Girish Mahajan (Editor)

List of University of Chicago alumni

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This list of University of Chicago alumni consists of notable people who either graduated from, taught at, or attended the University of Chicago.

Contents

Nobel laureates

  • Luis Alvarez (A.B. 1932, S.M. 1934, Ph.D. 1936) – Physics, 1968.
  • Emily Green Balch (attended) – Peace, 1946
  • Gary Becker (A.M. 1953, Ph.D. 1955) – Economics, 1992
  • Saul Bellow (X. 1939) – Literature, 1976
  • Herbert Brown (S.B. 1936, Ph.D. 1938) – Chemistry, 1979
  • James M. Buchanan (Ph.D. 1948) – Economics, 1986
  • Owen Chamberlain (Ph.D. 1949) – Physics, 1959
  • John Maxwell Coetzee (Professor) – Literature, 2003
  • James Cronin (S.M. 1953, Ph.D. 1955) – Physics, 1980
  • Clinton Davisson (S.B. 1909) – Physics, 1937
  • Jerome Friedman (A.B. 1950, S.M. 1953, Ph.D. 1956) – Physics, 1990
  • Milton Friedman (A.M. 1933) – Economics, 1976
  • Ernest Lawrence (X. 1923) – Physics, 1939
  • Tsung-Dao Lee (Ph.D. 1950) – Physics, 1957
  • Robert Lucas, Jr. (A.B. 1959, Ph.D. 1964) – Economics, 1995
  • Harry Markowitz (A.B. 1947, A.M. 1950, Ph.D. 1955) – Economics, 1990
  • Robert Millikan (X. 1894) – Physics, 1923
  • Robert Mulliken (Ph.D. 1921) – Chemistry, 1966
  • Irwin Rose (S.B. 1948, Ph.D. 1952) – Chemistry, 2004
  • F. Sherwood Rowland (S.M. 1951, Ph.D. 1952) – Chemistry, 1995
  • Paul Samuelson (A.B. 1935) – Economics, 1970
  • Myron Scholes (M.B.A. 1964, Ph.D. 1970) – Economics, 1997
  • Herbert A. Simon (A.B. 1936, Ph.D. 1943) – Economics, 1978
  • George E. Smith (Ph.D. 1959) – Physics, 2009
  • Roger Sperry (Ph.D. 1941) – Medicine, 1981
  • Jack Steinberger (S.B. 1942; Ph.D. 1949) – Physics, 1988
  • George Stigler (S.B. 1942, Ph.D. 1949) – Economics, 1982
  • Edward Lawrie Tatum (X. 1931) – Medicine, 1958
  • Daniel Tsui (S.M. 1963; Ph.D. 1967) – Physics, 1998
  • James Dewey Watson (S.B. 1947) – Medicine, 1962
  • Frank Wilczek (A.B. 1970) – Physics, 2004
  • Chen Ning Yang (Ph.D. 1948) – Physics, 1957

    • General

  • Shimon Agranat (J.D. 1929) – President of the Supreme Court of Israel from 1965 until 1976
  • Saul Alinsky (Ph.B. 1930) – labor organizer and political activist
  • Prince Chad Al-Sherif Pasha (M.A.P.S.S. 2006) – of the Hijaz and Turkey
  • Bernard W. Aronson (A.B. 1967) – United States Assistant Secretary of State for Western Hemisphere Affairs from 1989 to 1993
  • John Ashcroft (J.D. 1967) – Attorney General of the United States (2001–2005)
  • David Axelrod (A.B. 1977) – author and former Senior Advisor to President Barack Obama
  • Paul Bloom (1939–2009) – lawyer who recovered $6 billion for the United States Department of Energy
  • Robert H. Bork (A.B. 1948, J.D. 1953) – Attorney General of the United States (1973–1974); United States Court of Appeals Judge (1982–1988)
  • Marvin Braude (1920–2005) – member of Los Angeles City Council (1965–1997)
  • Lisa Brown (J.D. 1986) – White House Staff Secretary (2009–2011)
  • William Holmes Brown (J.D. 1954) – Parliamentarian of the United States House of Representatives (1974–1994)
  • Charles W. Bryan – 20th and 23rd Governor of Nebraska
  • John E. Cashman – Member of the Wisconsin Senate from the 1st district
  • Ahmed Chalabi (Ph.D. 1969) – interim Oil Minister and Deputy Prime Minister of Iraq
  • Elizabeth Cheney (J.D. 1996) – head of the Iran Syria Policy and Operations Group (ISOG) and daughter of former U.S. Vice President Richard Cheney
  • Ramsey Clark (A.M. 1950, J.D. 1951) – Attorney General of the United States (1967–1969)
  • Benjamin V. Cohen (Phi Beta Kappa 1913, Ph.B 1914, J.D. 1915) – member of President Franklin D. Roosevelt's brain trust
  • James Comey (J.D.) – seventh director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation
  • Lycurgus Conner (B.A., J.D.) – member of the Illinois House of Representatives from 1961 until 1963.
  • Richard Cordray (J.D. 1986) – 1st Director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, 49th Attorney General of Ohio, 46th Treasurer of Ohio
  • Jon S. Corzine (M.B.A. 1973) – Governor of New Jersey (D) (2006–2010); United States Senator (D-NJ) (2001–2006); former CEO of Goldman Sachs; University trustee
  • Benjamin O. Davis, Jr. (X. 1933) – General of the United States Air Force (1954); Assistant Secretary of Transportation under Nixon
  • Francisco Gil Diaz (Ph.D. 1972) – Secretary of Finance and Public Credit of Mexico
  • James I. Dolliver (J.D. 1921) – Republican U.S. Representative from Iowa's 6th congressional district
  • Jon Dudas (J.D.) – Director of the United States Patent and Trademark Office, Under Secretary of Commerce for Intellectual Property
  • Troy Eid (J.D. 1991) – United States Attorney for the District of Colorado (2006 - 2009)
  • Frank H. Easterbrook (J.D. 1973) – Circuit Judge, United States Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals
  • Allison H. Eid (J.D. 1991) – 95th Justice of the Colorado Supreme Court
  • Harvey Feldman (A.B. ?, A.M. 1954) – drafter of the Taiwan Relations Act, United States Ambassador to Papua New Guinea and the Solomon Islands (1979–1981)
  • Jerome Frank (A.B. 1909, J.D. 1912) – legal philosopher, Judge of United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, Chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission
  • Stanton Friedman (B.S. 1955, M.S. 1956) – nuclear physicist, UFOlogist
  • Douglas H. Ginsburg (J.D. 1973) – Chief Judge, United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit
  • Jackie Goldberg (M.A.T. 1973) – California State Assembly member (2000–2006)
  • James Hormel (J.D. 1958) – United States Ambassador to Luxembourg (1999–2001)
  • Constance Horner (M.A. 1967) – member of the United States Commission on Civil Rights 1993–1998; public official in the Reagan and first Bush administrations, independent director of Pfizer, Prudential Financial, and Ingersoll Rand
  • Thomas W. Hyde – major general of volunteers in the American Civil War, Maine state senator, founder of Bath Iron Works
  • Harold LeClair Ickes (A.B. 1897 J.D. 1907) – United States Secretary of the Interior (1933–1946)
  • Fred Ikle (A.M. 1948, Ph.D. 1950) – former Under Secretary of Defense for Policy; Director of U.S. Arms Control and Disarmament Agency (1973–1977)
  • Peter Jambrek (Ph.D. 1971) – President of the Constitutional Court (1991–1993) and Minister of the Interior of Slovenia (2000), member of the European Court for Human Rights (1993–1999)
  • Patricia Kabbah (A.M. 1963) – former First Lady of Sierra Leone
  • Zalmay Khalilzad (Ph.D. 1979) – United States Ambassador to the United Nations (2007–2009); former United States Ambassador to Afghanistan
  • Amy Klobuchar (J.D. 1985) – United States Senate (D-MN) (2007–present)
  • Alexander Krasnoshchyokov (J.D. 1912) – Soviet politician, first Chairman of the Government of the Far Eastern Republic
  • Koh Tsu Koon (Ph.D. 1977) – third Chief Minister of the State of Penang, Malaysia (1990–2008)
  • Jewel Lafontant (J.D. 1946) – United Nations delegate
  • Thomas Rex Lee (J.D. 1991) – Associate Justice of the Utah Supreme Court
  • Rex E. Lee (J.D. 1963) – 37th Solicitor General of the United States
  • Edward Levi (A.B. 1932, J.D. 1935) – Attorney General of the United States (1975–77)
  • Robert Todd Lincoln (J.D. 1867) – 35th United States Secretary of War
  • Lien Chan (Ph.D. 1965) – Vice President of the Republic of China (Taiwan) under President Lee Teng-hui (1996–2000)
  • Justin Yifu Lin (Ph.D. 1986) – Senior Vice President and first Chief Economist from a developing country for the World Bank (2008–present)
  • T. D. A. Lingo – folk singer, radio personality, and brain researcher
  • Jack Markell (M.B.A. 1985) – Governor of Delaware (2009–2017)
  • Michael W. McConnell (J.D. 1979) – Circuit Judge, United States Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals
  • David M. McIntosh (J.D. 1983) – Member of the U.S. House of Representatives from Indiana's 2nd district, President of the Club for Growth
  • Marco Antonio Mena Rodríguez – Governor-elect of Tlaxcala
  • Abner J. Mikva (J.D. 1951) – Illinois Congressman (1956–1966); United States Congressman (1969–1973, 1975–1979); United States Court of Appeals Judge (1979–94)
  • John Milkovich – member of the Louisiana State Senate since 2016; Shreveport lawyer; studied journalism at Chicago
  • Patsy Mink (J.D. 1951) – United States House of Representatives (D-HI) (1965–1977, 1990–2002)
  • Carol Moseley Braun (J.D. 1972) – United States Senate (D-IL) (1992–1998); United States Ambassador (1999–2001)
  • Eliot Ness (A.B. 1925) – United States Treasury and Bureau of Prohibition agent, head of The Untouchables
  • William Niskanen (A.M. 1955, Ph.D. 1962) – Chairman of the Cato Institute in Washington, D.C.
  • James B. Parsons (A.M. 1946, J.D. 1949) – first African-American Federal District Court Judge (1991–1992)
  • Peter George Peterson (M.B.A. 1951) – United States Secretary of Commerce (1972–1973)
  • Abraham A. Ribicoff (J.D. 1933) – 4th United States Secretary of Health, Education, and Welfare, 80th Governor of Connecticut
  • Pete Ricketts (A.B. 1986, M.B.A. 1991) – 40th Governor of Nebraska (2015–present)
  • Paul Romer (B.A. 1977, Ph.D. 1983) – Chief Economist of the World Bank
  • Kyle Sampson (J.D. 1996) – Chief of Staff and Counselor of United States Attorney General Alberto Gonzales
  • Bernie Sanders (Sc.B. 1964) – United States Senator (VT) United States House of Representatives and 2016 presidential candidate
  • David Schuman (Ph.D. 1974) – Oregon Court of Appeals Judge
  • Masaaki Shirakawa (A.M. 1977) – Governor, Bank of Japan (2008–present)
  • Thomas Sowell (Ph.D. 1968) – winner of the National Humanities Medal (2003); Economist and Senior Fellow at Hoover Institution, Stanford University
  • John Paul Stevens (A.B. 1941) – United States Supreme Court Justice (1975–2010)
  • Jim Talent (J.D. 1981) – United States Senator (R-Mo) (2002–2007)
  • John Thomas (J.D. 1970) – Lord Chief Justice of England and Wales
  • Paul Wolfowitz (Ph.D. 1972) – President of the World Bank (2005–2007); United States Deputy Secretary of Defense (2001–2005)
  • Kateryna Yushchenko (M.B.A. 1986) – First Lady of Ukraine (2005–2010)

    • Arts and entertainment

  • Ed Asner (X. 1948) – Emmy Award-winning actor, The Mary Tyler Moore Show, Lou Grant, Up, Elf
  • David Auburn (A.B. 1991) – playwright; winner of the Pulitzer Prize and Tony Award for Proof
  • Lester Beall (A.B. 1926) – modernist graphic designer
  • Elvin Bishop (X, 1972) – rock musician; blues icon
  • Anna Chlumsky (A.B. 2002) – actress; film My Girl and TV series Veep
  • Misha Collins (A.B. 1997) – actor; star of TV series Supernatural
  • Jan Crull Jr. (A.M. 1984) – documentary filmmaker
  • Katherine Dunham (Ph.B. 1936) – dancer and choreographer, National Medal of Arts winner
  • Roger Ebert (X. 1970) – film critic and Pulitzer Prize winner
  • Kurt Elling (X. 1992) – jazz singer and nine-time Grammy Award nominee
  • George R. Ellis (A.B. 1959, M.F.A. 1962) – author, art historian and director of the Honolulu Museum of Art
  • Melvin Frank (A.B. 1935) – Academy Award-nominated filmmaker and screenwriter, A Touch of Class
  • Philip Glass (A.B. 1956) – Academy Award-nominated composer and musician
  • John Grierson (A.M. 1927) – coined the word "documentary"; founder of the British documentary film movement; founded and headed Canada's National Film Board during World War II; director of mass communications for UNESCO, 1948–50
  • Sessue Hayakawa (A.B. 1913) – Academy Award-nominated film actor; starred in Cecil B. DeMille's The Cheat and Bridge on the River Kwai
  • Marilu Henner (X. 1974) – actress; starred in TV series Taxi
  • Mark Hollmann (A.B. 1985) – Tony Award-winning composer
  • Celeste Holm (X. 1934) – Academy Award-winning actress, Gentleman's Agreement, All About Eve, High Society
  • Kabir Iyengar (A.B. 2008) – YouTube personality, comedian, and writer
  • Rebecca Jarvis (A.B. 2003) – runner-up on the fourth season of The Apprentice
  • Wolf Kahn (A.B. 1950) – artist
  • Philip Kaufman (A.B. 1958) – film director, The Right Stuff, The Unbearable Lightness of Being
  • Rose Kaufman (X. 1959) – screenwriter, The Wanderers and Henry & June
  • Greg Kotis (A.B. 1988) – Tony Award-winning playwright
  • Aaron Lipstadt (A.B. 1974) – director
  • Joshua Marston (A.M. 1994) – film director, Maria Full of Grace
  • Tucker Max (A.B. 1998) – Internet celebrity and New York Times bestselling author
  • Elaine May (A.B. 1953) – screenwriter, actress, and director, comedian with Nichols and May, Oscar-nominated writer of Heaven Can Wait and Primary Colors, director of A New Leaf and The Heartbreak Kid
  • Mike Nichols (X. 1953) – film and stage director; winner of a Tony Award and an Academy Award; directed The Graduate, Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, Catch-22, Silkwood; co-founder of The Second City comedy troupe
  • Sheldon Patinkin (A.B. 1953) – theater director
  • Kimberly Peirce (A.B. 1990) – film director, Boys Don't Cry (Academy Award for Best Actress, Hilary Swank) and Stop-Loss
  • Dan Peterman – artist
  • Bernard Sahlins (A.B. 1943) – co-founder of The Second City comedy troupe
  • Hayden Schlossberg (A.B. 2000) – writer, Harold & Kumar Go to White Castle
  • Eddie Shin (A.B. 1998) – actor
  • Paul Sills (A.B. 1951) – co-founder of The Second City comedy troupe
  • Michael Stevens – creator of educational YouTube channel Vsauce
  • Fritz Weaver (A.B. 1951) – actor, Holocaust, Fail-Safe, Black Sunday
  • Gavin Williamson – harpsichordist

    • Athletics

  • Henry Adkinson – Major League Baseball player for the St. Louis Browns
  • Jay Berwanger (A.B. 1936) – first Heisman Trophy winner
  • Willie D. Davis (M.B.A. 1968) – professional football player and former university trustee
  • Kim Ng (A.B. 1990) – senior vice president of operations with Major League Baseball, former assistant general manager of Los Angeles Dodgers
  • Craig Robinson (M.B.A. 1992) – former men's basketball head coach at Oregon State University; older brother of Michelle Obama
  • Adam Silver (J.D. 1988) – Commissioner of the National Basketball Association

    • Business

  • Robert V. Adams (M.B.A. 1961) – former Executive Vice President of Xerox Corporation
  • Andrew M. Alper (A.B. 1980, M.B.A., 1981) – President of the New York City Economic Development Corporation, youngest Goldman Sachs partner in company history, university trustee
  • Robert Barnett (J.D. 1971) – partner at the law firm Williams & Connolly LLP
  • Paul G. Blazer (A.A. 1915) – founder of Ashland Oil & Refining Company (Ashland, Inc.)
  • David G. Booth (M.B.A. 1971) – philanthropist, Co-CEO and Co-Founder of Dimensional Fund Advisors
  • Bart Becht (M.B.A. 1982) – CEO of Reckitt Benckiser
  • Tae-won Chey (B.A, M.S. 1988) – Chairman of the SK Group
  • Norton Clapp (Ph.B. 1928, J.D. 1929) – an original owner of Space Needle; university trustee
  • L. Gordon Crovitz (A.B. 1980) – publisher of the Wall Street Journal
  • Daniel Doctoroff (J.D. 1984) – President of Bloomberg L.P.; former Deputy Mayor of New York City under Mayor Michael Bloomberg
  • Brady Dougan (A.B. 1981, M.B.A., 1982) – CEO of Credit Suisse First Boston; CEO-elect of Credit Suisse Group in Zurich (beginning May 2007); youngest CEO on Wall Street (2004)
  • Patrick Doyle (M.B.A. 1988) – President and CEO of Domino's Pizza, Inc
  • Larry Ellison (did not graduate) – founder of Oracle; reportedly wealthiest person in California, third-richest in United States
  • Jacob A. Frenkel (M.A., Ph.D) - Chairman of JPMorgan Chase International, Chairman of the Board of Trustees of the Group of Thirty (G-30), former David Rockefeller Professor of International Economics at The University of Chicago
  • Gerald Gidwitz (Ph.B. 1927) – co-founder of Helene Curtis Industries, Inc.
  • Scott Griffith (M.B.A. 1990) – CEO of Zipcar (2003–present)
  • Daniel S. Hamermesh (B.A. 1969) – professor in Foundations of Economics at University of Texas at Austin, research associate at Peter Peterson[National Bureau of Economic Research]], program director at Institute for the Future of Labor (IZA)
  • Timothy E. Hoeksema (M.B.A. 1977) – founder of Midwest Airlines
  • Gary Hoover – founder of Bookstop and Hoover's
  • Mark Hoplamazian (M.B.A. 1989) – CEO, Global Hyatt Corporation (2006–present)
  • Johannes P. Huth (M.B.A.) – Head of KKR Operations in Europe, Middle East, and Africa
  • Kenneth M. Jacobs (B.A.) – Chairman and CEO of Lazard; university trustee
  • Porter Jarvis (M.B.A. 1932) – President, then Chairman of Swift & Co., 1955–1967
  • John H. Johnson (X. 1942) – founder of Johnson Publishing Company, publisher of Ebony and Jet magazines
  • James M. Kilts (M.B.A. 1974) – Chairman, President, and CEO of Gillette Company
  • Bon-Joon Koo (M.B.A.) – Vice President of LG Electronics Corporation
  • Sherry Lansing (Lab 1962) – Chairman and CEO of Paramount Pictures
  • Michael Larson (businessman) (M.B.A. 1981) – Chief Investment officer of Cascade Investment, the investment vehicle for Bill Gates and his foundation
  • John Liew (PhD '95, MBA '94, BA '89) – co-founder of AQR Capital
  • Matt Maloney (MBA '10) - Founder and CEO of GrubHub Inc.
  • Joe Mansueto (A.B. 1978, M.B.A. 1980) – Chairman and CEO of Morningstar, Inc.
  • Howard Marks (M.B.A. 1969) – Founder of Oaktree Capital Management
  • Peter Mensch (X, 1975, Masters in Marketing) - rock impresario
  • John Meriwether (M.B.A. 1973) – CEO and Principal of JWM Partners; former CEO of Long Term Capital Management
  • Martin Nesbitt (M.B.A. 1991) – CEO of The Parking Spot, Treasurer of Barack Obama's 2008 presidential campaign
  • Joseph Neubauer (M.B.A. 1965) – Chairman and CEO of Aramark
  • John Opel (M.B.A. 1949) – President of IBM (1974–1983); CEO of IBM (1981–1985); Chairman of IBM (1983–1986)
  • Ferdinand Peck – businessman and philanthropist, best known for financing Chicago's Auditorium Building
  • Peter Peterson (M.B.A. 1951) – co-founder and former Chairman of Blackstone Group
  • David Wendell Phillips (J.D. 1988) – angel investor
  • Donald Pritzker (J.D. 1959) – Former president of Hyatt Corporation
  • Nicholas Pritzker (J.D. 1975) – Former president of Hyatt Corporation and co-founder of Tao Capital
  • Thomas Pritzker (J.D./M.B.A. 1976) – Chairman and CEO of The Pritzker Organization and Executive Chairman of Hyatt Corporation
  • Philip J. Purcell (M.B.A. 1967) – former chairman and CEO of Morgan Stanley Dean Witter
  • Roberta Cooper Ramo (J.D.) – private practice lawyer, President of the American Law Institute
  • Jay Rasulo (M.B.A. 1984) (AM 1982) – Senior Executive Vice President and CFO of The Walt Disney Company
  • Laura Ricketts (A.B. 1984) – co-owner of Chicago Cubs, board member of Lambda Legal, gay rights activist
  • Pete Ricketts (M.B.A. 1991) – 40th Governor of Nebraska, former COO of Ameritrade
  • Thomas S. Ricketts (A.B. 1988, M.B.A. 1993) – CEO of Incapital LLC; Director of TD Ameritrade Holding Corporation; Chairman of the Chicago Cubs
  • David Rockefeller (Ph.D. 1940) – Chairman of Chase Manhattan Bank (1969–81); former trustee of the University of Chicago
  • Emmanuel Roman (M.B.A. 1987) – CEO of PIMCO
  • David Rubenstein (J.D. 1973) – co-founder of The Carlyle Group
  • Nassef Sawiris (A.B. 1982) – CEO of Orascom Construction Industries (OCI)
  • Evan Sharp (A.B.) – co-founder and Chief Creative Officer of Pinterest
  • Patrick Spain (A.B. 1974) – founder of Hoover's and HighBeam Research
  • Robert Steel (M.B.A. 1984) – CEO of Wachovia Bank (2008–present); former Vice-Chairman of Goldman Sachs; former Under Secretary for Domestic Finance within the United States Department of the Treasury
  • Dick Stoken (M.B.A., 1958) – founding partner in Lind-Waldock, head of Strategic Capital Management
  • Frederick D. "Sandy" Sulcer, (M.B.A. 1963) – advertising, wrote Put a Tiger In Your Tank for ExxonMobil
  • Dylan Taylor (M.B.A 1998) – CEO, Americas, of Colliers International
  • Marion A. Trozzolo (PhB 1947, M.B.A. 1950) – first United States manufacturer to apply teflon to cookware
  • John S. Watson (M.B.A. 1980) – Chairman and CEO of Chevron Corporation
  • Jon Winkelried (B.A. & M.B.A. 1982) – CEO of TPG Capital and former COO of Goldman Sachs

    • Education

  • John Alroy (Ph.D. 1994) – paleobiologist and researcher at the National Center for Ecological Analysis and Synthesis, UCSB, 2007 Charles Schuchert Award from The Paleontological Society
  • Richard C. Atkinson (Ph.B. 1948) – President of the University of California (1995–2003)
  • Marguerite Ross Barnett (A.M. 1966, Ph.D. 1972) – first African-American and female President of the University of Houston (1990–92); first African-American Chancellor of the University of Missouri (1986–90)
  • Werner A. Baum (Ph.D.) – second chancellor of University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee (1973–1979) and the 7th president of University of Rhode Island (1968–1973)
  • Laird Bell (J.D.) – lawyer, Chairman of the Chicago Council on Foreign Relations, Chairman of the University of Chicago Board of Trustees, and of Carleton College
  • Henry Bienen (A.M. 1962, Ph.D. 1966) – President of Northwestern University (1995–2009)
  • George W. Bond (M.A. 1923) – President of Louisiana Tech University from 1928 to 1936
  • Leon Botstein (A.B. 1967) – President of Bard College (1975–present); principal conductor of American Symphony Orchestra
  • John W. Boyer (A.M. 1969, Ph.D 1975) – Dean of the College at the University of Chicago
  • Tom Campbell (A.B. 1973, A.M. 1973, Ph.D. 1980) – Dean of Haas School of Business at the University of California, Berkeley (2002–2008)
  • King Virgil Cheek (J.D. 1969) – President of Shaw University (1969–1971); President of Morgan State University (1971–1974)
  • Rebecca S. Chopp (Ph.D. 1983) – current Chancellor, University of Denver; former President of Swarthmore College; President of Colgate University (2002–2009); former dean of Yale Divinity School; former provost of Emory University; feminist theologian
  • John Royston Coleman (Ph.D. 1950) – labor economist; President of Haverford College; formerly dean of Carnegie-Mellon University; author of Blue-Collar Journal; host of CBS program Money Talks
  • May Louise Cowles – economist; researcher, and nationwide advocate of home economics study
  • Peter Dorman (Ph.D. 1985) – President, American University of Beirut (2008–present)
  • Mary Elizabeth Downey – Director of the Chautauqua School for Librarians who established and promoted library science education courses across the Western and Midwestern United States
  • Christopher L. Eisgruber (J.D. 1988) – 20th President of Princeton University
  • Norman Ericson (Ph.D.) – Bible scholar, faculty at Trinity International University
  • Ward Farnsworth (J.D. 1994) – Dean of University of Texas School of Law
  • Robert Franklin (Ph.D. 1985) – President of Morehouse College (2007–2012)
  • Adam Gamoran (A.B. 1979, A.M. 1979, Ph.D. 1984) – Professor of Sociology, University of Wisconsin–Madison; director, Wisconsin Center for Education Research
  • Edgar Godbold (Ph.D. 1907) – President from 1923 to 1929 of Howard Payne University in Brownwood, Texas, and Louisiana College in Pineville, Louisiana, from 1942 to 1951
  • Marvin L. Goldberger (Ph.D. 1948) – President of California Institute of Technology (1978–1987)
  • Clifton Daggett Gray (Ph.D.) – President of Bates College (1920–1944)
  • Susan Henking, (Ph.D. 1988) – President of Shimer College (2012–present)
  • Leo I. Higdon, Jr. (M.B.A. 1972) – President of Connecticut College (2006–present); President of the College of Charleston (2001–2006); President of Babson College (1997–2001); Dean of Darden Graduate School of Business Administration at the University of Virginia
  • William E. Holmes – former President of Central City College, faculty of the Atlanta Baptist Institute, now called Morehouse College for 25 years.
  • Howard Wesley Johnson (A.M. 1947) – President of Massachusetts Institute of Technology (1966–1971)
  • David Aaron Kessler (J.D. 1978) – Dean of the University of California at San Francisco School of Medicine; former Dean of Yale School of Medicine; former Food and Drug Administration Commissioner
  • Yong-Hak Kim (Ph.D.) – President of Yonsei University (2016–)
  • Werner Krieglstein (Ph.D. 1972) – Professor and philosopher; recipient of the CCHA's Distinguished Regional Humanities Educator Award in 2008 and a Fulbright scholar
  • Thomas W. Krise (Ph.D. 1995) – 13th President of Pacific Lutheran University (2012–)
  • John S. Kyser (post-graduate) – President of Northwestern State University (1954–1966)
  • H. Gregg Lewis (A.B. 1936, Ph.D. 1947) – professor and noted labor economist
  • Benjamin E. Mays (A.M. 1925, Ph.D. 1935) – President of Morehouse College (1940–1967); recipient of American Educator Award (1980); civil rights activist
  • William Parker McKee (B.Div., 1887) – second president of Shimer College
  • Deborah Meier (A.M. 1955) – founder of small schools in New York and Boston; recipient of MacArthur Fellowship
  • Herman Clarence Nixon – professor, member of the Southern Agrarians
  • Dallin H. Oaks (J.D. 1957) – former President of Brigham Young University
  • Edison E. Oberholtzer (A.M. 1915) – founder and first President of the University of Houston
  • G. Dennis O'Brien (Ph.D., 1961) – former president of Bucknell University and the University of Rochester
  • Leo J. O'Donovan (postdoctoral fellow at University of Chicago) – 47th President of Georgetown University
  • Santa J. Ono (A.B. 1984) – 15th President & Vice-Chancellor University of British Columbia; 28th President University of Cincinnati
  • William L. Pollard (Ph.D. 1976) – President of Medgar Evers College (2009–present)
  • Clayton Rose (B.A. 1980, M.B.A. 1981) – President of Bowdoin College (2015–present)
  • James Monroe Smith (graduate work, 1922) – President of Louisiana State University, 1930–1939
  • Barbara Snyder (J.D.) – president of Case Western Reserve University
  • Gerhard Spiegler – former President of Elizabethtown College
  • Samuel L. Stanley (A.B. 1976) – President of Stony Brook University (beginning July 1, 2009)
  • Vince Tinto – theorist in field of higher education, particularly concerning university student retention
  • David Truman (A.M. 1936, Ph.D. 1939) – President of Mount Holyoke College (1969–1978); President of Russell Sage Foundation (1978–1979)

    • Historians

  • Allan Berube (X. 1968) – founder of the San Francisco Gay and Lesbian History Project, now the Gay and Lesbian Historical Society; author of Coming Out Under Fire (1990) [Lambda Literary Award]; MacArthur Fellow (1996)
  • Antoinette Burton (A.M. 1984, Ph.D. 1990) – Catherine A. and Bruce C. Bastian Professor of Global and Transnational Studies and Professor of History at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
  • Henry Steele Commager (Ph.B. 1923, A.M. 1924, Ph.D. 1928) – American historian
  • Avery Craven (Ph.D. 1923) – Professor of History; Civil War expert
  • Frances Gardiner Davenport (Ph.D. 1904), editor of the series European Treaties Bearing on the History of the United States and its Dependencies
  • Angie Debo (A.M. 1924, international relations) – Oklahoma and Native American history, author of And the Waters Still Run: The Betrayal of the Five Civilized Tribes (1940)
  • Nicholas Dirks (A.M. 1974, Ph.D. 1981) – Franz Boas Professor of History and Anthropology; Vice-President for Arts and Sciences at Columbia University
  • Lawrence M. Friedman (A.B. 1948, J.D. 1951, LL.M. 1953) – Marion Rice Kirkwood Professor of Law at Stanford Law School; legal historian and author of Crime and Punishment in American History
  • David Fromkin (A.B. 1950, J.D. 1953) – University Professor of International Relations, History, and Law at Boston University
  • Anthony Grafton (A.B. 1971, A.M. 1972, Ph.D. 1975) – Prominent Renaissance historian and Henry Putnam University Professor at Princeton University.
  • Vincent Harding (A.M. 1956, Ph.D. 1965) – a scholar of American religion and society
  • Gertrude Himmelfarb (Ph.D. 1950) – National Humanities Medal (2004); Professor Emeritus of History at the City University of New York
  • Kenneth T. Jackson (A.M. 1963, Ph.D. 1966) – Jacques Barzun Professor of History and the Social Sciences at Columbia University
  • Russell Jacoby (S.M. 1978) – Professor in Residence at Department of History, University of California, Los Angeles; author of The Last Intellectuals (1987 [2000])
  • Judith Walzer Leavitt (Ph.D 1966) – Professor Emerita, History of Medicine Department, [University of Wisconsin, Madison]], author of "Typhoid Mary."
  • Mark Edward Lewis (A.B. 1977, A.M. 1979, Ph.D. 1985) – Kwoh-Ting Li Professor in Chinese Culture, Department of History, Stanford University
  • Walter A. McDougall (A.M. 1971, Ph.D. 1974) – Professor of History and Alloy-Ansin Professor of International Relations, University of Pennsylvania; Pulitzer Prize Winner (1986)
  • William Hardy McNeill (A.B. 1938, A.M. 1939) – Professor Emeritus of History at the University of Chicago; author of The Rise of the West: A History of the Human Community (1963)
  • Saul K. Padover (Ph.D., 1932) – historian and political scientist at the New School for Social Research in New York City
  • Richard Anthony Parker (Ph.D. 1938) – Charles Edwin Wilbour Professor of Egyptology at Brown University; director of the University of Chicago's epigraphic survey studying the mortuary temple of Ramses III
  • Rick Perlstein (B.A. 1992) – author of Nixonland: The Rise of a President and the Fracturing of America and Before the Storm: Barry Goldwater and the Unmaking of the American Consensus
  • Vijay Prashad (A.M. 1990, Ph.D. 1994) – George and Martha Kellner Chair in South Asian History and Professor of International Studies, Trinity College; author of The Darker Nations: A People's History of the Third World (2007)
  • Nicolas Rasmussen (A.M. 1986) – Professor of History at the University of New South Wales
  • Francesca Rochberg (Ph.D. 1980) – Catherine and William L. Magistretti Distinguished Professor of Near Eastern Studies, University of California, Berkeley; MacArthur Fellow (1982)
  • Eileen Southern (A.B. 1940, A.M. 1941) – National Humanities Medal (2001); first African-American female professor at Harvard University
  • Studs Terkel (Ph.B. 1932, J.D. 1934) – oral historian and radio host; Pulitzer Prize winner for the Good War: An Oral History of World War II (1985); National Humanities Medal (1997)
  • Gerhard Weinberg (A.M. 1949, Ph.D. 1951) – historian, World War II expert; William R. Kenan, Jr. Professor Emeritus of History, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill
  • Irene J. Winter (M.A. 1967) – Ancient Near East Art historian, professor at Harvard and chair of the department of Fine Arts from 1993–96; MacArthur Fellow (1983), Radcliffe Fellow (2003–04), Mellon Lecturer (2005)
  • Carter G. Woodson (A.B. 1908, A.M. 1908) – historian and founder of Negro History Week (1926), which evolved into Black History Month; civil rights activist
  • John Komlos (Ph.D. 1978) – professor emeritus, University of Munich economic historian and founder of the journal Economics and Human Biology

    • Journalism

  • Rick Atkinson (A.M. 1976) – reporter and author, four-time Pulitzer Prize winner
  • David Blum (A.B. 1977) – Editor in Chief of the Village Voice (2006–present)
  • David Broder (A.B. 1947, A.M. 1951) – Pulitzer Prize winner for commentary (1973); political correspondent and columnist for The Washington Post
  • David Brooks (A.B. 1983) – political commentator; columnist for the New York Times; senior editor of The Weekly Standard; regular commentator on The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer
  • Ana Marie Cox (A.B. 1994) – liberal columnist, founding editor of the Wonkette blog, correspondent for Air America Media
  • Roger Ebert (X. 1970) – Pulitzer Prize winner for film criticism (1975); columnist for the Chicago Sun-Times
  • Thomas Frank (A.M. 1989, Ph.D. 1994) – Editor-in-Chief of The Baffler; author of The Conquest of Cool (1997) and What's the Matter with Kansas? (2004)
  • Katharine Graham (A.B. 1938) – publisher of the Washington Post for over two decades; Pulitzer Prize winner for her memoir Personal History (1998)
  • Virginia Graham (A.S. 1934) – noted television news correspondent; also notable for her role as a prosecution witness in the Tate-LaBianca murders trial
  • Jan Crawford Greenburg (J.D. 1993) – legal correspondent for ABC News
  • Scott Gurvey M.B.A. 1982 – former Nightly Business Report senior correspondent and New York bureau chief
  • Nathan Hare (A.M. 1957, Ph.D. 1962) – author, activist, and sociologist; founding publisher of The Black Scholar, later cited as "the most important journal devoted to black issues since the Crisis" by the New York Times
  • Seymour Hersh (A.B. 1958) – Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative journalist and author, most famous for exposing the My Lai Massacre, which greatly changed public opinion of the Vietnam War; frequent contributor to The New Yorker
  • Daniel Hertzberg (A.B. 1968) – Pulitzer Prize winner 1988; Managing Editor of The Wall Street Journal
  • Dave Kehr (A.B. 1975) – film critic for The New York Times
  • Sarah Koenig (A.B. 1990) – creator of the award-winning Serial podcast
  • Harvey Levin (J.D. 1975) – Managing Editor of TMZ.com
  • Roderick MacLeish (A.B. 1947) – National Public Radio political commentator; journalist and author
  • John G. Morris (A.B. 1937) – photo editor for Life, Ladies' Home Journal, The Washington Post, The New York Times, National Geographic
  • Greg Palast (A.B. 1974, M.B.A. 1976) – progressive investigative journalist
  • John Podhoretz (A.B. 1982) – conservative commentator for the National Review, the New York Post, and The Weekly Standard
  • Joshua Cooper Ramo (A.B. 1992) – former foreign editor, Time Magazine; managing director, Kissinger Associates
  • David E. Reed (A.B. 1946) – roving editor, Reader's Digest; author, 111 Days in Stanleyville (1965); Up Front in Vietnam (1967); Save the Hostages (1988)
  • Emmett Rensin – contributor to the Los Angeles Times Opinion Blog, USA Today, Salon, the New Republic, and the Los Angeles Review of Books
  • Edward Rothstein (Ph.D. 1994) – cultural critic at The New York Times; former music critic at the New Republic and The New York Times
  • Nate Silver (A.B. 2000) – sabermetrician and inventor of PECOTA; writer for Baseball Prospectus; and founder of FiveThirtyEight.com
  • Robert B. Silvers (A.B. 1947) – co-founding editor of The New York Review of Books
  • Brent Staples (A.M. 1976, Ph.D. 1982) – editorial writer for The New York Times (1990–present); winner of the Anisfield-Wolf Book Award for his memoir Parallel Time: Growing Up in Black and White (1994)
  • Bret Stephens (A.B. 1995) – foreign-affairs columnist and deputy editorial page editor of the Wall Street Journal; winner of the 2013 Pulitzer Prize for Commentary
  • Ray Suarez (A.M. 1993) – host of Inside Story on Al Jazeera America, former senior correspondent on The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer
  • Kenneth Allen Taylor (Ph.D. 1984) – co-host of radio program Philosophy Talk; Professor of Philosophy, Stanford University
  • Neda Ulaby (A.M. 1996) – National Public Radio reporter

    • Literature

  • Jessica Abel (A.B. 1991) – comic book writer and artist
  • Saul Bellow (X. 1939) – author, Pulitzer Prize winner and Nobel Prize winner
  • Allan Bloom (Ph.B. 1949, A.M. 1953, Ph.D. 1955) – author
  • Paul C. Borgman (Ph.D. 1973) – religious author and professor
  • Dmitri Borgmann (Ph.B.) – writer
  • Alice C. Browning (Ph.B. 1931) — writer, editor of Negro Story (1944-1946)
  • Ernest Callenbach (Ph.B. 1949, A.M. 1953) – writer
  • Bonnie Jo Campbell (A.B. 1984) – novelist and short story writer
  • Paul Carroll (A.M. 1952) – poet
  • Hayden Carruth (A.M. 1947) – winner of National Book Award in poetry
  • Robert Coover (A.M. 1965) – novelist and short story writer
  • Will Cuppy (Ph.B. 1907, A.M. 1914) – humorist
  • Mu Dan (A.M. 1951) – Chinese poet and literary translator
  • Sebastian de Grazia (A.B. 1944, Ph.D. 1948) – Pulitzer Prize winner
  • Caitlin Doughty – mortician, author, and promoter of death acceptance
  • Phyllis Eisenstein – author of science fiction and fantasy short stories and novels
  • Joseph Epstein (A.B. 1959) – essayist, literary critic, and short story writer
  • James T. Farrell (X. 1929) – novelist, short story writer, journalist, travel writer, poet and literary critic
  • Richard Garfinkle (X. 1980) – science fiction and fantasy author, author of Celestial Matters
  • Paul Goodman (Ph.D. 1954) – social critic
  • Gerald Graff (A.B. 1959) – president-elect of the Modern Language Association (2008)
  • Katharine Graham (A.B. 1938) – author, Pulitzer Prize winner
  • Sam Greenlee (1954–57) – writer, author of The Spook Who Sat by the Door
  • Bette Howland (A.B. 1955) – writer, literary critic, MacArthur Fellow
  • Cyril M. Kornbluth – science fiction author
  • Patrick Larkin (A.B. 1982) – author of espionage, military, and historical thrillers
  • Stephen Leacock (Ph.D. 1903) – Canadian humourist and professor of economics at McGill University
  • Luis Leal (A.B. 1941, Ph.D. 1950) – literary scholar and winner of National Humanities Medal
  • Seth Lerer (Ph.D. 1981) – former Stanford professor; Dean of Arts and Humanities at the University of California, San Diego (2009–2014)
  • Naomi Lindstrom (A.B. 1971) – Latin American literary critic
  • Jackson Mac Low (A.A. 1943) – poet, winner of Wallace Stevens award
  • Norman Maclean (Ph.D. 1940) – William Rainey Harper Professor of English at the University of Chicago, author of A River Runs Through It
  • Tom Mandel – contemporary poet whose work is often associated with the language poets
  • Campbell McGrath (A.B. 1984) – poet, MacArthur Fellow
  • Susan Murphy-Milano (B.A. 1981) – non-fiction author and victims' advocate
  • Sterling North (A.B. 1929) – children's author
  • Norman Panama (A.B. 1936) – screenwriter and film director
  • Sara Paretsky (A.M. 1969, M.B.A. 1977, Ph.D. 1977) – crime novelist
  • Elizabeth Peters (Ph.B. 1947, A.M. 1950, Ph.D. 1952) – mystery author
  • Joseph G. Peterson (A.B. 1988) – author and poet
  • Robert Pirsig (attended but did not graduate) – philosopher, author of Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance and Lila: An Inquiry into Morals
  • Edouard Roditi – writer and translator
  • Richard Rorty (A.B. 1949, A.M. 1952) – Professor of Philosophy and Comparative Literature at Stanford University; MacArthur Fellow
  • Leo Rosten (Ph.B. 1930, Ph.D. 1937) – humorist
  • Philip Roth (A.M. 1955) – author, Pulitzer Prize and National Medal of Arts winner
  • Aram Saroyan (X c.1965) – writer, poet, and dramatist, author of famous minimalist poems such as "lighght"
  • John Scalzi (B.A. 1991) – novelist
  • Susan Fromberg Schaeffer (B.A. 1961, M.A. 1963, Ph.D. 1966) – novelist, poet and professor
  • Susan Sontag (A.B. 1951) – author, filmmaker and activist, MacArthur Fellow
  • George Steiner (A.B. 1948) – literary critic
  • Carl Van Vechten (1903) – writer of novels such as Nigger Heaven and prolific portrait photographer
  • Herman Voaden (X) – playwright and social activist
  • Kurt Vonnegut Jr. (A.M. 1971) – author of Cat's Cradle, Slaughterhouse-Five, Breakfast of Champions
  • Edward F. Wente, (Ph.D 1959) – professor and Egyptologist
  • Yvor Winters (attended) – poet and critic
  • Marguerite Young – novelist and poet

    • Mathematics

  • Abraham Adrian Albert (B.S. 1926, S.M. 1927, Ph.D. 1928)
  • George Birkhoff (Ph.D. 1907) – Bôcher Memorial Prize winner
  • Gilbert Ames Bliss (Ph.D. 1900)
  • Alberto Calderón (Ph.D. 1950) – co-founded the Chicago school of mathematical analysis; winner of Bôcher Memorial Prize, the Wolf Prize, and the National Medal of Science
  • Wei-Liang Chow (B.A. 1931) – known for work in algebraic geometry
  • Paul J. Cohen (S.M. 1954, Ph.D. 1958) – Fields Medal winner
  • David Eisenbud (Ph.D. 1970)
  • Bernard Galler (Ph.D. 1955)
  • Richard Hamming (B.S. 1947) – Turing Award winner
  • Thomas W. Hungerford (Ph.D. 1963)
  • John Irwin Hutchinson (Ph.D. 1896)
  • Richard Lyons
  • Saunders MacLane (A.M. 1931) – co-founder of category theory
  • Anil Nerode (Ph.D. 1956)
  • Isadore Singer (Ph.D. 1955) – Abel Prize winner
  • Elias M. Stein (Ph.D. 1959)
  • John Thompson (Ph.D. 1959) – world leader in group theory, Fields Medal and National Medal of Science winner
  • Oswald Veblen (Ph.D. 1903)
  • George W. Whitehead (Ph.D. 1941)
  • Dudley Weldon Woodard (M.S. 1907)

    • Medicine

  • Robert Gallo (Resident in Medicine 1963–1965) – identified first retrovirus in humans
  • Maurice Hilleman (Ph.D. 1941) – microbiologist specialising in vaccinology
  • Donald Hopkins (M.D. 1966) – MacArthur Fellow (1995); acting director (1985) of the Centers for Disease Control
  • John D. Hunter 2004 – neurobiologist
  • Sarah H. Kagan – Lucy Walker Honorary Term Professor of Gerontological Nursing at the University of Pennsylvania; MacArthur Fellow in 2003
  • Leon Kass (S.B. 1958, M.D. 1962) – Chairman of the President's Council on Bioethics; Addie Clark Harding Professor in the Committee on Social Thought; Hertog Fellow in Social Thought at the American Enterprise Institute
  • Joseph Ransohoff (M.D. 1941) – pioneer in the field of neurosurgery; founder of the first neurosurgical intensive care unit; chief of neurosurgery at NYU Medical Center
  • Janet Rowley (Ph.B. 1944, S.B. 1946, M.D. 1948) – discovered translocation on chromosome 9 resulted in the Philadelphia chromosome, and had implications for specific types of leukemia; her work has influenced further research into cancer genetics
  • Esther Somerfeld-Ziskind – neurologist and psychiatrist
  • Samuel Stanley – MD, immunologist, biomedical researcher and 5th President of Stony Brook University
  • David Talmage – Professor of Medicine, discovered the clonal selection theory

    • Religion

  • Thomas J. J. Altizer (A.B. 1948, A.M. 1951, Ph.D. 1955) – "Death of God" theologian
  • M. Craig Barnes (Ph.D. 1992) – president of Princeton Theological Seminary
  • George Ricker Berry (Ph.D. 1895) – Semitic scholar, author, archaeologist, and Professor Emeritus of Colgate-Rochester Divinity School
  • Jonathan Butler (Ph.D. 1975) – historian of religion, lecturer for the Seventh-day Adventist Church
  • Donald Eric Capps (M.A. 1966, Ph.D. 1970) – scholar and Professor of Pastoral Theology
  • Jesse Lee Cuninggim – Methodist clergyman, head of the Department of Religious Education at Southern Methodist University and moved the Scarritt College from Kansas City, Missouri to Nashville, Tennessee as its president
  • Mary Ann Glendon (A.B. 1959, J.D. 1961, L.L.M. 1963) – President of the Pontifical Academy of Social Sciences (highest-ranking female advisor to the Pope); Learned Hand Professor of Law, Harvard Law School; member of the President's Council on Bioethics
  • Andrew Greeley (A.M. 1961, Ph.D. 1962) – Senior Study Director at the National Opinion Research Center; Roman Catholic priest; sociologist; best-selling novelist
  • Charles Richmond Henderson (Old University A.B. 1870) – sociologist of religion, president of the National Prison Association
  • Don Wendell Holter (Ph.D. 1934) – Professor of Church History and Missions at Garrett Theological Seminary; founding President of Saint Paul School of Theology; Bishop of the United Methodist Church
  • Jeffrey Kaplan (Ph.D. 1993) – Associate Professor of Religion at the University of Wisconsin–Oshkosh
  • Douglas Laycock (J.D.) – Professor at the University of Virginia School of Law, expert of religious liberties
  • Jeffery D. Long (A.M. 1993, PhD 2000) – Hindu expert and author of A Vision for Hinduism: Beyond Hindu Nationalism
  • Martin Marty (Ph.D. 1956) – National Humanities Medal (1997); national figure in non-sectarian religious studies
  • Ingrid Mattson (Ph.D. 1999) – first female president of Islamic Society of North America; professor of religion at Hartford Seminary
  • John Warwick Montgomery (Ph.D. 1962) – lawyer, theologian and academic known for his work in the field of Christian Apologetics; Distinguished Research Professor of Philosophy and Christian Thought at Patrick Henry College
  • David Novak (A.B. 1961) – Jewish legal theorist at the University of Toronto; a founder of the Institute of Traditional Judaism; author of Covenantal Rights
  • Dallin H. Oaks (J.D. 1957) – Apostle; member of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS Church)
  • Jaroslav Pelikan (Ph.D. 1946) – historian of Christian thought; Sterling Professor of History at Yale University; winner of Library of Congress' Kluge Prize in the Human Sciences; author of The Christian Tradition: A History of the Development of Doctrine
  • Valerie Saiving Goldstein, author of The Human Situation, early feminist theologist
  • Mordecai Waxman (A.B. 1937) – rabbi in American Jewish Conservative movement, responsible for opening dialogue between American Jews and Pope John Paul II in 1987

    • Social sciences

  • Janet L. Abu-Lughod (A.B. 1947, A.M. 1950) – Professor Emerita of Sociology at the New School for Social Research
  • Guillermo Algaze (A.M. 1979, Ph.D. 1986) – MacArthur Fellow (2003); Professor of Anthropology at the University of California, San Diego
  • Anne Allison (A.M. 1979, Ph.D. 1986) – Robert O. Keohane Professor of Cultural Anthropology, Duke University
  • Alfred C. Aman, Jr. (J.D. 1970) – professor of administrative law, author and Dean of Indiana University Maurer School of Law - Bloomington and Suffolk University Law School
  • Elijah Anderson (A.M. 1972) – William K. Lanman, Jr. Professor of Sociology, Yale University
  • Arjun Appadurai (A.M. 1973, Ph.D. 1976) – Goddard Professor of Media, Culture, and Communication, New York University
  • Robert Axelrod (A.B. 1964) – MacArthur Fellow (1990); Professor of Public Policy, University of Michigan
  • Howard S. Becker (Ph.B. 1946, A.M. 1949, Ph.D. 1951) – former Professor of Sociology at Northwestern University and the University of California, Santa Barbara
  • Walter Berns (A.M. 1951, Ph.D. 1953) – National Humanities Medal (2005); John M. Olin University Professor Emeritus at Georgetown University
  • Lorenzo Bini Smaghi (Ph.D. 1988) – member of the Executive Board of the European Central Bank; economist
  • Keiichiro Kobayashi (Ph.D. 1998) – Professor of Faculty of Economics, Keio University
  • Leonard Bloomfield – linguist who led the development of structural linguistics
  • Larry Bourne (Ph.D. 1966) – Professor Emeritus of Urban Geography and Planning, University of Toronto
  • Michael Burawoy (Ph.D. 1976) – Professor of Sociology, University of California, Berkeley
  • Lynton K. Caldwell (A.B. 1934, Ph.D. 1943) – Arthur F. Bentley Professor Emeritus of Political Science at Indiana University Bloomington
  • Stephen Cameron (Ph.D. 1996) – financial analyst, economist and Adjunct Associate Professor of International and Public Affairs at Columbia University
  • Marvin Chirelstein (J.D. 1953) – Professor at Columbia Law School and Yale Law School
  • Gregory Chow (A.M. 1952, Ph.D. 1955) – Professor of Economics, Emeritus, and Class of 1913 Professor of Political Economy, Emeritus, at Princeton University
  • Ann Weiser Cornell (Ph.D. 1975) – authority on Focusing; author of The Power of Focusing
  • Mihály Csíkszentmihályi (A.B. 1960, Ph.D. 1965) – C.S. and D.J. Davidson Professor of Psychology and Management, Claremont Graduate University; pioneer of the concept of flow
  • Nicholas de Genova (A.B. 1982, Ph.D. 1989) – Assistant Professor of Anthropology, Columbia University
  • Eugene Fama (Ph.D. 1964) – father of efficient market theory. Robert R. McCormick Distinguished Service Professor of Finance at the University of Chicago
  • Marianne Ferber, (Ph.D.) – Professor Emeritus of Economics at University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
  • George P. Fletcher (J.D. 1964) – Professor at Columbia Law School
  • Roland G. Fryer, Jr. – Henry Lee Professor of Economics at Harvard University
  • Marc Galanter (J.D.) – Professor Emeritus at University of Wisconsin School of Law
  • Alexander L. George (A.M. 1941, Ph.D. 1958) – MacArthur Fellow (1983); Graham H. Stuart Professor of International Relations, Emeritus, Stanford University; pioneering scholar in political psychology and foreign policy
  • Erving Goffman (A.M. 1949, Ph.D. 1953) – former Professor of Sociology at the University of California, Berkeley and the University of Pennsylvania
  • Claudia Goldin (Ph.D. 1972) – Henry Lee Professor of Economics at Harvard University
  • Zvi Griliches (A.M. 1955, Ph.D. 1957) – John Bates Clark Medalist (1965); economist
  • Sanford J. Grossman (A.B. 1973, A.M. 1974, Ph.D. 1975) – John Bates Clark Medalist (1987); economist
  • Charles V. Hamilton (A.M. 1957, Ph.D. 1964) – civil rights leader and Professor in Political Science, Columbia University
  • Robin Hanson (A.M. 1984, M.S. 1984) – associate professor of economics at George Mason University, research associate at the Future of Humanity Institute of Oxford University
  • Edward C. Hayes (Ph.D. 1902) – President of the American Sociological Association
  • Susanna Hecht (A.B. 1972) – Professor of Urban Planning, UCLA; a founder of "Political Ecology" approach to forestry; Guggenheim Fellow (2008)
  • Carolyn Heinrich (Ph.D. 1995) – Sid Richardson Professor and economist at University of Texas at Austin
  • Ukshin Hoti (1943–1999?) – professor of international law at the University of Pristina
  • Samuel P. Huntington (A.M. 1948) – Albert J. Weatherhead Professor of Government at Harvard University; author of The Clash of Civilizations (1998)
  • Harold Innis – founder of the Toronto School of Communication
  • Robert Kates (A.M. 1960, Ph.D. 1962) – MacArthur Fellow (1981); Professor Emeritus of Geography and Director Emeritus of the World Hunger Program at Brown University
  • V. O. Key, Jr. (Ph.D. 1934) – taught at UCLA, Professor at Johns Hopkins University, Alfred Cowles Professor of Government at Yale University, Jonathan Trumbull Professor of American History and Government at Harvard University
  • Bruce M. King (Ph.D. 1978) – psychologist and professor at Clemson University
  • Rose Hum Lee (Ph.D. 1947) – first woman and the first Chinese American to head a US university sociology department, appointed such at Roosevelt University, 1956
  • Charles Miller Leslie – anthropologist
  • Frederick B. Lindstrom (Ph.D. 1950) – sociologist and historian of the Chicago School of sociology
  • Antonio Martino (Ph.D. 1968) – Professor of Economics at LUISS Guido Carli University in Rome, former Italian Ministry of Defense
  • Adeline Masquelier (Ph.D 1993) – cultural anthropologist at Tulane University
  • Nolan McCarty (A.B. 1990) – Susan Dod Brown Professor of Politics and Public Affairs at Princeton University
  • Thomas W. Merrill (J.D. 1977) – Charles Evans Hughes professor at Columbia Law School
  • Richard Thacker Morris (Ph.D) – Professor of Sociology at the University of Chicago and the UCLA
  • Kevin M. Murphy (Ph.D. 1986) – John Bates Clark Medalist (1997); George J. Stigler Professor of Economics, University of Chicago
  • John V. Murra (A.M. 1942, Ph.D. 1956) – anthropologist and researcher of the Inca Empire
  • Marc Leon Nerlove (A.B. 1952) – John Bates Clark Medalist (1969); economist
  • Esther Newton (A.M. 1964, Ph.D. 1968) – Kempner Distinguished Research Professor of Anthropology at SUNY; pioneer in gender and sexuality studies; author of Mother Camp
  • Harold L. Nieburg (Ph.B. 1947, A.M. 1952, Ph.D. 1960) – Professor of Political Science at SUNY; author of In the Name of Science
  • Anne Norton (A.B. 1977, A.M. 1979, Ph.D. 1982) – Alfred L. Cass Term Chair and Professor of Political Science, University of Pennsylvania; author of Leo Strauss and the Politics of American Empire (2004)
  • Sherry Ortner (A.M. 1966, Ph.D. 1970) – MacArthur Fellow (1990); Distinguished Professor of Anthropology, University of California, Los Angeles
  • Walter Oi (Ph.D. 1961) – Elmer B. Milliman Professor of Economics at the University of Rochester
  • George L. Priest (J.D.) – John M. Olin Professor of Law and Economics and Director of the John M. Olin Center for Law, Economics, and Public Policy at Yale Law School
  • Enrico Quarantelli (Ph.D. 1959) – founder of disaster science
  • Paul Rabinow (A.B. 1965, A.M. 1967, Ph.D. 1970) – Robert H. Lowie Distinguished Chair in Anthropology, University of California, Berkeley
  • Jonathan Rapping (A.B.) – professor of law at Atlanta's John Marshall Law School and Harvard Law School, criminal defense attorney, founder and president of Gideon's Promise
  • Albert Rees (Ph.D. 1950) – former University of Chicago and Princeton economics professor, former Provost at Princeton, advisor to President Gerald Ford
  • James M. Redfield (A.B. 1954, Ph.D. 1961) – Edward Olson Distinguished Service Professor and Professor of the Committee on Social Thought at the University of Chicago (1976–present)
  • Philip Rieff (A.B. 1946, A.M. 1947, Ph.D. 1954) – Benjamin Franklin Professor of Sociology at the University of Pennsylvania; author of Freud: The Mind of the Moralist (1959); noted sociologist
  • Philip Carl Salzman (Ph.D. 1972) – Professor of Anthropology, McGill University
  • Paul Samuelson (A.B. 1935) – Institute Professor, MIT. Bank of Sweden Prize in Econonomics in Memory of Alfred Nobel, 1970
  • Ritch Savin-Williams (A.M. 1973, Ph.D. 1977) – Professor of developmental psychology at Cornell University; prolific sexual orientation researcher
  • Thomas Sebeok (A.B. 1941, A.M. 1943) – semiotician and linguist
  • Richard Sennett (A.B. 1964) – Centennial Professor of Sociology at the London School of Economics, Bemis Adjunct Professor of Sociology at MIT, and Professor of Humanities at New York University
  • Orin Starn (A.B. 1982) – Sally Dalton Robinson Professor of Cultural Anthropology, Duke University
  • Edwin Sutherland (Ph.D. 1913) – former Professor of Sociology at Indiana University
  • Robert Thompson (A.B. 1981) – director of Syracuse University's Center for the Study of Popular Television
  • Jonathan Turley (A.B. 1983) – professor of law at The George Washington University Law School
  • Sudhir Venkatesh (A.M. 1992, Ph.D. 1997) – William B. Ransford Professor of Sociology, Columbia University
  • Loïc Wacquant (A.M. 1986, Ph.D. 1994) – MacArthur Fellow (1997); Professor of Sociology, University of California, Berkeley
  • Althea Warren – President of the American Library Association 1943-44
  • John B. Watson (Ph.D. 1903) – established behaviorism and pioneered rat-in-maze laboratory research
  • James Q. Wilson (A.M. 1957, Ph.D. 1959) – Ronald Reagan Professor of Public Policy at Pepperdine University; Presidential Medal of Freedom recipient (2003)
  • Michael Woodford (A.B. 1977) – MacArthur Fellow (1981); Professor of Economics, Princeton University
  • Henry Tutwiler Wright (A.M. 1965, Ph.D. 1967) – MacArthur Fellow (1983); Professor of Anthropology and Curator of Archaeology, University of Michigan
  • Theodore O. Yntema (Ph.D. 1929) – economist, director of the Cowles Commission
  • John Komlos (Ph.D. 1978) – professor emeritus, University of Munich economic historian and founder of the journal Economics and Human Biology

    • Science and technology

  • Robert McCormick Adams (Ph.B. 1947, A.M. 1952, Ph.D. 1956) – archeologist. Secretary Emeritus of the Smithsonian Institution
  • Warder Clyde Allee (S.M. 1910, Ph.D. 1912) – zoologist and ecologist
  • Abhay Ashtekar (Ph.D. 1974) – pioneer in the field of loop quantum gravity
  • Zonia Baber – geographer and geologist
  • John N. Bahcall (S.M. 1957) – known for contributions to solar neutrino problem and development of the Hubble Space Telescope, and development of Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton
  • Ralph Buchsbaum (Ph.D. 1938) – invertebrate zoologist
  • Albert Chan (Ph.D. 1979) – fellow of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, president of Hong Kong Baptist University
  • Jane C. Charlton (M.S. 1984) – professor of astronomy and astrophysics
  • Mihir Chowdhury (post doc 1962–64) – physical chemist, Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar laureate
  • Margaret S. Collins (Ph.D. 1950) – invertebrate zoologist, professor and dean of the zoology department at Florida A&M University
  • William Cottrell (A.B. 2002) – former Ph.D. candidate at the California Institute of Technology, described by scientists as a "genius", convicted in April 2005 of conspiracy to arson of 8 sport utility vehicles and a Hummer dealership in the name of the Earth Liberation Front (ELF)
  • George Cowan (Ph.D. 1940) – scientist of the Manhattan Project, founder of the Santa Fe Institute
  • Harmon Craig (Ph.D. 1951) – winner of Balzan Prize, the first in geochemistry; pioneer in Earth sciences
  • Savas Dimopoulos (Ph.D. 1978) – theoretical physicist at Stanford; with Howard Georgi, he formulated the supersymmetric extension to the Standard Model, the leading theory for particle physics beyond the Standard Model
  • Frank Edwin Egler (S.B. 1932) – plant ecologist, winner of a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1955
  • Larry Ellison (dropped out) – co-founder and CEO of Oracle Corporation, a major database software company
  • Harvey Fletcher (Ph.D 1911) – collaborator with Robert Millikan on the Nobel Prize-winning experiment on the charge of an electron; father of stereophonic sound
  • Robert Floyd (A.B. 1953, S.B. 1958) – computer scientist, Turing Award winner
  • Jeannette Howard Foster (Ph.D 1935) – librarian, professor, and researcher
  • T. Theodore Fujita (S.B. 1953) – meteorologist, developed the Fujita scale for measuring tornadoes
  • Gerald Gabrielse (Ph.D. 1980) – Professor of Physics at Harvard, known for his techniques of creating antimatter
  • Martin Gardner (A.B. 1936) – author and columnist of "Mathematical Games" in Scientific American
  • Piara Singh Gill (Ph.D. 1940) – physicist, pioneer in cosmic ray nuclear physics
  • Mack Gipson, Jr. (S.M. 1961, Ph.D. 1963) – first African-American to obtain a Ph.D. in Geology; founding advisor of the NABGG in 1981; consultant to NASA
  • Richard Gordon (BSc Mathematics 1963) – adapted Kaczmarz method to create the Algebraic Reconstruction Technique
  • Seymour L. Hess (Ph.D. 1950) – meteorologist and planetary scientist who designed the weather instruments for the Viking 1
  • Edwin Hubble (S.B. 1910, Ph.D. 1917) – astronomer who found the first evidence for the big bang theory
  • Deborah S. Jin (Ph.D. 1995) – physicist; MacArthur Fellow in 2003
  • Donald Johanson (A.M. 1970, Ph.D. 1974) – paleoanthropologist who discovered "Lucy", a link between primates and humans
  • Jason Jones (X. 1997) – co-founder of Bungie Studios, the company behind Halo
  • Ernest Everett Just (Ph.D. 1916) – zoologist, biologist, physiologist, and research scientist
  • William Tinsley Keeton (B.A. 1952, B.S. 1954) – zoologist known for work in animal navigation, and a popular professor at Cornell University
  • Vern Oliver Knudsen (Ph.D. 1922) – co-founder of the Acoustical Society of America; Chancellor of UCLA from 1959–1960
  • Robert Kowalski – computer scientist in field of logic programming
  • Martin Kruskal (S.B. 1945) – Professor Emeritus at Princeton University, started the soliton revolution in mathematics; advances included Kruskal-Shafranov Instability, Bernstein-Greene-Kruskal (BGK) Modes and the MHD Energy Principle, which laid theoretical foundations of controlled nuclear fusion, and Kruskal coordinates in theory of relativity
  • Stephen Lee (Ph.D. 1986) – Professor of Chemistry at Cornell University; MacArthur Fellow
  • Lynn Margulis (A.B. 1957) – Distinguished professor at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. Contributed to development of Gaia theory
  • George Willard Martin – mycologist and professor at the University of Iowa
  • Kirtley F. Mather (Ph.D. 1915) – Professor of Geology at Harvard University; President, American Association for the Advancement of Science; noted civil libertarian
  • Sara Branham Matthews – microbiologist
  • Stanley Miller (Ph.D. 1954) – performed classic Miller–Urey experiment on origin of life in collaboration with Harold Urey in 1953
  • William Wilson Morgan (S.B. 1927, Ph.D. 1931) – astronomer who co-developed MK system for classification of stars, as well as classification systems for galaxies and clusters; director of Yerkes Observatory
  • Donald Osterbrock (A.B., Ph.D.) – astrophysicist known for his contributions to the body of knowledge on interstellar matter, gaseous nebulae, and the nuclei of active galaxies; President of American Astronomical Society; director of Lick Observatory
  • Fushih Pan (M.D. 1986, Ph. D. 1989) – plastic surgeon; developer of the MIRA Procedure
  • Clair Cameron Patterson, (Ph.D. 1951) – geochemist accurately determined age of the Earth and discovered significant lead contamination of environment
  • Nikhil Mohan Pattnaik – Indian scholar, scientist, and science author
  • Jeannette Piccard (S.M. 1919) – Balloon aeronaut, speaker for NASA, teacher, scientist and Episcopal priest
  • Raymond R. Rogers (Ph.D. 1995) – geology professor
  • Arthur H. Rosenfeld (Ph.D. 1954) – physicist; professor at University of California, Berkeley; energy efficiency pioneer
  • Carl Sagan (A.B. 1954, S.B. 1955, S.M. 1956, Ph.D. 1960) – astronomer, author of Contact; Pulitzer Prize winner
  • John T. Scopes (X. 1931) – proponent of Charles Darwin's theory of evolution that led to the Scopes Trial and the inspiration for the play and film Inherit the Wind
  • Alex Seropian (S.B. 1991) – co-founder of Bungie Studios, the company behind Halo
  • Harold Horton Sheldon (Ph.D. 1920) – physicist, scientist, inventor, teacher, editor and author
  • Herbert A. Simon (A.B. 1936, Ph.D. 1943) – computer scientist, Turing Award winner; economist, Nobel Prize winner
  • Joanne Simpson (Ph.D. 1949) – meteorologist
  • Otto Struve (Ph.D. 1923) – astronomer, Fellow of the Royal Society
  • David Suzuki (Ph.D. 1961) – Chair of the David Suzuki Foundation; award-winning scientist, environmentalist and broadcaster
  • Richard Thieme (M.A., 1967) – priest, technology consultant, author
  • Sherry Turkle (attended Committee on Social Thought, 1971) – Abby Rockefeller Mauze Professor of the Social Studies of Science and Technology at Massachusetts Institute of Technology
  • Richard Wassersug (Ph.D. 1973) – professor of anatomy at Dalhousie University
  • George Wetherill (Ph.B. 1948, S.M. 1949, S.M. 1951, Ph.D. 1953) – National Medal of Science winner, known for seminal work on formation of planets and solar system
  • Erik Winfree (B.S.) – computer scientist, bioengineer, and professor at California Institute of Technology; MacArthur fellow in 2000

    • References

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


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