of the Botanical Society of America (1894) and as President for a second time (1918); member of the National Academy of Sciences (1902)
  • Jayant B. Udgaonkar (PhD 1986) – molecular biologist and Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar laureate
  • Douglas C. Wallace (B.S. 1968) – geneticist and evolutionary biologist at the University of Pennsylvania known for his pioneering work in using human mitochondrial DNA as a molecular marker; member of the National Academy of Sciences (1995) and recipient of Gruber Prize in Genetics (2012)
  • Robert H. Wasserman (B.S. 1949, Ph.D. 1953) – Professor of Physiology, Emeritus at Cornell University; member of the National Academy of Sciences (1980)
  • Susan R. Wessler (Ph.D. 1980 Biochemistry) – Distinguished Professor of Genetics at the University of California, Riverside; member of the National Academy of Sciences (1998), fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences
  • Cynthia Westcott (Ph.D. 1932, Plant Pathology) – plant pathologist, author, and rose expert; fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science
  • Reed Wickner (B.A. 1962) – Member of the National Academy of Sciences (2000) and of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences; Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science
  • Robley C. Williams (B.S. 1931, Ph.D. 1935 Physics) – biophysicist and virologist, known for his work in Tobacco mosaic virus; first President of the Biophysical Society; member of the National Academy of Sciences
  • Arthur Winfree (Bachelor of Engineering Physics 1965) – theoretical biologist at the University of Arizona; MacArthur Fellow (1984); recipient of Norbert Wiener Prize in Applied Mathematics (2000)
  • Albert Hazen Wright (B.A., Ph.D. 1908; professor) – herpetologist, honorary member of the International Ornithological Congress, recipient of the Eminent Ecologist Award (1955)
  • Xiangzhong Yang (M.S. 1986, Ph.D. 1990) – Chinese-American biotechnology scientist and cloning pioneer; credited with creating the first cloned farm animal in the United States, a cow called "Amy"

    • Medicine

  • Mary Amdur (Ph.D. 1946 Biochemistry) – toxicologist, public health researcher and a pioneer in air pollution toxicology
  • Carol Remmer Angle – pediatrician, nephrologist, and toxicologist
  • Robert Atkins (M.D. 1955) – creator of the Atkins Diet; author on health and nutrition
  • Emily Dunning Barringer (B.S. 1897) – first female ambulance surgeon in the U.S.
  • Joshua B. Bederson (B.A. 1979) – Chief of Neurosurgery at Mount Sinai Medical Center in New York City; author of Treatment of Carotid Disease: A Practitioner's Manual
  • Jeffrey Bluestone (Ph.D. 1980) – immunologist who served as Executive Vice Chancellor and Provost of University of California, San Francisco (2010–2015); member of the National Academy of Medicine and Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences
  • Lewis C. Cantley (Ph.D. 1975) – cell biologist and biochemist, known for discovery and study of the enzyme PI-3-kinase, now known to be important to understanding cancer and diabetes mellitus, and the discovery of Phosphatidylinositol (3,4,5)-trisphosphate; former professor of Systems Biology and Medicine at Harvard Medical School, currently director of the Cancer Center, Professor of Cancer Biology at Weill Cornell Medical College; member of the National Academy of Sciences (2001) and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences; recipient of numerous awards and honors including $3 million Breakthrough Prize in Life Sciences (2013), Gairdner Foundation International Award (2015), Wolf Prize in Medicine (2016)
  • Francis V. Chisari (M.D. 1968) – Professor Emeritus at the Scripps Research Institute; member of the National Academy of Sciences (2002)
  • Mandy Cohen, MD, MPH – Chief Medical Officer, Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services
  • Carlos Cordon-Cardo (Ph.D. 1985) – physician and scientist known for his pioneering research in experimental pathology and molecular oncology
  • John Allen Clements (M.D. 1947) – physician known for his role in the study of pulmonary surfactant; professor at the University of California, San Francisco; recipient of the Gairdner Foundation International Award (1983); member of the National Academy of Sciences (1974)
  • Park Dietz (A.B. 1970) – forensic psychiatrist and criminologist known for consulting or testifying in many of the highest profile US criminal cases including Jeffrey Dahmer, The Unabomber, the Beltway sniper attacks, and Jared Lee Loughner
  • Dean Edell (B.A. 1963 Zoology, M.D. 1967) – physician and media personality
  • Anthony S. Fauci (M.D. 1966) – immunologist, known for HIV and the progression to AIDS; member of the National Academy of Sciences, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the Institute of Medicine (Council Member), the American Philosophical Society, and the Royal Danish Academy of Sciences and Letters; recipient of Maxwell Finland Award (1989), Ernst Jung Prize (1995), National Medal of Science (2005), Lasker Award (2007), Presidential Medal of Freedom (2008), Robert Koch Prize (Gold, 2013), Gairdner Foundation International Award (2016)
  • Gerald Fischbach (M.D. 1965) – neuroscientist; professor at Harvard University Medical School (1973–1981, 1990–1998) and the Washington University School of Medicine (1981–1990), Vice President and Dean of the Health and Biomedical Sciences, the Dean of the Faculty of Medicine, and the Dean of the Faculty of Health Sciences at Columbia University (2001–2006), director of the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke (NINDS) (1998–2001); member of the National Academy of Sciences, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and the Institute of Medicine
  • Alfred Freedman (B.S. 1937) – psychiatrist who led move to destigmatize same sex orientation; former president of American Psychiatry Association
  • Jeffrey M. Friedman (Postgraduate Fellow 1980–1981) – known for discovery of the hormone leptin and its role in regulating body weight; recipient of the Gairdner Foundation International Award (2005), Shaw Prize (2009), Albert Lasker Award for Basic Medical Research (2010); member of the National Academy of Sciences (2001)
  • Wilson Greatbatch (B.E.E. 1950) – engineer and inventor who advanced the development of early implantable pacemakers and lithium ion batteries and held more than 350 patents; member of the National Inventors Hall of Fame and of the National Academy of Engineering (1988); recipient of Lemelson–MIT Prize, Russ Prize (2001) and National Medal of Technology and Innovation (1990)
  • Henry Heimlich (B.A. 1941, M.D. 1943) – inventor of the Heimlich maneuver
  • Dr. Mark Hyman, MD, chairman of the Functional Medicine Institute and founder of the UltraWellness Center
  • Arthur H. Hayes Jr. (M.D. 1964) – pharmacologist; Commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) (1981–1983); Dean and provost of New York Medical College
  • Ernst Knobil (B.S. 1948, Ph.D. 1951) – endocrinologist and physiologist; recipient of the Dickson Prize (1990); member of the National Academy of Sciences (1986), the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and the French Academy of Science
  • John F. Kurtzke (M.D. 1952) – pioneering neuroepidemiologist
  • Cato T. Laurencin (Clinical Fellowship in Sports Medicine and Shoulder Surgery 1993–1994) – recipient of the National Medal of Technology and Innovation (2015); member of the National Academy of Engineering (2011)
  • Beth Levine (M.D. 1986) – Charles Cameron Sprague Distinguished Chair in Biomedical Science at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center; member of the National Academy of Sciences (2013)
  • Philip Levine (M.D. 1923) – immunohematologist; discovered the Rh factor in blood in 1939; member of the National Academy of Sciences (1966)
  • Frank Lilly (Ph.D. 1965) – geneticist; fellow of the New York Academy of Sciences, the American Association for the Advancement of Science and member of the National Academy of Sciences (1983)
  • Pamela Lipkin – physician, early proponent of cosmetic Botox
  • Richard Lower (M.D. 1955) – pioneer of cardiac surgery; known for organ transplantation (particularly in the field of heart transplantation) and Ciclosporin
  • Martha MacGuffie ('46) – pioneer female reconstructive and plastic surgeon
  • Robert Millman (undergrad; Saul P. Steinberg Distinguished Professor of Psychiatry and Public Health, Medical College) – drug abuse expert, former Medical Director for Major League Baseball
  • Cecilia Mettler (Ph.D. 1938) – medical historian
  • Maria New (B.A. 1950) – pediatrician; member of the National Academy of Sciences
  • Lt. Gen. James Peake, US Army (ret) (M.D. 1972) – former Surgeon General of the United States Army and the United States Secretary of Veterans Affairs
  • Gregory Goodwin Pincus (B.S. 1924) – co-inventor of the combined oral contraceptive pill; member of the National Academy of Sciences (1965)
  • Alvin F. Poussaint (M.D. 1960) – child-rearing expert
  • Jeffrey V. Ravetch (M.D. 1979) – Theresa and Eugene M. Lang Professor at the Rockefeller University; member of the National Academy of Sciences (2006); recipient of Gairdner Foundation International Award (2012) and the Wolf Prize in Medicine (2015)
  • Arnold S. Relman (B.A.) – physician; editor of the New England Journal of Medicine (1977–1991); professor at Boston University School of Medicine; then Frank Wister Thomas professor of medicine and chair of the department of medicine at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine; finally a professor at Harvard School of Medicine
  • John Ross, Jr. (M.D. 1955) – cardiologist, pioneer of acute myocardial infarction and heart failure treatments
  • Daniel Elmer Salmon (B.S. 1872, D.V.M. 1872) – namesake of salmonella; first D.V.M. in the United States
  • Myron G. Schultz (D.V.M) – infectious disease expert who helped identity he AIDS epidemic in the early 1980s, after noting a cluster of pneumocystis cases in adult males
  • Ida S. Scudder (M.D. 1899) – medical missionary in India; founder of Christian Medical College & Hospital, Vellore, Tamilandu
  • Hee-Sup Shin (Ph.D. 1983) – Korean neuroscientist; member of the National Academy of Sciences (2009)
  • Benjamin Spock (medical residency; Professor of Pediatrics, Medical College, 1933–47) – Author of The Common Sense Book of Baby and Child Care, one of the best selling books of all time
  • Kevin J. Tracey (neurosurgery residency, 1992) – President, Feinstein Institute for Medical Research, neurosurgeon and immunologist who discovered the Inflammatory Reflex
  • Robert J. Winchester (M.D. 1963) – Professor of Pediatrics, Medicine and Pathology at Columbia University; recipient of Crafoord Prize (2013)
  • Owen Witte (B.S. 1971 Microbiology) – Physician-scientist at the University of California, Los Angeles; member of the National Academy of Sciences (1997) and of the Institute of Medicine, fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (1996)

    • Environmental studies and environmental science

  • James H. Brown (A.B. 1963 Zoology) – ecologist and Distinguished Professor of Biology at the University of New Mexico; member of the National Academy of Sciences (2005), fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (1988) and of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (1995)
  • Charles T. Driscoll Jr. (M.S. 1976, Ph.D. 1980 Environmental Engineering) – distinguished professor and University Professor at Syracuse University; member of the National Academy of Engineering (2007)
  • Annie Leonard (Masters in City and Regional Planning) – proponent of sustainability and a critic of excessive consumerism; Executive Director for Greenpeace USA (2014–)
  • Daniel Peter Loucks (Ph.D. 1965 Environmental Engineering) – professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering at Cornell University, known for his leadership in the application of systems analysis to the fields of water resources and environmental engineering; member of the National Academy of Engineering (1989)
  • M. Granger Morgan (M.S. 1965) – University Professor at Carnegie Mellon University; member of the National Academy of Sciences (2007), fellow of the AAAS and of the IEEE
  • Norman R. Scott (Ph.D. 1962) – professor emeritus of Biological & Environmental Engineering at Cornell University; member of the National Academy of Engineering (1990)
  • David L. Sedlak (B.S. 1986 Environmental Science) – Plato Malozemoff Professor of Civil & Environmental Engineering at the University of California, Berkeley; member of the National Academy of Engineering (2016)

    • NASA astronauts

  • Ellen S. Baker (M.D. 1978) – Lead Astronaut for Medical Issues, Johnson Space Center
  • Daniel T. Barry (B.S.E.E. 1975) – astronaut, contestant on CBS reality program Survivor: Exile Island
  • Jay C. Buckey, Jr. (B.S.E.E. 1977, M.D. 1981) – astronaut
  • Martin J. Fettman (B.S. 1976 Animal Nutrition, M.S. 1980 Nutrition, D.V.M 1980; Spencer T. and Ann W. Olin Lecturer 1994) – payload specialist
  • Mae Jemison (M.D. 1981; A.D. White Professor-at-Large 1999–2005) – first African-American woman to travel in space; member of National Women's Hall of Fame; chemical engineer, physician, teacher
  • G. David Low (B.S.M.E. 1980) – astronaut
  • Edward T. Lu (B.S.E.E. 1984) – astronaut and physicist
  • Donald A. Thomas (M.S. 1980 Materials Science, Ph.D. 1982 Materials Science) – astronaut

    • Anthropology and sociology

  • Edward Bernays (B.S. 1912 Agriculture) – public relations practitioner, author of Propaganda
  • Ken Blanchard (B.A. 1961, Ph.D. 1967) – management consultant, co-author of The One Minute Manager
  • Alfred Blumstein (B.A., Ph.D.) – criminologist and former dean of the Heinz College at Carnegie Mellon University; member of the National Academy of Engineering (1998)
  • Aaron Cicourel (Ph.D.) – professor emeritus of sociology at the University of California, San Diego; fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (1992) and of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (1982)
  • Kimberle Crenshaw: founder of Critical Race Theory, highly influential black feminist and race theorist
  • Harry Edwards (Ph.D. 1970) – sociologist noted for work on race and sports, Professor Emeritus at University of California, Berkeley
  • Shelly Errington (M.A., Ph.D.) – cultural anthropologist and a professor of Anthropology at the University of California, Santa Cruz; MacArthur Fellow (1981)
  • Daniel A. Foss (B.A.) – sociologist, author of Beyond Revolution: A New Theory of Social Movements (1986), Freak Culture: Life Style and Politics (1972)
  • Ward Goodenough (B.A. 1940) – anthropologist at the University of Pennsylvania; member of the National Academy of Sciences (1971), fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (1975)
  • Erik Mueggler (B.A.) – anthropologist; professor at the University of Michigan; MacArthur Fellow (2002)
  • John Naisbitt (graduate study) – best-selling writer in the area of futures studies
  • Tom Peters (B.C.E. 1965, M.C.E. 1966) – business management motivational guru
  • David M. Schneider (B.S. 1940, M.S. 1941) – cultural anthropologist known for his studies of kinship; former William B. Ogden Distinguished Service Professor Emeritus in Anthropology, and Chairman of Anthropology (1963–1966) at the University of Chicago
  • G. William Skinner (B.A. 1947, Ph.D. 1954) – anthropologist and sinologist best known for his delineation of the physiographic macroregions of China; member of the National Academy of Sciences (1980)
  • Julian Steward (B.A. 1925 Zoology and Biology) – Anthropologist best known for his development of a scientific theory of cultural evolution; member of the National Academy of Sciences (1954)
  • Stanley Jeyaraja Tambiah (Ph.D. 1954) – social anthropologist and Esther and Sidney Rabb Professor (Emeritus) of Anthropology at Harvard University; recipient of Balzan Prize (1997) and Fukuoka Asian Culture Prize (1998), member of the National Academy of Sciences (1994)
  • Brackette Williams (B.S. 1973) – anthropologist; MacArthur Fellow (1997)

    • Economics

  • Alice Amsden (B.A. 1965) – Barton L. Weller Professor of Political Economics at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (1999–2012)
  • Luc Anselin (M.A. 1979, Ph.D. 1980) – one of the principal developers of the field of spatial econometrics; member of the National Academy of Sciences (2008) and fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (2011)
  • Hugh E. Conway – labor economist, college professor, and construction industry expert
  • Maureen L. Cropper (M.A. 1972, Ph.D. 1973 Economics) – Distinguished University Professor at the University of Maryland, College Park; member of the National Academy of Sciences (2008)
  • Robert Gilpin (M.S. 1954) – scholar of international political economy, professor emeritus of Politics and International Affairs at the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs at Princeton University, fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences
  • Claudia Goldin (B.A. magna cum laude 1968) – economist; member of the National Academy of Sciences (2006)
  • Sanjeev Goyal (M.A. 1989, Ph.D. 1990 Economics) – Professor of Economics, University of Cambridge and a fellow of the British Academy
  • Ricardo Hausmann (Ph.D. 1981) – former Venezuelan Minister and ex-Chairman of the IMF – World Bank Development Committee
  • Charles Henry Hull (1886) – economist and historian; former Dean of the College of Arts of Cornell University
  • Paul L. Joskow (B.A. 1968) – economist, distinguished fellow of the American Economic Association, fellow of the Econometric Society and Industrial Organization Society and of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences; Elizabeth and James Killian Professor of Economics, Emeritus at MIT, past department chair of MIT Department of Economics; current president of the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation since 2008
  • Ehud Kalai (M.S. 1971, Ph.D. 1972) – game theorist and mathematical economist and James J. O’Connor Distinguished Professor of Decision and Game Sciences at Northwestern University; Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the Econometric Society
  • Edwin W. Kemmerer (Ph.D. 1903) – economist at Princeton University who served as President of the American Economic Association (1926), known internationally as "The Money Doctor"; fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (1934)
  • Frank H. Knight (Ph.D. 1916) – influential scholar-economist, one of the original leaders of the "Chicago School" of economic theory
  • Alan Krueger (B.S. 1983) – labor economist and former Chief Economist for the US Department of Labor
  • Sendhil Mullainathan (B.A. 1993) – behavioral economist at Harvard, co-founder of MIT Poverty Action Lab, MacArthur Foundation "genius grant" recipient (2002)
  • Edwin Griswold Nourse (1906) – agricultural economist; first chairman of the US Council of Economic Advisers (1946–49); President of the American Economic Association (1942) and vice president of the Brookings Institution; Guggenheim Fellows; Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (1934)
  • George Rea (1915) – first paid president of the New York Curb Exchange
  • Thorstein Veblen (graduate study 1891–92, transferred) – Economist, author of The Theory of the Leisure Class

    • Government

  • Benedict Anderson (Ph.D. 1967) – Aaron L. Binenkorb Professor Emeritus of International Studies, Government & Asian Studies at Cornell University; best known for his book Imagined Communities
  • Gordon G. Chang (B.A. 1973, J.D. 1976) – author of The Coming Collapse of China and Nuclear Showdown : North Korea Takes On the World; one of the original set of Student Trustees
  • George Friedman (Ph.D. 1976) – Director of the political analysis and forecasting think tank Stratfor; author of The Next 100 Years: A Forecast for the 21st Century (2009)
  • Everett Carll Ladd (Ph.D.) – – political scientist; Director of the Roper Center for Public Opinion Research at the University of Connecticut
  • John Mearsheimer (Ph.D. 1980) – international relations theorist and Professor of Political Science at University of Chicago; known for his book on offensive realism, The Tragedy of Great Power Politics and his New York Times best-seller The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy
  • Stephen Skowronek (Ph.D. 1979) – Pelatiah Perit Professor of political and social science at Yale
  • William Irwin Thompson (Ph.D. 1966; professor) – Cultural historian, social critic, poet, philosopher of science
  • James Weinstein (B.A. 1949 Government) – author and publisher of In These Times

    • Psychology

  • I. Madison Bentley (Ph.D. 1899) – 34th president of the American Psychological Association (1925–1926); former faculty member and department chair of the Psychology Department at Cornell University
  • Edwin G. Boring (1908, Ph.D. 1915 Psychology; Instructor of Psychology 1913–18) – Historian of psychology; member of the National Academy of Sciences (1932)
  • Urie Bronfenbrenner (B.A. 1938 Psychology and Music; Jacob Gould Schurman Professor Emeritus of Human Development and Psychology) – psychologist, pioneer in developmental psychology (Ecological Systems Theory), founder of the field of human ecology; co-founder of national Head Start program
  • Joyce Brothers (B.S. 1947) – author, psychologist, and television personality
  • John E. Exner (Ph.D. 1958 Clinical Psychology) – psychologist known for Exner system of scoring
  • James Maas (M.A., Ph.D.; Professor of Psychology) – psychologist, coined the term "power nap"
  • Abraham Maslow (undergrad 1928–29, transferred) – psychologist best known for Maslow's hierarchy of needs
  • Helen Neville (Ph.D. Neuropsychology) – psychologist and neuroscientist at the University of Oregon; member of the National Academy of Sciences (2014); fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and of the American Psychological Society
  • Frank Parsons (B.S. Civil Engineering) – founder of the field of vocational psychology.
  • Walter Bowers Pillsbury (Ph.D. 1896) – psychologist who was on faculty with the University of Michigan for his entire career; president of the American Psychological Association (1910–1911), member of the National Academy of Sciences (1925)
  • Frank Rosenblatt (A.B. 1950, Ph.D. 1956) – psychologist in the field of artificial intelligence; inventor of the perceptron algorithm.
  • Elizabeth Spelke (Ph.D.) – cognitive psychologist; psychology professor at the University of Pennsylvania, Cornell University, MIT and Harvard University; fellow of the Society of Experimental Psychologists, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the American Association for the Advancement of Science; member of the National Academy of Sciences; recipient of the 2009 Jean Nicod Prize
  • Louis Leon Thurstone (Master of Mechanic Engineering 1912) – pioneer in the fields of psychometrics and psychophysics; He conceived the approach to measurement known as the law of comparative judgment, and is well known for his contributions to factor analysis; President of American Psychological Association (1933); co-founder and first President of the Psychometric Society (1936); Fellow of the American Statistical Association and member of the National Academy of Sciences (1938)
  • Margaret Floy Washburn (Ph.D. 1894) – psychologist, first female PhD in psychology; President of the American Psychological Association (1921–1922); members of the National Academy of Sciences

    • Philosophy

  • Marilyn McCord Adams (Ph.D. 1967) – philosopher; Fellow of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences (2015)
  • Francis Fukuyama (B.A.) – philosopher, political economist, and professor at Johns Hopkins University
  • Edmund Gettier – philosopher and Professor Emeritus at the University of Massachusetts Amherst; owes his reputation to a single three-page paper published in 1963 called "Is Justified True Belief Knowledge?"
  • Matthew Kramer (B.A. 1981, Philosophy) – philosopher, professor of Legal and Political Philosophy at the University of Cambridge; Fellow of the British Academy (2014); Guggenheim Fellow (2001–2002)
  • Jessica Wilson (Ph.D. 2001) – professor of philosophy at the University of Toronto
  • John Warwick Montgomery (A.B. 1952) – lawyer, professor, theologian and academic known for his work in the field of Christian apologetics
  • Thomas Nagel (B.A. 1958) – philosopher, author of What is it like to be a bat?
  • George Ashton Oldham (A.B. 1902) – Episcopal bishop, peace activist, and writer
  • John Perry (Ph.D. 1968) – Henry Waldgrave Stuart Professor of Philosophy Emeritus at Stanford University and Distinguished Professor of Philosophy Emeritus at the University of California, Riverside; Jean Nicod Prize laureate (1999); member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (2002) and of the Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters
  • David H. Sanford (Ph.D. 1966) – professor of philosophy at Duke University
  • J. B. Schneewind (B.A.) – Professor Emeritus of Philosophy at Johns Hopkins University, former Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences at the University of Pittsburgh and former Provost of Hunter College CUNY; fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences]
  • May Gorslin Preston Slosson (Ph.D. 1880) – suffragist, first woman in the United States to get her Ph.D. in philosophy
  • Samuel Weber (Ph.D. 1960) – Avalon Foundation Professor of Humanities at Northwestern University; professor at the European Graduate School in Saas-Fee, Switzerland
  • Paul Ziff (B.F.A. 1949, Ph.D. 1951) – artist and philosopher specializing in semantics and aesthetics

    • Literature

  • Diane Ackerman (M.F.A. 1973 Poetry, M.A. 1976, Ph.D. 1978) – author, poet, and naturalist
  • Gerald Taiaiake Alfred (M.S. 1992, Ph.D. 1994) – scholar, author, and adviser to indigenous nations
  • Melissa Bank (M.F.A. 1998) – best-selling author; The Girls' Guide to Hunting and Fishing, a bestseller in both the United States and the United Kingdom, and The Wonder Spot, a novel, have been translated into over thirty languages
  • Morris Bishop (B.A. 1913, M.A. 1914, Ph.D. 1926; Professor of Romance Literature) – biographer, author, humorist, wrote the preeminent history of the university, A History of Cornell
  • Harold Bloom (B.A. 1951) – literary and cultural scholar-critic; Sterling Professor of Humanities at Yale University; MacArthur Fellow (1985)
  • Susan Brownmiller (B.A. 1956) – feminist author and activist
  • Louis Bromfield (1914–1916 Agriculture) – Pulitzer Prize winner for best novel for Early Autumn (1927) and pioneer of innovative scientific farming concepts
  • Pearl S. Buck (M.F.A. 1924) – author, novelist, and winner of the Pulitzer Prize in 1932 and Nobel Prize in Literature in 1938
  • Murray Burnett (B.A. 1931) – author of the play Everybody Comes to Rick's, which was turned into the film Casablanca
  • George Lincoln Burr (B.A. 1881; John Stambaugh Professor of History 1888–?) – U.S. historian, diplomat, author, and educator
  • Fiona Cheong (B.A. English; M.F.A. Creative Writing) – author of The Scent of the Gods, nominated for a National Book Award (1991)
  • George Cockcroft (B.A. 1954) – author, The Dice Man, uses the pen name Luke Rhinehart
  • Junot Díaz (M.F.A. 1995) – critically acclaimed, Pulitzer Prize-winning short-story writer; MacArthur Fellowship (2012)
  • Alice Dunbar-Nelson (attended 1907–1908) – poet, journalist, political activist, Harlem Renaissance influence
  • Jane Duran – Cuban-born poet, recipient of the Forward Poetry Prize (1995) and the Cholmondeley Award (2005)
  • Barry Eisler (J.D. 1989) – author, novelist
  • Richard Fariña (B.A. 1962 English) – author, Been Down So Long It Looks Like Up to Me, folk singer
  • Jessie Redmon Fauset (B.A. 1905) – author from the Harlem Renaissance
  • Alice Fulton (M.F.A. 1982; Ann S. Bowers Distinguished Professor of English) – Poet, author, feminist, MacArthur Fellow (1991)
  • William H. Gass (Ph.D. 1954 Philosophy) – author, essayist
  • C. S. Giscombe – poet and professor of English at University of California, Berkeley; recipient of American Book Award for Prairie Style (2008)
  • Martin Hägglund (Ph.D. 2009 Comparative Literature) – literary theorist, philosopher
  • Lynne Hanley (B.A. English) – literary critic
  • E. D. Hirsch (B.A., 1950) – literary critic and educational theorist
  • Laura Howes (B.A. English) – scholar of Middle English literature
  • Minfong Ho (B.A. Economics) – Chinese-American author
  • Laura Z. Hobson – author, Gentleman's Agreement
  • Clifford Irving (B.A. 1951) – author of the Howard Hughes biography hoax
  • Anne LaBastille (B.A. 1955, Ph.D. 1969) – author and award-winning conservationist
  • James H. Morey (M.A. 1987, Ph.D. 1990) – Medievalist and professor of English at Emory University
  • Lorrie Moore (M.F.A. 1982) – prize-winning short-story writer and novelist
  • Manuel Muñoz (M.F.A. 1998) – award-winning author and professor of creative writing
  • Ira B. Nadel (Ph.D. 1970) – prize-winning biographer and literary critic
  • George Jean Nathan (1904) – author, critic
  • Iddo Netanyahu (did not graduate) – Israeli physician, author and playwright; younger brother of Benjamin Netanyahu
  • Nicholas Nicastro (B.A. 1985 English, M.A. 1991 Archaeology, Ph.D. 2003 Psychology) – historical novelist
  • Téa Obreht (MFA 2009) – novelist, The Tiger's Wife
  • Stewart O'Nan (MFA 1992) – novelist, Drue Heinz Literature Prize-winning author for In the Walled City in 1993, author of Snow Angels
  • Julie Orringer (B.A. 1994 English) – short-story writer and novelist
  • Thomas Perry (B.A. 1969) – novelist, Edgar Award winner
  • Darryl Ponicsan (M.A. 1965) – writer best known as the author of the 1971 novel The Last Detail
  • Seksan Prasertkul (M.A., Ph.D. 1989 Political Science) – Thai author, National Artist of Thailand (literature)
  • Michael Punke (J.D. 1989) – author of The Revenant: A Novel of Revenge, adapted as the film The Revenant
  • Thomas Pynchon (B.A. 1959 English) – author, Gravity's Rainbow and The Crying of Lot 49; MacArthur Fellow (1988)
  • Kenneth Roberts (B.A. 1908) – novelist, Northwest Passage
  • Laura Riding (attended 1918–21) – poet, novelist, essayist, short story writer, leader in modernism
  • Matt Ruff (B.A. 1988) – author, Fool on the Hill
  • Joanna Russ (B.A. 1957 English; professor) – feminist author, The Female Man
  • Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick (undergrad) – critical theorist, literature professor
  • Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak (Ph.D. 1967 Comparative Literature) – post-colonialist theorist, Can the Subaltern Speak?; winner of Kyoto Prize in Arts and Philosophy; University Professor at Columbia University
  • William Stokoe (B.A. 1941, Ph.D. 1946 English) – pioneered research on American Sign Language; co-authored A Dictionary of American Sign Language on Linguistic Principles (1965), the first attempt to systematically represent and characterize ASL phonology, Stokoe notation creator
  • William Strunk Jr. (Ph.D. 1896; professor) – author of The Elements of Style
  • Hendrik Willem van Loon (1905; Professor of History 1915–17) – author of the first book to be awarded the Newbery Medal for an outstanding contribution to children's literature
  • William T. Vollmann (B.A., Comparative Literature, 1977) – novelist, journalist, war correspondent, short story writer, and essayist.
  • Kurt Vonnegut (undergrad 1941–1944) – author, Slaughterhouse-Five, Cat's Cradle, and Breakfast of Champions
  • Lauren Weisberger (B.A. 1999 English) – author, The Devil Wears Prada and Everyone Worth Knowing
  • E. B. White (B.A. 1921) – author, Charlotte's Web and Stuart Little; co-author, The Elements of Style

    • History

  • Glenn C. Altschuler (Ph.D. 1976) – Thomas and Dorothy Litwin Professor of American Studies and Vice President for University Relations at Cornell University
  • Barbara Watson Andaya (Ph.D. 1975) – Professor of Asian Studies at the University of Hawaii and Director of the Center for Southeast Asian Studies
  • Leonard Andaya (Ph.D. 1972) – Professor of Southeast Asian History at the University of Hawaii
  • Edward Countryman (M.A. 1969, Ph.D. 1971) – American historian and educator; recipient of Bancroft Prize (1982)
  • Nancy F. Cott (B.A. 1967) – historian, Sterling Professor of History and American Studies at Yale University and Jonathan Trumbull Professor of American History at Harvard University; member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences
  • Charlotte J. Erickson (M.A. 1947, Ph.D. 1951) – historian, the Paul Mellon Professor of American History at the University of Cambridge (1983–1990); MacArthur Fellow (1990) and Guggenheim Fellow (1966–1967)
  • Louis R. Gottschalk (A.B. 1919, A.M. 1920, Ph.D. 1921) – professor of history (1927–1965), department chair (1937–1942), Gustavus F. and Ann M. Swift Distinguished Service Professor of History (1959–1965) at the University of Chicago
  • Henry Guerlac (B.A. 1932 Chemistry, M.A. 1933 Biochemistry) – historian of science considered among the pioneers in the development of the academic field of the history of science; president of the History of Science Society (1957–1960), recipient of the George Sarton Medal (1973)
  • Marie Boas Hall (Ph.D. 1949) – historian of science; fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (1955) and of the British Academy (1994), recipient of the George Sarton Medal (1981)
  • Charnvit Kasetsiri (Ph.D. 1972) – Thai historian and former President of Thammasat University
  • Frederic C. Lane (B.A. 1921) – historian in Medieval history, professor emeritus of history at Johns Hopkins University; President of the American Historical Association (1964–1965); fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and of the Medieval Academy of America
  • Melvyn P. Leffler (B.S. 1966) – American historian and educator, Edward Stettinius Professor, former Chairman of the Department of History, Dean of the College and Graduate School of Arts & Sciences at the University of Virginia; recipient of the George Louis Beer Prize (2008) and Bancroft Prize (1993)
  • William Leuchtenburg (B.A. 1943) – Historian, William Rand Kenan Jr. professor emeritus of history at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill; recipient of Bancroft Prize and North Carolina Award for Literature
  • William McNeill (Ph.D. 1947) – historian, Professor Emeritus of History at the University of Chicago; author of The Rise of the West: A History of the Human Community; recipient of the National Humanities Medal (2010)
  • Anthony Milner (Ph.D.) – Basham Professor of Asian History, School of Culture, History & Language, Australian National University
  • David Oshinsky (B.S. 1965, M.S. 1967) – historian, winner of the Pulitzer Prize for History in 2006 for his book Polio: An American Story, Jack S. Blanton, Sr. Chair Emeritus in History at The University of Texas at Austin, Distinguished Scholar in Residence, New York University
  • Milton Osborne (Ph.D.) – Australian historian, author, and consultant specializing in Southeast Asia
  • Laura Otis (Ph.D. 1991 Comparative Literature) – historian of science and Professor of English at Emory University; MacArthur Fellow (2000)
  • Richard Pipes (graduate of 1945) – historian in Russian history; fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences; recipient of National Humanities Medal (2007)
  • Merle Calvin Ricklefs (Ph.D.) – scholar of the history and current affairs of Indonesia
  • Clinton Rossiter (1939; professor 1947–1970) – historian and political scientist; recipient of the Bancroft Prize (1954) and the Woodrow Wilson Foundation Award (1953)
  • Kazys Varnelis (M.A. 1990, Ph.D. 1994) – historian and theorist of architecture, specializing in network culture
  • David K. Wyatt (Ph.D. 1966) – John Stambaugh Professor of History and Asian Studies, Emeritus, Cornell University

    • Religion

  • Homer Alexander Jack (B.A. 1936, M.S. 1937, Ph.D. 1940) – Unitarian Universalist minister and early activist for peace, disarmament, racial equality and social justice; Niwano Peace Prize (1984), Jamnalal Bajaj Award (1992)

    • Music

  • Robert Alexander Anderson (1916) – composer, wrote Christmas song "Mele Kalikimaka"
  • Russ Barenberg – Grammy–nominated bluegrass musician
  • Herbert Barrett (B.A. 1930) – talent manager for hundreds of famous artists from the 1930s to 2000s
  • Harry Chapin (dropped out) – folk musician, "Cat's in the Cradle"
  • Henrique de Curitiba (M.F.A. 1981) – Polish-Brazilian composer
  • Mack David – eight-time Academy Award nominee for songs including "Bibbidi Bobbidi Boo"
  • Jeremy Dussolliet (B.S. 2009) – Grammy-nominated singer/songwriter and member of the duo Kinetics & One Love
  • Jared Emerson-Johnson (B.A. 2003) – video game music composer
  • Joscelyn Godwin (Ph.D. 1969 Musicology) – musicologist, translator, historian of the esoteric
  • Greg Graffin (Ph.D. 1991 Evolutionary Biology) – lead singer and co-founder of Bad Religion
  • Laurens Hammond (B.S. 1916 Mechanical Engineering) – inventor of the Hammond organ
  • Jesse Harris (B.A.) – Grammy Award-winning songwriter who wrote "Don't Know Why" and "Come Away with Me", songs popularized by the artist Norah Jones
  • Ari Hest (attended, transferred) – singer-songwriter
  • John S. Hilliard (D.M.A. 1983) – classical composer
  • Barry Kernfeld (M.A. 1978, Ph.D. 1981) – musicologist, jazz saxophonist, known for the largest jazz dictionary ever published, The New Grove Dictionary of Jazz
  • Huey Lewis (undergrad 1967–69, dropped out) – rock musician, Huey Lewis and the News
  • Robert Moog (Ph.D. 1965) – inventor of the Moog synthesizer
  • Charles Previn (B.A. 1910) – Academy Award–winning film composer, seven-time Academy Award nominee
  • Steve Reich (B.A. 1957) – Pulitzer Prize–winning composer, and one of the pioneers of minimal music
  • Christopher Rouse (D.M.A. 1977) – classical composer; winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Music
  • Cary Sherman (1968) – Chairman and CEO of the Recording Industry Association of America
  • Tim Sommers (B.S. 2010) – Grammy-nominated producer/songwriter and member of the duo Kinetics & One Love
  • Oliver Strunk (attended from 1917 to 1919 and in 1927) – musicologist who was on the faculty of Princeton University from 1937 to 1966; founding member and president (1959–1960) of the American Musicological Society
  • Steven Stucky (D.M.A. 1978; Professor of Music Composition) – Pulitzer Prize–winning composer
  • Gilbert Harry Trythall (D.M.A. 1960) – composer and pianist
  • Paul Francis Webster (undergrad 1927–28, transferred) – Academy and Grammy Award-winning lyricist
  • Peter Yarrow (B.A. 1959) – folk singer, member of Peter, Paul and Mary

    • Architecture and design

  • Frederick L. Ackerman (B.Arch. 1901) - architect and urban planner
  • Raymond F. Almirall (1891) American architect of the Beaux-Arts period, practicing in New York City
  • Edmund Bacon (B.Arch. 1932) – urban planner, reshaped Philadelphia, 1949–70
  • Pietro Belluschi (Civil engineering grad) – architect, leader of the Modern Movement in architecture who was responsible for the design of over 1,000 buildings; Dean of the architecture and planning school at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (1951–1965); Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the American Institute of Architects; member of the National Academy of Design; recipient of AIA Gold Medal (1972), National Medal of Arts (1991)
  • Morris Fuller Benton (Engineering, 1896) – engineer and typeface designer; designed many popular fonts still in everyday use, including Century Schoolbook, News Gothic, Franklin Gothic and Bank Gothic
  • Albert Cassell (B.Arch. 1919) – designed buildings for Howard University, Morgan State University, and Virginia Union University
  • Gilmore David Clarke (B.S. 1913 Landscape Architecture and Civil Engineering) – designed the Central Park Zoo and the Unisphere
  • Peter Eisenman (B.Arch. 1955) – a foremost practitioner of deconstructivism in American architecture; Wolf Prize in Arts (2010)
  • Frederick Earl Emmons (1907-1999) - American architect
  • M. Arthur Gensler Jr. (B. Arch 1956) – founder of M. Arthur Gensler Jr. & Associates, Inc.
  • Lawrence Halprin (B.A.) – landscape architect, designer and teacher; recipient of National Medal of Arts (2002)
  • Margaret Hicks (architect) (B.Arch. 1880) first female architectural school graduate at Cornell
  • Douglas Honnold (1901-1974) - Canadian-born American architect
  • William B. Ittner (1887) architect and designer of school buildings
  • Lee S Jablin (B.Arch. 1971) – founding partner of Harman Jablin Architects
  • Robert Trent Jones (1931) – designer of about 500 golf courses
  • Raymond M. Kennedy (B.Arch. 1915) – designed Grauman's Chinese Theatre
  • Fred Koetter (M.Arch. 1966) – former dean of the School of Architecture at Yale University (1993–1998)
  • Rem Koolhaas (M.Arch.) – Dutch architect, journalist, and screenwriter, Pritzker Architecture Prize winner
  • David Macpherson (Civil Engineering) – city planner for San Antonio, Texas; designed the Santa Fe Railroad
  • Tomás Mapúa (B.Arch. 1911) – founded the Mapúa Institute of Technology; first Filipino to earn a degree in architecture
  • Peter Marino (1971) designer of boutique stores for luxury brands, and private residences for wealthy individuals
  • Richard Meier (B.Arch. 1957, professor) – Pritzker Architecture Prize, AIA Gold Medal winner
  • Charles Morse Stotz (B.Arch. 1921, Master's) – architect, historian, and preservationist of Western Pennsylvania
  • William Henry Miller (B.Arch 1872) – designed many iconic buildings on Cornell's Ithaca campus
  • Enrique Norten (M.Arch. 1980) – Mexican architect, professor, 2003 World Trade Center Site Memorial Competition jury member
  • Nathaniel A. Owings (B.Arch. 1927) – founding partner of Skidmore, Owings and Merrill which popularized the International style after World War II
  • Frederick Roehrig (1883 Architecture) – early 20th-century architect known for his many landmark buildings in Pasadena, California, including the Hotel Green
  • Richmond Shreve (B.Arch.) – partner of architectural firm Shreve, Lamb and Harmon, which designed the Empire State Building
  • Vertner Tandy (M.Arch.) – architect whose most famous commission was probably Villa Lewaro, the mansion of Harlem millionairess Madam C.J. Walker; founder of Alpha Phi Alpha Fraternity
  • Jan V. White (B.Arch. 1951) – Communication designer, educator and writer
  • E. Stewart Williams (B.Arch.) – Palm Springs, California-based architect with a distinctive modernist style
  • Helen Binkerd Young (B.Arch. 1900) – architect and lecturer
  • Ricardo Zurita (B.Arch. 1984) - architect and designer of urban public projects

    • Fine arts and photography

  • Elfriede Abbe (1940) – sculptor
  • James De La Vega (B.F.A. 1994) – muralist, street artist in Harlem, New York
  • Arthur Dove (1903) – first abstract expressionist painter in the US
  • Pat Lipsky (B.F.A. 1963) – painter
  • Cabot Lyford (B.F.A. 1950) – sculptor
  • Jill Magid (B.F.A. 1995) – performance artist
  • Enrique Martinez Celaya (B.S. Applied & Engineering Physics, 1986) – artist
  • John Rosenbaum (M.E.P. 1957) – kinetic artist, educator
  • Susan Rothenberg (B.F.A. 1967) – painter
  • Monir Shahroudy Farmanfarmaian (1948–1951) – contemporary Iranian artist
  • Frederick Sommer (M.A. 1927 Landscape Architecture) – photographer
  • Hugh Troy (undergrad 1922–1927, did not graduate) – artist, famous prankster

    • Journalism

  • Eric Alterman (B.A. 1982 History and Government) – author and columnist
  • Jim Axelrod (B.A. 1985 History) – national correspondent and reporter for CBS News
  • Margaret Bourke-White (B.A. 1927) – photojournalist
  • Rodney A. Brooks (B.S. 1975 – Personal Finance Editor, USA TODAY
  • Julius Chambers (B.A. 1870) – author, editor, journalist, travel writer, and activist against psychiatric abuse
  • C.J. Chivers (B.A. 1987) – foreign correspondent with the The New York Times
  • Charles Collingwood (B.A. 1939) – broadcast journalist and foreign correspondent
  • Ann Coulter (B.A. 1984 History) – book author and columnist
  • S.E. Cupp (B.A. 2000 Art History) – co-host of MSNBC's The Cycle
  • Michael Dirda (M.A. 1974, Ph.D. 1977, Comparative Literature) – Pulitzer Prize–winning book critic for the Washington Post
  • Edward Jay Epstein (B.A., M.A.) – investigative journalist; former political science professor at Harvard, UCLA, and MIT
  • Jessica Ettinger (B.S. 1997) – news anchor with CBS 1010 WINS New York; anchor of Today Show Radio, SiriusXM/NBC
  • Jeffrey Gettleman (B.A. 1994) – foreign correspondent, The New York Times; Pulitzer Prize for International Reporting (2012)
  • Wendy M. Grossman [B.A. 1975] - journalist, blogger
  • Philip Gourevitch (B.A. 1986) – former editor of The Paris Review; 1998 National Book Critics Circle Award winner
  • Carolyn Gusoff (B.A. 1984) – reporter and anchor with WNBC in New York City
  • Austin H. Kiplinger (B.A. 1939) – journalist; editor of The Kiplinger Letter; founder of Kiplinger's Personal Finance magazine; winner of the Peabody Award
  • John S. Knight – major newspaper publisher and editor, Pulitzer Prize winner
  • Steven Lagerfeld (B.A. 1977) – editor of The Wilson Quarterly
  • Eric Lichtblau (B.A. 1987 English and Political Science) – Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist for national reporting with The New York Times
  • Roger Lowenstein (B.A. 1973) – financial journalist and author of When Genius Failed (2000)
  • James C. McKinley, Jr. (B.A. 1984) – foreign correspondent, The New York Times
  • Farhad Manjoo (2000) – journalist and author, columnist for The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times
  • Philip Merrill (B.A. 1955 Government, trustee) – owner and publisher of The Capital Daily Newspaper in Annapolis, MD and Washingtonian magazine; international statesman; adviser to U.S. presidents
  • Jeremy O'Grady (MA Political Science) – founding editor of The Week news digest magazine, and one of its original owners; now its editor-in-chief
  • China Okasi (B.A. 2001 English) – editor, journalist and political commentator
  • Keith Olbermann (B.S. 1979 Communication) – sportscaster, news anchor and political commentator; hosted Countdown with Keith Olbermann on MSNBC
  • Bill Pidto (1987) – a host of NHL Live on NHL Network and former anchor at ESPN, 1993-2008
  • John Andrew Rea (B.A. 1869) – editor of The Olympian, Minneapolis Tribune, Bismarck Tribune and the Dakota edition of the St. Paul Pioneer Press
  • Dave Ross – talk show host on KIRO-FM
  • Dick Schaap (B.S. 1955) – sports newscaster on ABC and ESPN, two Emmy Awards, author and co-author of 33 books
  • Jeremy Schaap (1991) – author, sports journalist, recipient of eight Emmy Awards
  • Kate Snow (B.S. 1991 Communication) – journalist, correspondent, NBC News
  • Andrew Ross Sorkin (B.S. 1999 Communication) – journalist, co-anchor of Squawk Box, author of Too Big to Fail
  • Gerald Stone (1957 Political Science) – American-born Australian television and radio journalist, television executive, and author
  • Howard Taubman (B.A. 1929) – Chief Music Critic and Chief Theater Critic for The New York Times in the 1950s and 1960s
  • William T. Vollmann (B.A. 1981 Comparative Literature) – journalist, author of numerous books on war, including a seven volume treatise on violence
  • Whit Watson (B.A., English, 1993) – announcer on Golf Channel, formerly at ESPN and Sun Sports; winner of four Emmy Awards; former Sports Director at WVBR
  • Pete van Wieren – sportscaster and sport reporter, best known for 33-year career calling play-by-play for Major League Baseball's Atlanta Braves
  • Sheryl WuDunn (B.A. 1981 European History) – journalist at The New York Times, co-winner in 1990 of the Pulitzer Prize for her coverage on the Tienanmen Square protests of 1989, winner of the George Polk Award in 1989, and winner of the Overseas Press Club in 1990
  • Robert Zelnick (B.S.) – award-winning journalist; winner of two Emmy Awards and two Gavel Awards; formerly ABC News correspondent for more than 20 years, and professor of journalism at the Boston University College of Communication

    • Film, radio, television and theatre

  • Ted Berkman (1933) – screenwriter, authored Bedtime for Bonzo
  • Josh Bernstein (B.A. 1993 Anthropology and Psychology) – host of Digging for the Truth on the History Channel
  • Murray Burnett, co–wrote the play Everybody Comes to Rick's which was adapted into the film Casablanca
  • Steve Carver (B.A.) – film director and producer
  • Arun Chaudhary (B.A. 1997) – White House official videographer
  • Dane Clark (bachelors 1930s) – actor, Moonrise
  • Jordan Clarke (B.A. 1973 Philosophy, M.F.A. 1973 Acting) – actor, starred in Guiding Light, winner of a Daytime Emmy for Best Supporting Actor in a Drama Series
  • Bob Clendenin (B.Sc. 1986) – actor, starred in Cougar Town, 10 Items or Less
  • Gordon Davidson (1956) – Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Director and Tony Award for Best Direction of a Play-winning stage and film director; fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences
  • Maria Dizzia (Theater) – actress, nominated for the 2010 Tony Award for Best Performance by a Featured Actress in a Play for her performance in In the Next Room (or The Vibrator Play)
  • Ellen Albertini Dow (B.A. 1935 Theater, M.A. 1938 Theater) – actress, Wedding Crashers and The Wedding Singer
  • Dan Duryea (B.A. English) – actor
  • Zelda Fichandler – doyenne of regional theater
  • Art Fleming – original Jeopardy! host, 1964–75
  • David Folkenflik (B.A. 1991 Arts and Sciences) – media correspondent for NPR
  • Steven Franken (B.A. 1950) – actor, best known for his role in The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis
  • Robert N. Fried (M.S.) – film producer, screenwriter, studio executive and media entrepreneur; Academy Award recipient in 1992 for his short film, Session Man
  • David F. Friedman (1942, Electrical Engineering) film maker
  • Allen Funt (B.A. 1934 Fine Arts) – Producer, created Candid Camera
  • Carla Gallo (B.A. Theater) – actress notable for recurring roles in the television series Undeclared, Carnivàle, Bones, Californication
  • Eric Garcia (transferred 1992) – writer, author of Matchstick Men
  • Joel Gertner (1993–1996, dropped out) – former ECW personality
  • Sam Gold (B.A. English 2000) – theater director and actor; 2015 Tony Award for Best Direction of a Musical winner for Fun Home
  • Meta Golding (Theatre Arts and International Relations) – Haitian-American actress
  • Harold Gould (M.A. 1948 Theater, Ph.D. 1953 Dramatic Speech and Literature; Professor of Speech and Drama) – stage, screen, and television actor
  • Paul Eliot Green – playwright, known for Pulitzer Prize for Drama for his play, In Abraham's Bosom (1927)
  • Kovid Gupta (M.B.A. 2015) – screenwriter, author, Kingdom of The Soap Queen: The Story of Balaji Telefilms
  • Brian Hallisay (degree in Economics and History) – actor from the television show Privileged
  • Howard Hawks (Mechanical Engineering) – film director, producer and writer of the classic Hollywood era; directed Scarface, His Girl Friday, The Big Sleep, and Gentlemen Prefer Blondes
  • Catherine Hicks (M.F.A. 1976?) – actress; played Annie Camden on 7th Heaven
  • John Hostetter (M.A. acting) – actor, played John the stage manager on Murphy Brown for 62 episodes
  • Frederick Johnson (B.A. 1978 English) – Emmy Award-winning television writer; credits include All My Children, The Young and the Restless, Days of Our Lives, As The World Turns, One Life to Live, Guiding Light
  • Sidney Kingsley (B.A. 1928) – playwright, screenwriter, winner of the Pulitzer Prize in 1934 for the drama Men in White
  • Mia Korf – actress, best known for originating the role of Blair Daimler Buchanan on One Life to Live
  • Jamie Kovac (B.S. 2001, M.Eng. 2002) – "Fury" on American Gladiators
  • Arthur Laurents (B.A. 1937 English) – playwright, screenwriter, director, author, credits include West Side Story, Rope, and Gypsy
  • Jane Lynch (M.F.A. 1984 Theater) – actress, best known for Glee
  • Bill Maher (B.A. 1978 English) – comedian and satirist, best known for hosting the television series Politically Incorrect and Real Time with Bill Maher
  • Rob Marciano – journalist and meteorologist
  • Louis Massiah (B.A. Astrophysics) – documentary filmmaker; MacArthur Fellow (1996), Tribeca Film Institute Fellow (1990, 1996), Fleisher Founder's Award (2009)
  • Gardner McKay (attended for 2 years) – actor, artist, and author known for the lead role in the 1960s TV series Adventures in Paradise
  • Carol Mendelsohn (B.A. 1973) – television producer; credits include C.S.I.
  • Adolphe Menjou (B.S. Engineering) – actor, known for his roles in The Sheik, The Three Musketeers, and Paths of Glory
  • Ronald D. Moore (failed out 1985) – writer and producer of Star Trek: The Next Generation, Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, and the re-imagined Battlestar Galactica; two–time Hugo Award winner, nominated for an Emmy Award
  • Frank Morgan (undergrad 1908–09, dropped out) – actor, played the Wizard in The Wizard of Oz, Academy Award recipient
  • Bill Nye (B.S. 1977 Mechanical Engineering, M.Eng. 1977, Frank H.T. Rhodes Class of '56 University Professor 2001–06) – star of Bill Nye the Science Guy; science education advocate
  • Adepero Oduye (1999) – actress in 12 Years a Slave and Pariah
  • Keith Olbermann (B.S. 1979 Communication Arts) – sports commentator, MSNBC news anchor, co-host of Football Night in America of NBC
  • Peter Ostrum (D.V.M. 1984) – played Charlie Bucket in Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory
  • Evan Parke (1990) – Jamaican-born American actor best known for his role as Hayes in King Kong
  • Richard Price (B.S. 1971) – author, The Wanderers and six other novels; Academy Award-nominated screenwriter for The Color of Money and Clockers
  • Keith Raywood (B.A. Architecture, 1980) – Emmy Award-winning production designer
  • Christopher Reeve (B.A. 1974 Theater Arts and English) – actor, best known for starring in Superman and its sequels
  • Jason Reich (B.S. Communication 1998) – Emmy Award-winning writer for The Daily Show with Jon Stewart
  • Christopher Rich (M.A. Theater Arts) – Miller Redfield on Murphy Brown
  • Casey Robinson – producer, director and screenwriter
  • Elizabeth Allen Rosenbaum (B.A.) – director
  • William Sadler (M.F.A. 1974) – actor, known for various films including The Shawshank Redemption
  • Gene Saks (B.A. 1943) – stage and film director, an inductee of the American Theater Hall of Fame; seven-time nominee and three-time winner of Tony Award; four-time nominee of Drama Desk Award
  • Andrea Savage (B.A. Political Science and Spanish, minor in Law Studies) – Actress, Dog Bites Man
  • Robert Frederic Schenkkan, Jr. (M.F.A 1977) – Award-winning playwright, screenwriter, and actor; the Pulitzer Prize for Drama (1992) for his work The Kentucky Cycle, and the Tony Award for Best Play (2014) for his drama All the Way earned
  • Bert Schneider – Film and television producer, Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature for producing Hearts and Minds (1975)
  • Vivian Schiller (B.A. Russian) – former CEO of NPR
  • Thelma Schoonmaker (B.A. 1961) – film editor, received the Academy Award for Raging Bull, The Aviator, and The Departed
  • David Seidler (1959) – screenwriter, won 83rd Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay for The Kings Speech (2010)
  • Robert Smigel (undergrad 1978–80, transferred) – Puppeteer behind Triumph, the Insult Comic Dog; first head writer of Late Night with Conan O'Brien; author of "TV Funhouse" animations on Saturday Night Live
  • Jimmy Smits (M.F.A. 1982) – actor
  • Sarah Spain – ESPN sports journalist
  • Tim Squyres (B.A. 1981) – Academy Award-nominated film editor, best known for Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon
  • Yale Summers (Bachelor's Business with honors, 1955) – actor and governing member of the Screen Actors Guild
  • Ken Sunshine (1970) – publicist
  • Jennifer Tipton (B.A. 1958) – award-winning theatre and dance lighting designer; MacArthur Fellowship (2008)
  • Franchot Tone (B.A. 1927) – actor, nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actor for Mutiny on the Bounty
  • Ming Tsai (Hotel Administration) – celebrity chef of Ming's Quest, a cooking show featured on the Fine Living Network, and Simply Ming on American Public Television
  • Andrew Weinberg (B.A. 1998) – television writer and co-winner of Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Writing for a Variety Series (2007)
  • David Wild – writer and critic in the music and television industries, nominated for an Emmy Award for his work on America: A Tribute to Heroes
  • Sheri Wilner – playwright
  • Mary Woronov (did not graduate) – actress, member of Andy Warhol's The Factory
  • Paula Vogel (1976, M.A, 2016, PhD) – playwright, known for Pulitzer Prize for Drama for her play, How I Learned to Drive (1998)

    • Founders and leaders of academic institutions

  • John Cranford Adams (B.A. 1926, Ph.D. 1935) – 2nd president of Hofstra University (1944–1964)
  • Ilesanmi Adesida (postdoctoral researcher 1979–1984) – Dean of College of Engineering (2005–2012) and Provost (2012–2015) at University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign; member of National Academy of Engineering and the American Association for the Advancement of Science
  • John Agresto (Ph.D. 1974) – President of St. John's College in Santa Fe (1989–2000)
  • Joseph A. Alutto (Ph.D. 1968 Organizational Behavior) – Dean of the SUNY-Buffalo School of Management (1976–1990) and of Ohio State University's Max M. Fisher College of Business (1991–2007); Executive Vice President and Provost of Ohio State University (2007–2013); Interim President of Ohio State (2007, 2013–2014)
  • Elam Jonathan Anderson (M.A. 1915) – President of Linfield College (1932–1938) and the University of Redlands (1938–1944)
  • James A. Anderson (Ph.D. 1980) – Chancellor and professor of psychology at Fayetteville State University (2008–)
  • Alfred Atkinson (M.S. 1912) – 4th president of Montana State University (1919–1937) and 12th president of University of Arizona (1937–1947)
  • Nadine Aubry (Ph.D. 1987 Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering) – Dean of the College of Engineering and University Distinguished Professor at Northeastern University; member of the National Academy of Engineering (2011)
  • Joel D. Baines (Ph.D. 1988) – Dean of Louisiana State University School of Veterinary Medicine (2014–)
  • Michael Barber (Ph.D. 1972) – Vice Chancellor (CEO) of Flinders University, Australia (2008–2014)
  • James Francis Barker (Mechanical Engineering graduate 1893) – 2nd president of Rochester Institute of Technology (1916–1919)
  • William S. Barker (M.A. 1959) – church historian who served as President of Covenant Theological Seminary (1977–1984)
  • George Wells Beadle (Ph.D. 1930 Genetics) – President of University of Chicago, 1961–1968
  • Steven D. Bennion (MPA) – President of Snow College (1982–1989), Brigham Young University–Idaho (then Ricks College) (1989–1997) and Southern Utah University (1997–2006)
  • Sherwood Berg (M.A. 1948) – President of South Dakota State University (1975–1984)
  • Katherine Bergeron (M.A., Ph.D.) – 11th president of Connecticut College (2014–) and former dean of the college at Brown University
  • Irene Burgess (B.A. Agricultural Economics) – former Provost of Eureka College in Eureka, Illinois (2007–2009)
  • K. Roald Bergethon (M.A., Ph.D.) – former Dean and a professor of German at Brown University, 12th president of Lafayette College (1958–1978), president of New England College in New Hampshire (1981–1985), interim president of Bloomfield College in New Jersey (1986–1987) and Wells College in New York (1987–1988)
  • Jamshed Bharucha (Research Associate 1982–1983) – 12th president of Cooper Union (2011–2015)
  • Henry Bienen (B.S. 1960) – President of Northwestern University, 1995–2009
  • Claude Bissell (Ph.D. English Literature) – President of Carleton University (1956–1958) and the University of Toronto (1958–1971); Companion of the Order of Canada
  • William Fremont Blackman (Ph.D. 1893) – 4th president of Rollins College (1902–1915)
  • Dorothy Gulbenkian Blaney (B.A. Comparative Literature) – former executive vice president of Pace University in New York and president of Cedar Crest College (1989–2006); Blaney Hall Administration Building at Cedar Crest College was named in her honor
  • Edward J. Bloustein (Ph.D. 1954, LL.B. 1959) – President of Bennington College (1965–1971) and Rutgers University (1971–1989)
  • John C. Bliss (A.B. 1889) – President of what is now State University of New York at New Paltz (1908–1923)
  • John G. Bollinger (M.S. 1958 Mechanical Engineering) – former dean (1981–1999) and dean emeritus of College of Engineering at the University of Wisconsin-Madison; member of the National Academy of Engineering (1983)
  • Karen Boroff (B.S. ILR) – Dean of Stillman School of Business, Seton Hall University
  • John Casper Branner (B.S. 1882) – President of Stanford University, 1913–15); geologist
  • Hilton Marshall Briggs (Ph.D.) – 13th president of South Dakota State University (1958–1975)
  • Victor L. Butterfield (B.A. 1927, M.A. 1928) – 11th president of Wesleyan University (1943–1967)
  • Colin G. Campbell (B.A.) – 13th president of Wesleyan University (1970–1988)
  • J. Richard Chase (Ph.D.) – President of Biola University (1970–1982) and Wheaton College (Illinois) (1982–1993)
  • Stanley Chodorow (B.A. 1964 Government, Ph.D. 1968 History) – Provost of the University of Pennsylvania (1994–1997) and Dean of Arts and Humanities at the University of California, San Diego
  • Marc P. Christensen (B.S. 1993 Engineering Physics) – Dean of Lyle School of Engineering at Southern Methodist University
  • Lisa Staiano-Coico, aka Lisa S. Coico (Ph.D. 1981 Weill Cornell Graduate School of Medical Sciences) – Dean of New York State College of Human Ecology (2004–2007); Provost of Temple University (2007–2010); President of City College of New York (2010–present)
  • Stirling Colgate (B.S. 1948, Ph.D. 1951) – President of New Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology (1965–1974) and co-founder of Santa Fe Institute; member of the National Academy of Sciences
  • Elizabeth Coleman (M.A.) – President of Bennington College (1987–2013)
  • Jerry H. Combee (Ph.D. Government) – President of Grove City College (1991–1995)
  • Theodore B. Comstock (B.S. 1870, D.Sc. 1886) – First President of the University of Arizona (1894–1895)
  • Roger B. Corbett (B.S., M.S., Ph.D.) – President of New Mexico State University (1955–1970)
  • Edmund Cranch (B.A. 1945. Ph.D. 1951) – Dean of Cornell University College of Engineering (1972–1978), President of Worcester Polytechnic Institute (1978–1985)
  • Steven C. Currall (Ph.D. 1990 Organizational Behavior) – Provost and Vice President for Academic Affairs at Southern Methodist University (2016–) and former Dean of the Graduate School of Management at UC Davis (2009–2014); Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science
  • Paul D'Anieri (M.A., Ph.D. 1991) – Dean of University of Florida College of Liberal Arts and Sciences (2008–2014); Executive Vice President and Provost of University of California, Riverside (2014–)
  • Thomas B. Day (Ph.D. 1957 Physics) – 6th president of San Diego State University (1978–1996)
  • William W. Destler (Ph.D. 1972 Applied physics) – President of Rochester Institute of Technology, 2007–present
  • Thomas DiPiero (M.A. 1984, Ph.D. 1988 Romance Studies) – Dean of the Dedman College of Humanities and Sciences at Southern Methodist University (2014–)
  • Cathy Dove (MBA) – former Vice President of Cornell Tech; 10th president of Paul Smith's College 2014–present
  • Faye Duchin (B.A. 1965 Experimental Psychology) – Dean of the School of Humanities and Social Sciences at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (1996–2002)
  • Hu Dunfu (B.A. 1909 Mathematics) – Chinese mathematician who co-founded the Chinese Mathematical Society and served as its first president; He co-founded Utopia University in March 1912, which became one of the most reputable private universities in China, and served as its president for 20 years (1912–1928, 1941–1945)
  • Clyde A. Duniway (A.B. 1892) – President of the University of Montana (1908–1912), the University of Wyoming (1913–1917) and Colorado College (1917–1924)
  • Edward D. Eddy (B.A. 1944, Ph.D. 1956) – Provost of the University of New Hampshire (1955–1960) and Pennsylvania State University (1977–1983); President of Chatham University (1960–1977) and University of Rhode Island (1983–1991)
  • Henry Turner Eddy (Ph.D. 1872) – President of the University of Cincinnati (1874–1875, 1884, 1889–1891)
  • Kristin Esterberg (M.A. 1988, Ph.D. 1991 Sociology) – Provost and academic vice president at Salem State University (2009–2014); President of the State University of New York at Potsdam (2014–)
  • Gregory L. Fenves (B.S. 1979) – Dean of the Cockrell School of Engineering (2008–2013), executive vice president and provost (2013–2015) and the 29th president of the University of Texas at Austin (2015–); member of National Academy of Engineering
  • Glenn W. Ferguson (B.A. Economics 1950, MBA 1951) – Chancellor of Long Island University (1969–1970), President of Clark University (1970–1973), the University of Connecticut (1973–1978), the American University of Paris (1992–1995) and Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts in New York City (1983), U.S. diplomat
  • Daniel Fischel (B.A. 1972) – former Dean of the University of Chicago Law School (1999–2001) and Lee and Brena Freeman Professor of Law and Business, Emeritus at the University of Chicago
  • Daniel Mark Fogel (B.A. 1969 English, M.F.A. 1974 Creative Writing, Ph.D. 1976 English) – President of the University of Vermont (2002–2011)
  • George K. Fraenkel (Ph.D. 1949) – physical chemist, chairman of the chemistry department (1965–1968) and dean of Graduate School of Arts and Sciences (1968–1983) at Columbia University
  • Sharon Gaber (Ph.D.) – Provost of the University of Arkansas (2009–2015), President of the University of Toledo (2015–)
  • Zvi Galil (Ph.D. 1975) – President of Tel Aviv University (2007–2009); Dean of the Fu Foundation School of Engineering & Applied Science at Columbia University (1995–2007) and of Georgia Tech's College of Computing since April 9, 2010
  • James C. Garland (Ph.D. 1968 Physics) – 20th president of Miami University (1996–2006)
  • Charles Garside (Law School Graduate, 1923) – former president of the State University of New York (1951–1952)
  • John W. Gilmore (B.S. 1898, MSA 1906) – President of the University of Hawaii, 1908–1913
  • Milton Glick (postdoctoral fellow 1965–1967) – President of the University of Nevada, Reno (2006–2011)
  • Joseph Glover (B.A. 1974 Mathematics) – Provost of the University of Florida 2008–present
  • Jeffery P. Gold (B.S.E 1974, M.D. 1978) – Chancellor of the University of Nebraska Medical Center (2014–) and the University of Toledo Health Sciences Campus (2010–2014)
  • Wang Guosong (M.S. 1931, Ph.D. 1933) – co-founder of the Chinese Society for Electrical Engineering in 1934; head of the Electrical Engineering of Zhejiang University, vice president (1950–1951, 1952–1957) and acting president (1951–1952) of Zhejiang University
  • Carl A. Hanson (Ph.D. 1948 ILR) – President of the Gettysburg College (1961–1977)
  • Leslie Cleveland Harlow (B.S.A. and B.S.) – Principal of the Nova Scotia Agricultural College which is now Dalhousie University's Faculty of Agriculture (1940–1941)
  • Fred Harvey Harrington (B.A. 1933) – President of the University of Wisconsin–Madison (1962–1970)
  • Franklin S. Harris (Ph.D.) – President of Brigham Young University (1921–1945) and Utah State University (1945–1950)
  • William Williams Henderson (M.A. 1905) – President of what is now Weber State University (1910–1914)
  • Janet G. Hering (A.B. 1979) – Director of the Swiss Federal Institute of Aquatic Science and Technology (2007–); member of the National Academy of Engineering (2015)
  • Albert Ross Hill (Ph.D. 1896 Philosophy) – President of the University of Missouri (1908–1921)
  • Carl Mcclellan Hill (M.S., Ph.D.) – President of Kentucky State University (1962–1975) and Hampton University (1976–1978)
  • Emita Brady Hill (B.A. 1957) – Chancellor of Indiana University Kokomo (1991–1999)
  • Forrest Hill (Ph.D. 1930) – Provost of Cornell University (1952–1955)
  • Linnaeus N. Hines (attended Graduate School, 1899) – President of Indiana State University (1921–1934) and Ball State University (1921–1924)
  • Jerome H. Holland (B.S. 1939, M.S. 1941) – President of Delaware State University (1953–60) and Hampton University (1960–70); U.S. diplomat
  • Ira Owen Horsfall (Ph.D. 1932 Mathematics) – President of Snow College (1933–1936)
  • Wang Huzhen (M.S. 1923) – President of what is now North China University of Water Conservancy and Electric Power (1960–1978)
  • Julia Irvine – 4th president of Wellesley College (1894–1899)
  • Emil Q. Javier (Ph.D. 1969) – President of the University of the Philippines, 1993–99
  • David Starr Jordan (M.S. 1872, honorary LL.D. 1886) – founding President of Stanford University (1891–1913), President of Indiana University (1885–91), Smithsonian Institution associate
  • Leslie Jacobs (B.A. 1981) – founder of Educate Now, Louisiana Board of Elementary and Secondary Education; instrumental in transforming the moribund Orleans Parish School System after Hurricane Katrina
  • Jonathan Jansen (M.S.) – Vice-Chancellor and Rector of the University of the Free State, South Africa (2009–)
  • William Angus Jenkins (M.S. 1947) – Principal of the Nova Scotia Agricultural College which is now Dalhousie University's Faculty of Agriculture (1964–1972)
  • Kap-Young Jeong (M.A. and Ph.D. 1985 Economics) – 17th president of Yonsei University, South Korea (2012–2016)
  • A.R. Jewitt (Ph.D.) – 10th Principal of Bishop's University (1948–1960)
  • Walter H. Johns (Ph.D. 1934 Classics and Ancient History) – President of the University of Alberta, 1959–1969; Officer of the Order of Canada
  • Horace A. Judson (Ph.D.) – President of the State University of New York at Plattsburgh (1994–2003), Grambling State University, Louisiana (2004–2009) and Knoxville College (2010–2013)
  • Stephen Kahne (B.E.E.) – Professor Emeritus of Engineering and former Chancellor of Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University in Prescott, AZ
  • Charnvit Kasetsiri (Ph.D. 1972) – President of Thammasat University, 1994–95
  • Dexter Keezer (M.A. 1923) – President of Reed College (1934–1942)
  • William Jasper Kerr – President of Utah State University (1900–1907) and Oregon State University (1907–1932)
  • Shellamiah OKoth Keya (M.Sc. 1970, Ph.D. 1974 Soil Science) – Founding Chancellor of Dedan Kimathi University of Technology (2012–)
  • Rakesh Khurana (B.S. 1990) – Dean of Harvard College (2014–)
  • Akhlaqur Rahman Kidwai (Ph.D. 1950) – Chancellor of Aligarh Muslim University, Aligarh (1983–1992)
  • Lawrence A. Kimpton (Ph.D. 1935 Philosophy) – President of University of Chicago, 1951–1960
  • John E. King (Ph.D. 1941) – Provost of the University of Minnesota Duluth, President of what is now Emporia State University (1953–1966) and the University of Wyoming (1966–1967)
  • P.C. King (1913) – President of what is now China Agricultural University (1917–1920) and Tsinghua University (1920–1922)
  • Joseph T. Kingsbury – President of the University of Utah (1892–1894, 1897–1916)
  • Halsey B. Knapp (B.S. 1912, M.S. 1913 Agriculture) – founding president of what is now the State University of New York at Cobleskill (1916–1923) and the head of what is now the State University of New York at Farmingdale (1923–1956)
  • Steven Knapp (M.S. 1977, Ph.D. 1981) – Provost of Johns Hopkins University (1996–2007); current President of The George Washington University
  • Frank Lazarus (M.A. 1968, Ph.D. 1972 ) – President of the University of Dallas (2004–2009)
  • Patrick F. Leahy (Masters in Business Administration and Labor Relations) – 6th president of Wilkes University (2012–)
  • Robert C. T. Lee (Ph.D. Veterinary Medicine) – President of National Chung Hsing University (1981–1984)
  • Jeffrey S. Lehman (A.B. 1977) – President of Cornell University, 2003–2005; Dean of the University of Michigan Law School, 1994–2003; Founding Vice Chancellor and CEO of NYU Shanghai, 2012–present
  • Charles A. LeMaistre (M.D. 1947) – Chancellor of the University of Texas System (1971–1978), President of the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center (1978–1996)
  • E.L.Li (Ph.D. 1941) – civil engineer and educator; former Vice-president of Zhejiang University and former President of the Zhejiang University of Technology
  • Shu-tian Li (Ph.D. 1928) – studied hydaulic issues in China; grandfather of Steven Chu; president of what is now Southwest Jiaotong University (1930–1932) and of what is now Tianjin University (1932–1939)
  • Wendy B. Libby (B.A. 1972, MBA 1977) – President of Stephens College (2003–2009) and Stetson University (2009–)
  • Winthrop C. Libby – President of the University of Maine, 1969–1973
  • Jay O. Light (B.S.E. 1963) – Dean of Harvard Business School, 2006–2010
  • Franklin M. Loew (B.S., V.M.D.) – Dean of the Tufts University School of Veterinary Medicine (1982–1995) and of the Cornell University College of Veterinary Medicine (1995–1997); President of Becker College (1998–2003)
  • Wallace Loh (M.A.) – President of the University of Maryland, 2010–present
  • Richard P. Longaker (Ph.D.) – Provost and vice president of academic affairs of Johns Hopkins University (1976–1986)
  • Katharine Culbert Lyall (B.A. 1963, Ph.D. 1969) – President of the University of Wisconsin System (1992–2004)
  • Louis L. Madsen (Ph.D. 1934) – President of Utah State University (1950–1953)
  • C. Peter Magrath (Ph.D.) – President of Binghamton University (1972–1974, 2010–2012); President of the University of Minnesota (1974–1984); President of the University of Missouri System(1985–1991); President of West Virginia University(2008–2010)
  • Tomas Mapua (B.Arch. 1911) – founder of the Mapúa Institute of Technology and architect
  • Robert Marshak (Ph.D.1939) – President of City College of New York (1970–1979); Fourteen Year Chairmanship of Physics Department at Rochester University
  • Dale Rogers Marshall (B.A. 1959 Government) – 6th president of Wheaton College (Massachusetts) (1992–2004)
  • Burton Clare Matthews (Ph.D. 1952) – President of the University of Waterloo (1970–1981) and the University of Guelph (1983–1988), Chairman of the Ontario Council of University Affairs (1982–1984)
  • Michael C. McFarland (B.A. 1969 Physics) – President of College of the Holy Cross, 2000–present
  • Alexander Meiklejohn (Ph.D. 1897) – President of Amherst College (1912–1924); Dean of Brown University (1901–1912)
  • Thomas Noel Mitchell (Ph.D.) – Provost (President) of Trinity College Dublin (1991–2001)
  • Fred Tom Mitchell (Ph.D.) – President of Mississippi State University (1945–1953)
  • Don Moon (B.S. 1957) – President of Shimer College, 1978–2004
  • Harcourt A. Morgan – 13th president of the University of Tennessee (1919–1934)
  • Richard Morrison (M.A. 1941) – 5th president of Alabama A&M University (1962–1984)
  • Keith Murray (Ph.D.) – Rector of Lincoln College, Oxford (1944–1953) and Chancellor of University of Southampton (1964–1974)
  • Steven Muller – President of Johns Hopkins University, 1972 to 1990
  • Ernest Fox Nichols (M.S. 1893, Ph.D. 1897) – President of MIT (1921–22) and Dartmouth (1909–16), Professor of physics at Colgate (1892–98), Dartmouth (1898–1903), Columbia (1903–09), and Yale; recipient of Rumford Prize for his proof that light exerts pressure using Nichols radiometer
  • S. Georgia Nugent (Ph.D.) – 18th president of Kenyon College (2003–2013); Interim President of the College of Wooster (2015–2016)
  • Lynn Okagaki (Ph.D. Developmental Psychology) – former Commissioner of Education Research in the Institute of Education Sciences at the U.S. Department of Education; dean of the College of Education and Human Development and Deputy Provost for Academic Affairs at the University of Delaware
  • Archie Palmer (A.B. 1920) – 8th president of the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga (1938–1942)
  • Marc Brendan Parlange (M.S. Agricultural Engineering, Ph.D. Civil and Environmental Engineering) – Dean of Faculty of Applied Science, University of British Columbia; member of the National Academy of Engineering (2017)
  • Frederick D. Patterson (Ph.D. 1933) – President of what is now Tuskegee University (1935–53); founder of the United Negro College Fund; 1987 Presidential Medal of Freedom recipient
  • Raymond A. Pearson (B.S. 1894, M.S. 1899) – President of Iowa State University (1912–1926) and the University of Maryland, College Park (1926–1935)
  • Eduardo Peñalver (B.A. 1994) – 16th Dean of Cornell Law School (2014–)
  • Joseph B. Platt (Ph.D. 1942) – founding President of Harvey Mudd College (1956–1976); 8th president of Claremont Graduate University (1976–1981)
  • Jennifer Raab – President of Hunter College
  • Charles H. Rammelkamp (B.A. 1896, Ph.D. 1900) – President of Illinois College (1905–1932)
  • George Rea (1915) – President of what is now Drexel University (1942–1944)
  • Zhou Ren (B.S. 1914, M.S. 1915) – founding president (1959–?) of Shanghai University of Science and Technology
  • Hermengildo B. Reyes (B.Eng. 1918) – co-founder and president of Far Eastern University (1946–1947) and of University of the East (1951)
  • Melody Rose (M.A., Ph.D.) – 15th president of Marylhurst University (2014–present); former chancellor of the Oregon University System (OUS)
  • Brian C. Rosenberg (B.A.) – 16th president of the Macalester College (2003–)
  • Neil Albert Salonen (attended, transferred) – President of the University of Bridgeport (2000–)
  • Eugene G. Sander (M.S. 1959, Ph.D. 1965 Biology) – President of the University of Arizona (2011–2012)
  • Carlos E. Santiago (Ph.D. 1982 Economics) – Chancellor, University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee
  • Charles Madison Sarratt (Bachelor's 1911) – Chair of the Department of Mathematics (1924–1946), Dean of Students (1939–1945) and Vice-Chancellor (1946–1958) at Vanderbilt University
  • Earl Rogers Sayers (M.A. 1961, Ph.D. 1964) – President of the University of Alabama (1988–1996)
  • George L. Scherger (Ph.D. 1899) – 3rd president of Columbia College Chicago (1927–1929)
  • Robert A. Scott (Ph.D.) – former president of Ramapo College (1985–2000); 9th president of Adelphi University (2000–2015)
  • A. Richard Seebass (Ph.D. 1962 Aerospace Engineering) – Dean of the College of Engineering and Applied Science at the University of Colorado Boulder (1981–1994); member of the National Academy of Engineering (1985)
  • Mary Antoinette Brown Sherman (Ph.D. 1967) – first woman to serve as president of the University of Liberia (1978–1984)
  • Hu Shih (B.A. 1914) – Chancellor of Peking University (1946–1948)
  • G. T. "Buck" Smith (M.P.A. 1960) – 10th president of Chapman University (1977–1988), 18th president of Bethany College (W.Va.) (2004–2008), 13th president of Davis & Elkins College (2008–2013) and its interim president (2015–)
  • Arthur K. Smith (Ph.D. 1970) – President of the University of Utah (1991–1997) and the University of Houston(1997–2003); Chancellor of the University of Houston System (1997–2003); Provost/Executive Vice President/Interim President of the University of South Carolina(1988–1991); Vice President for administration at the Binghamton University
  • David R. Smith (B.A. 1976) – President of the Texas Tech University Health Sciences Center (1996–2001) and Chancellor of Texas Tech University (2001–2006), President of Upstate Medical University (2006–2013)
  • Robert L. Sproull (B.A. 1940 English, Ph.D. 1943 Physics) – President and CEO of University of Rochester (1975–1984)
  • Harvey G. Stenger (B.S. 1979 Chemical Engineering) – 7th president of Binghamton University (2012–)
  • Bertha Stoneman (Bachelor's, Ph.D.) – botanist and university professor in South Africa; 3rd president of Huguenot College (1921–1933)
  • Kathleen Sullivan (B.A. 1976) – Dean of Stanford Law School (1999–2004), professor at Harvard Law School (1984–93), professor at Stanford Law School (2004–present)
  • Louis Wade Sullivan (Medical College Resident) – founder, Dean (1975–1981) and President (1981–1989, 1993–2002) of Morehouse School of Medicine; Secretary of Health and Human Services under George H. W. Bush (1989–1993)
  • Samuel O. Thier – President of Brandeis University (1991–1994), of Massachusetts General Hospital (1994–1996) and of the Institute of Medicine (1985–1991); CEO of Massachusetts General Hospital (1996–2002); Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences
  • M. Carey Thomas (B.A. 1877) – founder and second President of Bryn Mawr College (1894–1922); suffragist
  • George R. Throop (Ph.D. 1905) – Chancellor of Washington University in St. Louis (1927–1944)
  • John Main Trueman (B.S.A. 1895) – Principal of the Nova Scotia Agricultural College which is now Dalhousie University's Faculty of Agriculture (1927–1936)
  • W. Clarke Wescoe (M.D. 1944) – Dean of the University of Kansas School of Medicine (1952–1960) and 10th chancellor of the University of Kansas (1960–1969)
  • Warren Elvin Wilson (M.C.E.) – President of South Dakota School of Mines and Technology (1948–1953)
  • Kenneth E. Wing (B.A., M.A., Ph.D) – former president of the State University of New York at Cobleskill (1992–2002)
  • Lynton Wilson ( M.A. Economics) – Chancellor of McMaster University (2007–2013)
  • George T. Winston (B.A. 1874 Literature, professor) – President of University of North Carolina (1891–1896), the University of Texas at Austin (1896–1899), and North Carolina State University (1899–1908)
  • Randy Woodson (M.S. and Ph.D. Horticulture) – former Provost of Purdue University; 14th Chancellor of North Carolina State University (2010–)
  • Carl R. Woodward (Ph.D. 1926) – President of the University of Rhode Island (1941–1958)
  • Gregory S. Woodward (Ph.D. Doctor of Musical Arts) – 22nd President of Carthage College (2012–2017) and President-elect of the University of Hartford (to assume the presidency from July 2017)
  • Harry Woolf (Ph.D. 1955) – Provost of Johns Hopkins University (1972–1976), fifth Director of Institute for Advanced Study (1976–1987)
  • Henry T. Yang (Ph.D.) – President of University of California, Santa Barbara (1994–); member of the National Academy of Engineering (1991)
  • David N. Yellen (J.D. 1984) – Dean and Professor of Law at Loyola University Chicago School of Law (2005–2016), former Dean of the Maurice A. Deane School of Law at Hofstra University (2001–2004); 4th president of Marist College (2016–)
  • Mao Yisheng (M.S. 1917) – former President of Southwest Jiaotong University and other Chinese universities; Structural engineer, member of the National Academy of Engineering (1982)
  • E.T. York (Ph.D. 1955) – President of the University of Florida (1973–1974); Chancellor of the State University System of Florida (1974–1980)
  • Zhu Yuanding (M.S. 1926) – President of what is now Shanghai Ocean University (1957–1967, 1981–1983)
  • H. C. Zen (B.S. 1916) – Chinese politician, academic who served as President of National Sichuan University (1935–1937)

    • Educators and scholars

  • Rawi Abdelal (M.A. 1997, Ph.D. 1999 Government) – Joseph C. Wilson Professor of Business Administration at Harvard Business School
  • Amanda Anderson (Ph.D.) – Andrew W. Mellon Professor for the Humanities at Brown University, former faculty member at the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign and Caroline Donovan Professor of English Literature and the head of the English department at Johns Hopkins University; Guggenheim Fellows (2009)
  • Paul Avrich (B.A. 1957) – professor and historian; taught at Queens College, City University of New York for most of his life
  • William Bagley (Ph.D. 1900 Psychology and Education) – educator and editor
  • Jacques Bailly (Ph.D. 1997 Classics and Philosophy) – winner of Scripps National Spelling Bee (1980) and the Bee's chief pronouncer (2003–); recipient of the Fulbright Scholarship (1988–1990) and associate professor of classics at the University of Vermont (2004–)
  • Barbara A. Baird (Ph.D. 1979) – Horace White Professor at Cornell University, fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the American Association for the Advancement of Science
  • Brian A. Barsky (M.S. Computer Science) – Professor of Computer Science and Vision Science at the University of California, Berkeley
  • Jessica Berg (J.D. 1994) – Tom and Bette Lou Walker Professor of Law and Dean of the Law School at Case Western Reserve University School of Law
  • Hannah Buxbaum (J.D. 1992) – John E. Schiller Chair in Legal Ethics at Indiana University Maurer School of Law
  • Yuen Ren Chao (B.A. 1914) – Chinese-American linguist, educator, scholar, poet, and composer; president of Linguistic Society of America (1945)
  • Gregory Chow (B.A. 1951) – Chinese American economist, Class of 1913 Professor of Political Economy at Princeton University, known for Chow test
  • Dan T. Coenen (J.D. 1978) – University Professor and Harmon W. Caldwell Chair in Constitutional Law at the University of Georgia Law School
  • Paul A. Cohen (attended 1952–1953, transferred) – Edith Stix Wasserman Professor of Asian Studies and History Emeritus at Wellesley College
  • Kimberlé Williams Crenshaw (B.A. 1981) – Professor of Law at Columbia Law School and UCLA Law School and Centennial Professor at the London School of Economics; critical race scholar, civil rights advocate, introduced and developed intersectional theory
  • Alan Deardorff (M.A. 1969, Ph.D. 1971 Economics) – John W. Sweetland Professor of International Economics and Professor of Economics and Public Policy at the University of Michigan
  • Theodore Drange (Ph.D. 1963) – philosopher of religion and Professor Emeritus at West Virginia University
  • Cliff Eisen – Professor of Music at King's College London (1997–)
  • Susan Emmenegger (LL.M. 1993) – Professor of Private Law and Banking Law at the University of Bern
  • Herman LeRoy Fairchild (B.S. 1874) – co-founder of Geological Society of America (GSA), Secretary (1891–1906) and President (1912) of GSA
  • Marc A. Franklin (LL.B. 1956) – Frederick I. Richman Professor of Law at Stanford Law School
  • Paul S. Goodman (Ph.D. 1966 Organizational Psychology) – Organizational psychologist, author, filmmaker, and the Richard M. Cyert Professor of Organizational Psychology at Carnegie Mellon University
  • John Fillmore Hayford ( 1889) – geodesist; the crater Hayford on the far side of the Moon and Mount Hayford, a 1,871 m mountain peak near Metlakatla, Alaska, United States, are named after him; member of the National Academy of Sciences (1911)
  • Paul Horwich (Ph.D. 1974) – Professor of Philosophy at New York University, best known for his work Truth (1990); on faculties of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (1973–1995), University College London (1995–2000), and the Graduate Center of the City University of New York (2000–2005)
  • Kyron Huigens (J.D. 1984) – Professor of Law at Cardozo Law School
  • Jane Humphries (Ph.D. 1973) – Professor of Economic History and Fellow of All Souls College at the University of Oxford
  • Bruce Jentleson (B.A., Ph.D.) – Professor of Public Policy and Political Science at Duke University
  • Lilian Wyckoff Johnson (Ph.D., 1902) − Professor of History at the University of Tennessee; President of the Western College for Women (1904−1906)
  • James D. Livingston (B.S. 1952 Engineering Physics) – member of the National Academy of Engineering (1994)
  • Beverly J. Martin (B.S., 1957)- First African American Administrator in Ithaca in 1968. Central Elementary School renamed Beverly J. Martin Elementary School in her honor in January 1992.
  • Emil Martinec (Ph.D. 1984) – professor at the Enrico Fermi Institute at the University of Chicago; specialist in string theory
  • Asoke Nath Mitra (Ph.D. 1955) – Indian physicist at Delhi University; received the Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar Prize in 1969
  • David S. Moore (Ph.D.) – Shanti S. Gupta Distinguished Professor of Statistics, Emeritus at Purdue University known for his leadership in statistics education; president of the American Statistical Association (1998)
  • David A. Moss (B.A.) – John G. McLean Professor of Business Administration at Harvard University
  • Paul M. O'Leary (Ph.D. 1929, Faculty 1924–1967) – economist and educator; the first Dean of the S.C. Johnson Graduate School of Management
  • Julie O'Sullivan (J.D. 1984) – Professor of Law at Georgetown University Law Center
  • Susan Mokotoff Reverby (B.S. l967 Labor History) – Marion Butler McLean Professor in the History of Ideas and Professor of Women's and Gender Studies at Wellesley College; known for uncovered the syphilis experiments in Guatemala
  • Michelle Rhee (B.S. 1992 Government) – founder and President of The New Teacher Project; appointed Superintendent of Washington, DC Public Schools in 2007
  • Serge Rudaz (Ph.D. 1979) – theoretical physicist, Professor of Physics and Director of Undergraduate Honors at the University of Minnesota; Fellow of the American Physical Society, recipient of the Canadian Association of Physicists Herzberg Medal
  • Daniel Simons (Ph.D. 1997) – Professor of Psychology at the University of Illinois, known for Gorillas in Our Midst; Ig Nobel Prize winner (2004) for "demonstrating that even gorillas can become invisible when people are attending to something else"
  • Elaine Sisman (B.A. 1972) – Anne Parsons Bender Professor of Music who served as department chair from 1999–2005 at Columbia University, President of the American Musicological Society (2005–2006); member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (2014)
  • Eleonore Stump (M.A. 1973, Ph.D. 1975) – Robert J. Henle Professor of Philosophy at Saint Louis University; member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (2012)
  • Sridhar Tayur (Ph.D. 1990 Operations Research and Industrial Engineering) – Ford Distinguished Research Chair Professor of Operations Management at Carnegie Mellon University; member of the National Academy of Engineering (2017)
  • George B. Thomas (Ph.D. 1940) – professor of mathematics at MIT for 38 years, known for being the author of the widely used calculus textbook Calculus and Analytic Geometry
  • Axel Tschentscher (LL.M. 1993) – Chair of Constitutional Law, Legal Philosophy and Constitutional History at the University of Bern
  • Barry Voight – professor emeritus of geology and geological engineering at Pennsylvania State University; member of the National Academy of Engineering (2017)
  • Huang Wanli (M.S. 1935 Hydrology) – Chinese hydrologist and professor at Tsinghua University (1953–2001)
  • Richard H. Weisberg (Ph.D. 1970) – Walter Floersheimer Professor of Constitutional Law at Cardozo School of Law, founding director at Cardozo of the Holocaust, Genocide and Human Rights Program and the Floersheimer Center for Constitutional Democracy, and a recipient of France's Legion of Honour (2008)
  • Eric W. Weisstein (B.A. 1990 Physics, minor Astronomy) – Encyclopedist, created and maintains MathWorld, ScienceWorld, and other encyclopedias
  • John W. Wells (Ph.D. 1933, Professor 1948–1973) – paleontologist, biologist and geologist; President of Paleontological Society (1961–1962), member of the National Academy of Sciences (1968)
  • Robert C. West (B.A. 1950) – E. G. Rochow Professor of Chemistry Emeritus at the University of Wisconsin–Madison; Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (1978)
  • David White (1886) – geologist; served as President of the Geological Society of America in 1923; recipient of the Thompson Medal (1931) and the Walcott Medal (1934); Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (1921); Member of the National Academy of Sciences (1912)
  • Eliot Wigginton (B.A. 1965) – high school teacher; founder and editor of the Foxfire books; MacArthur Fellow (1989)
  • E-An Zen (B.A. 1951) – geologist; Roebling Medal recipient, fellow of the Geological Society of America (President, 1991–1992); the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the Mineralogical Society of America, member of the Geological Society of Washington (President 1973) and the National Academy of Sciences
  • Peter B. Zinoman (M.A. 1990, Ph.D. 1996) – Professor of History and Southeast Asian Studies, University of California, Berkeley

    • American football

  • Greg Bloedorn (1995) – former NFL offensive lineman and long snapper for the Seattle Seahawks
  • Kevin Boothe (B.S. 2005 Hotel Administration) – former lineman for the Oakland Raiders and New York Giants
  • Al Dekdebrun – Buffalo Bisons, 1946, Chicago Rockets, 1947, Boston Yanks, 1948, New York Yankees, 1948
  • Pete Gogolak (1964) – Buffalo Bills 1964–1965, New York Giants, 1966–1975; first "soccer style" kicker in professional "American" football
  • Derrick Harmon (1984) – San Francisco 49ers 1984–1986
  • Bill Lazor (1994) – NFL assistant coach
  • Chad Levitt (1997) – Oakland Raiders, St. Louis Rams
  • Ed Marinaro (B.S. 1972) – Minnesota Vikings, New York Jets, and Seattle Seahawks; runner-up for the 1971 Heisman Trophy Award, actor on Hill Street Blues
  • Jeff Mathews (2014) – quarterback for the Hamilton Tiger-Cats
  • Lou Molinet (1928) – Frankford Yellow Jackets, 1927 First Hispanic-American player in the National Football League
  • Seth Payne (1997) – Jacksonville Jaguars, 1997–2001, Houston Texans, 2001–2007
  • Lee Reherman (1988) – Miami Dolphins, actor on American Gladiators and X-Files
  • Luke Tasker (2013) – wide receiver for the Hamilton Tiger-Cats
  • J. C. Tretter (2012) – offensive guard for the Green Bay Packers (2013–present)
  • Bryan Walters (2010) – wide receiver for the San Diego Chargers 2010–2011, Seattle Seahawks (2012–2014), Jacksonville Jaguars (2015-present)
  • Glenn "Pop" Warner (LL.B. 1894, football coach) – football player and coach; founder of Pop Warner Little Scholars
  • Gary Wood (1964) – New York Giants 1964–1966, 1968–1969, New Orleans Saints, 1967

    • Baseball

  • Joe Birmingham – baseball player, Cleveland Naps, 1906–14
  • Jon Daniels (B.S. 1999) – General Manager of the Texas Rangers, youngest GM ever in Major League Baseball
  • Robert A. DuPuy (J.D. 1973) – former President and Chief Operating Officer of Major League Baseball (MLB)
  • Joseph Iglehart (1914) – Chairman of the Board, Baltimore Orioles, 1955–65
  • Hughie Jennings (LL.B. study 1901–04, dropped out; Baseball Coach, 1899–?) – Baseball Hall of Fame-inducted shortstop; Louisville Colonels (1891–93), Baltimore Orioles (1893–99), Brooklyn Superbas (1899–1900, 1903), Philadelphia Phillies (1901–02), Detroit Tigers (1907, 1909, 1912, 1918)
  • Rob Manfred (B.S. 1980) – chief operating officer of Major League Baseball; 10th Commissioner of Major League Baseball
  • A. J. Preller (B.S. 1999) – General Manager of the Major League Baseball's San Diego Padres 2014–
  • Bill Walkenbach (B.A. 1998) – Cornell head baseball coach

    • Basketball

  • Bryan Colangelo (B.S. 1987) – President and General Manager of the Toronto Raptors, 2005, 2007 NBA Executive of the Year
  • Jon Jaques - American-Israeli assistant men's basketball coach for Cornell University, who played for Ironi Ashkelon in Israel
  • Nat Militzok (1923–2009) – New York Knicks basketball player

    • Ice hockey

  • Gary Bettman (B.S. 1974) – Commissioner of the NHL
  • Byron Bitz (2007) – forward for the Boston Bruins 2008–2010, Florida Panthers 2010–2011, Vancouver Canucks 2011–present
  • Ken Dryden (B.A. 1969) – NHL Hockey Hall of Fame goaltender, six-time Stanley Cup winner, Conn Smythe Trophy winner, Calder Trophy winner, Canadian Member of Parliament
  • Colin Greening (2010) – Centre for the Ottawa Senators, 2011–present
  • Ned Harkness (lacrosse and hockey head coach) – Coach of Cornell NCAA hockey champions in 1967 and 1970; previously RPI coach of 1954 national champs; also head coach and then General Manager of the Detroit Red Wings
  • David LeNeveu – NHL goalie, previously for the Phoenix Coyotes
  • Matt Moulson (2006) – left wing for the Buffalo Sabres, and previously New York Islanders and Minnesota Wild.
  • Douglas Murray (2003) – defenseman for Montreal Canadiens and previously San Jose Sharks and Pittsburgh Penguins, 2010 Olympian
  • Riley Nash (2007–2010) – centre for the Carolina Hurricanes 2011–Present
  • Lance Nethery – NHL player, executive in the German Elite League
  • Joe Nieuwendyk (1988) – NHL player, 3-time Stanley Cup champion, 2002 Olympic gold medalist
  • Ryan O'Byrne (2007) – former NHL defenseman for the Montreal Canadiens and Colorado Avalanche
  • Ben Scrivens (2010) – goaltender for the Montreal Canadiens and previously Toronto Maple Leafs, Los Angeles Kings and Edmonton Oilers
  • Ryan Vesce (2004) – right wing for the San Jose Sharks, 2008–2010

    • Olympics

    See also: Cornell Olympians
  • Jon Anderson (1971) – 1972 Olympian, track; winner of 1973 Boston Marathon
  • Edward Tiffin Cook, Jr. ( 1910) – men's pole vault Olympic gold medalist in 1908 Summer Olympics
  • Darren Eliot (1983) – NHL player, Los Angeles Kings, Detroit Red Wings, Buffalo Sabres; 1984 Olympian
  • Jamie Greubel (2006) – bronze medalist in two-woman bobsleigh at the 2014 Sochi games
  • Al Hall (1956) – four-time Olympian (1956, 1960, 1964, 1968), hammer throw
  • Rebecca Johnston (2012) – hockey player, 2010 and 2014 Olympic gold medalist with Team Canada
  • Robert J. Kane (1934, Director of Athletics) – U.S. Olympic Committee president, 1976–80; inducted into U.S. Olympic Hall of Fame, 1986
  • Kent Manderville (1993) – NHL player, Calgary Flames, Pittsburgh Penguins; 1992 Olympic silver medalist with Team Canada
  • Edith Master (born 1932) – Olympic bronze medalist equestrian
  • Travis Mayer (undergrad 2000–01, on leave) – Olympic freestyle skiing silver medalist
  • Charles Moore (1951, Director of Athletics, 1994–99) – 1952 Olympic gold medalist (hurdles) and silver medalist (1600-meter relay); honored as Golden Olympian, 1996
  • Pablo Morales (J.D. 1994) – three-time Olympic gold medalist in swimming, 1984 and 1992
  • David Munson (1906) – four-mile team Olympic gold medalist in 1904 Summer Olympics; inducted into the Cornell University Athletic Hall of Fame in 1988
  • Richard Pew (1956) – 1956 Summer Olympics, épée fencing
  • Alma Richards (1917) – 1912 Summer Olympics high jump gold medalist
  • Bo Roberson (1958) – black athlete; the only person to earn an Ivy League degree, an Olympic medal, a doctorate, and have a career in the N.F.L.
  • Jamie Silverstein (undergrad 2002–04, 2006–) – Olympic figure skater

    • Other

  • Bruce Arena (B.S. 1971) – five-time NCAA Championship coach at the University of Virginia; coach of Major League Soccer's D.C. United; coach of the U.S. national team; coach of MLS's New York Red Bulls; present coach of MLS's Los Angeles Galaxy
  • Olivier Busquet – professional poker player
  • Clarence C. Combs, Jr., polo player, two-time winner of the Monty Waterbury Cup
  • Kyle Dake (B.A. 2013) – one of only three wrestlers to win four NCAA Division I individual national titles (2010–2013), and the only one to do so in four different weight classes
  • Michael "Mike" G. French (1976) – All-American lacrosse player at Cornell University from 1974 to 1976, leading the "Big Red" to the NCAA Men's Lacrosse Championship in 1976
  • Brian Hastings – professional poker player
  • Bill Jenkins – drag racer, ranked eighth on NHRA's Top 50 drivers in 2001
  • Alexander Kevitz (1923) – chess master
  • William Larned – seven-time U.S. Tennis championships winner
  • Daniel R. Mackesey (1977) – received NCAA Top Five Award in 1978 for lacrosse and soccer; inducted in National Lacrosse Hall of Fame in 2006
  • Teddy Mayer (J.D.) – motor racing team manager
  • Eamon McEneaney (1977) – All-American lacrosse player at Cornell University from 1975 to 1977, leading the "Big Red" to the NCAA Men's Lacrosse Championship in 1976 and 1977. Eamon died in the September 11 attacks on the World Trade Center
  • John Nickles (1986) – triathlete, winner of the World Champion Title in the 1999 Hawaii Ultraman World Championship; he set an Ultra Marathon Cycling Association world record in 1994
  • Peter Revson – racecar driver
  • Dave Sarachan – head coach of Major League Soccer's Chicago Fire (2002–2007)
  • Dick Savitt – tennis player, ranked #2 in the world
  • Doug J. Smylie (attended and played football for Cornell) – Canadian football player from 1945–1953 who played for the Toronto Argonauts, Montreal Alouettes and Ottawa Rough Riders, Grey Cup championships with Toronto in 1945 and 1952
  • Donald Spero – rower
  • Carl F. Ullrich (B.S. 1950) – Athletic Director at West Point, 1980–1990; Executive Director of the Patriot League, 1989–199-
  • Dan Wood (Ph.D. 1977), five year Cornell golf and soccer (52–20–6) coach; later coached professional teams Tacoma Tides, Colorado Caribous and Atlanta Chiefs; turned professional golfer in 1980

    • Crime

  • Nick Berg (undergrad 1996–98, transferred) – businessman beheaded by Islamic militants on May 7, 2004 during the U.S.-led occupation of Iraq
  • Leo Frank (B.S. 1906 Engineering) – Factory manager; lynched in 1915 for the murder of a 13-year-old girl; subject of the musical Parade
  • David G. Friehling (B.S. 1981) – accountant to Bernard Madoff
  • Mark Gerard (D.V.M., 1962) – perpetuated horse racing fraud, switching horses' identities
  • Katrina Leung (B.S. 1976) – accused spy; case dismissed; later sentenced to terms of plea agreement
  • Robert Tappan Morris (graduate study 1988–89, suspended) – author of the Morris Worm, which crippled the Internet in 1988
  • Michael Ross (B.S. 1981 Agricultural Economics) – convicted serial killer executed in Connecticut on May 13, 2005
  • Michael Schwerner (B.A. 1961 Sociology) – murdered by the Ku Klux Klan in the 1964 Mississippi civil rights worker murders
  • Mark Whitacre (Ph.D. 1983 Nutritional Biochemistry) – highest ranked executive in U.S. history of a Fortune 500 company to turn whistleblower and FBI informant; pleaded guilty to fraud

    • Other

  • Henry Arthur Callis – physician and Professor of Medicine at Howard University; one of the seven founders of Alpha Phi Alpha fraternity; served as its General President in 1915
  • Erwin Engst (1939–1941 Agro-Pastoral Studies) – advisor to the People's Republic of China
  • Eric Erickson (1921 Engineering) – Swedish oil executive; worked for American intelligence during World War II; the real-life spy on whom the book and film The Counterfeit Traitor are based
  • Joanna Guy (B.A. 2013) – Miss Maryland (2012)
  • William H. Hinton (1941 Agronomy and Dairy Husbandry) – farmer and prolific writer
  • Carol Levine (B.A. 1956) – AIDS Policy Specialist. MacArthur Fellow (1993)
  • Stephanie Rader (B.A. 1937) – an American undercover intelligence agent; recipient of the Legion of Merit (2016)
  • Adam Segal – cybersecurity expert

    • Fictional Cornellians

  • In 30 Rock, Fat Balls, a potential addition to Tracy Jordan's entourage is studying hotel administration at Cornell University.
  • In Absurdistan by Gary Shteyngart, a hotel manager attended the Cornell University School of Hotel Administration.
  • In Ally McBeal, Ling Woo was editor of the Cornell Law Review.
  • In Altered States, Dr. Eddie Jessup, played by William Hurt, is a research scientist at Cornell Medical College.
  • In American Pie and other films in the series, Vicky Lathum, played by Tara Reid, attends Cornell.
  • In Annie Hall, Herschel Kominsky has a chair in philosophy at Cornell.
  • In Any Given Sunday, Christina Pagniacci, played by Cameron Diaz, graduated with an M.B.A. in 1996.
  • In Avenue Q, Princeton had a B.A. in English from Cornell in early drafts of the play, according to creator Jeff Marx.
  • In The Big Bang Theory, Arthur Jeffries (a.k.a. Professor Proton), the former host of a children's science show, received a Ph.D. from Cornell.
  • In The Broker by John Grisham, Arthur Morgan, President of the United States, attended Cornell.
  • In Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2, Joseph Allen is an Ithaca, NY native and holds a B.A. in international relations.
  • In Cat's Cradle by Kurt Vonnegut, Newt Hoenikker is a Cornell pre-med student drop-out.
  • In Citizen Kane, Charles Foster Kane, the film's title character played by Orson Welles, was expelled.
  • In The Counterlife by Philip Roth, Henry Zuckerman, the novel's central character, graduated from Cornell.
  • In Dark City (1950), Danny Haley, played by Charlton Heston, was an undergraduate from 1937 to 1941.
  • In Deception Point by Dan Brown, Gabrielle Ashe has a B.A. in Government.
  • In Dirty Dancing, Neil attends the Cornell University School of Hotel Administration.
  • In Goats, many of the main characters attended Cornell.
  • In House of Cards, U.S. presidential chief of staff Linda Vasquez and journalist Tom Hammerschmidt are Cornell graduates.
  • In How I Met Your Mother, Barney Stinson is seen wearing a Cornell T-shirt, implying he attended Cornell. He also claims to have attended MIT, but this is later revealed to be the Magician's Institute of Teaneck.
  • In Just Cause, Bobby Earl, played by Blair Underwood, attended but did not graduate.
  • In Kingdom of Shadows by Alan Furst, Prince Hrubal of Northern Transylvania.
  • In The Lost Weekend, Don Birnam, played by Ray Milland, attended but did not graduate.
  • In Madam Secretary, Nadine Tolliver, Chief of Staff to Secretary of State McCord, is revealed to have studied English at Cornell University where she produced a thesis under the direction of Vladimir Nabokov.
  • In Made of Honor, Tom and Hannah meet at Cornell where Hannah studied fine arts.
  • In Me, Myself and Irene, Irene Waters, the film's title character played by Renée Zellweger, claims her major at Cornell was "Turf Management."
  • In Megan McCafferty's novels, Len Levy has an M.D from Cornell.
  • In Modern Family, Mitchell Pritchett is a graduate of Cornell.
  • In New Moon, Carlisle Cullen teaches at Cornell and Jasper Cullen studies philosophy.
  • In Numb3rs, Agent Sinclair is a graduate of Cornell.
  • In The Office, Andy Bernard attended Cornell, was in an a cappella group named "Here Comes Treble", started a frisbee golf team, drank heavily, never studied and still graduated on time. He minored in History and was a member of the Class of 1995.
  • In Over There, Pvt. Frank "Dim" Dumphy, played by Luke Macfarlane, is nicknamed "Dim" for being highly intelligent and earning a B.S. from Cornell, but ending up in the Army.
  • In Palace Council by Stephen L. Carter, the female protagonist, Aurelia (Aurie) Treene Garland, is a member of the English faculty at Cornell University who resides on Fall Creek Drive. Her colleagues Megan and Tristan Handley also teach at Cornell, where a clandestine meeting in Olin library is recounted.
  • In The Perfect Score, the main character, Kyle, wishes to study architecture at Cornell University.
  • In The Prince of Tides, Dr. Susan Lowenstein, played by Barbra Streisand.
  • In Say Anything..., Sheila, played by Kim Walker, was admitted to Cornell and plans to attend.
  • In The Secret in Their Eyes, Judge Irene Menéndez Hastings is a Cornell Law alumna.
  • In Sex and the City, Velma Rudin, psychologist in the show's second season, holds two Cornell degrees.
  • In The Simpsons, Sideshow Mel attended Cornell.
  • In The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants, the character Diana attends Cornell.
  • In Spriggan, Rie Yamabishi has a B.A. in Linguistics.
  • In Starman, National Security Agency scientist Mark Shermin wears a Cornell sweatshirt.
  • In Step Up, Nora's mother wants her to apply to Cornell if her dancing career fails
  • In Ugly Betty, Alexis Meade's assistant, Nick, is a Cornell graduate.
  • In Up in the Air, Natalie Keener is a Cornell graduate.
  • In Veep, Gary Walsh, personal aide to Vice President Meyer, claims he earned a Bachelor of Science from Cornell University's School of Hotel Administration.
  • In Water for Elephants, Jacob Jankowski, the narrator, attended Cornell's College of Veterinary Medicine.

    • References

    List of Cornell University alumni Wikipedia
    (Text) CC BY-SA


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