Elizabeth Bannan – educationist awarded the Walter Beavis prize and the Jones medal
Brian L. Byrne – social scientist known for research in psycholinguistics; Emeritus professor at the University of New England
Sir Robert Madgwick OBE – first Vice-Chancellor of the University of New England; two-term Chairman of the Australian Broadcasting Commission; Director of the Australian Army Education Service during World War II
John Andrews – designer of CN Tower, Toronto, Canada, the tallest concrete structure in the world and often listed as one of the seven wonders of the modern world
Philip Cox AO
Eleanor Cullis-Hill
Andrea Nield
Noel Pearson
Charles Perkins AO
Margaret Clunies Ross – McCaughey Professor of English Language and Early English Literature, Director of the Centre for Medieval Studies
Jill Ker Conway – former Vice-President of the University of Toronto and President of Smith College; Visiting Professor in MIT's program in Science, Technology, and Society; serves on the boards of Nike, Merrill Lynch, and Colgate-Palmolive; chairman of Lend Lease Corporation
Sandy Edwards – photographer
Charles Firth
Tom Gleeson
Germaine Greer – feminist
Michael Halliday – creator of the systemic functional grammar, an internationally influential grammar model
Andrew Hansen
Dominic Knight
Chas Licciardello
Niall Lucy – writer and scholar, best known for his work on Jacques Derrida and deconstruction
Julian Morrow
Timothy Potts – known for his directorship of the Fitzwilliam Museum, Kimbell Museum, and National Gallery of Victoria, and for his writings on the art and archaeology of the ancient Near East and Mediterranean
Craig Reucassel
Chris Taylor
Georgina Wilson – model, host of Asia's Next Top Model
John Bell
Rose Byrne
Jacqueline Fernandez
John Flaus
Michael Hannan – composer, pianist, and musicologist
Yvonne Kenny
Dolph Lundgren
Dame Joan Sutherland
Kip Williams – director of the Sydney Theatre Company
Roger Woodward – Foundation Director at California State University in San Francisco, School of Music & Dance; pianist and musician
Phillip Adams
Bob Ellis
Robert Hughes
Clive James
Paul Kelly – Editor-at-Large of The Australian
Ray Martin
Richard McGregor
Jessica Rowe
Lillian Roxon
Adam Spencer
Literature, writing and poetry
Millicent Armstrong (1888–1973) – playwright and farmer who wrote primarily about the experiences of country life in early 20th century Australia; graduated BA with first class honours in English in 1910
Nikos Athanasou
Clive Stephen Barry
Bruce Beresford
Dora Birtles
Christopher Brennan
Geraldine Brooks – winner of the Pulitzer Prize for March (2006)
Jane Campion
Dymphna Cusack
Kate Grenville
A. D. Hope
Geoffrey Lehmann
Jeni Mawter
Les Murray
Jennifer Rowe
Pierre Ryckmans (Simon Leys)
Kimberley Starr
Peter Weir
David Malet Armstrong – Challis Professor of Philosophy, 1964–91
Oliver Feltham – philosopher, best known for his English translation of Alain Badiou's Being and Event
Peter Godfrey-Smith – professor of philosophy at Harvard University
Other legal professionals
John Davies – Judge of the United States District Court
Geoffrey Robertson – international human rights lawyer
Charles Waterstreet – criminal defence lawyer, writer and producer
Astronauts and astronomy
Greg Chamitoff
Philip K. Chapman
Edwin Ernest Salpeter – Astronomy 1997
Paul D. Scully-Power – first Australian astronaut
Marnie Blewitt – molecular biologist, scientist in the field of epigenetics
June Lascelles – microbiologist, pioneer in microbial photosynthesis
Robert May, Baron May of Oxford – Crafoord Laureate Biosciences 1996
Roland Stocker – scientist in the field of redox biology
Arthur Birch
Sir John Cornforth – winner of the Nobel Prize for Chemistry (1975)
Noel Hush – FRS; winner of the 2007 Welch Award in Chemistry
Sir Robert Robinson – winner of the Nobel Prize for Chemistry (1947)
Anthony Weiss – McCaughey Professor in Biochemistry and Fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry, for discoveries on human elastic materials that accelerate the healing and repair of arteries, skin and 3D human tissue components
Michael Georgeff – AAAI Fellow, Director of the Australian Artificial Intelligence Institute
Rick Jelliffe – inventor of the Schematron schema language
Rod Johnson – best-selling author; expert in Java/Java EE; founder of the Spring Framework
John Lions – author of Lions' Commentary on UNIX 6th Edition, with Source Code, commonly known as the Lions Book
Vaughan Pratt – ACM Fellow; pioneer in computer science; Professor Emeritus at Stanford University
Ross Quinlan – AAAI Fellow; highly cited scholar and a pioneer in decision theory
Ken Thompson– co-creator of unix; Turing Award recipient
Andrew Tridgell – co-inventor of the rsync algorithm; author of and contributor to the Samba file server
Ronald Ernest Aitchison – solid-state physicist and electronics engineer
Ronald N. Bracewell – Lewis M. Terman Professor of Electrical Engineering, Emeritus at Stanford University
John Bradfield – designer of the Sydney Harbour Bridge
Graeme Clark – inventor of the bionic ear implant
Bryan Gaensler – former associate professor of astronomy at Harvard University; ARC Federation Fellow at the University of Sydney
Richard Makinson – physicist notable for his contributions to amorphous semiconductors
Robert May, Baron May of Oxford – former Chairman of the University Research Board and Professor of Zoology at Princeton University
John O'Sullivan – winner of 2009 Prime Minister's Prize for Science; an originator of wireless technology, credited with the invention of WiFi, earning hundreds of millions of dollars in royalties
Ruby Payne-Scott – first female radio astronomer
Terence Percival – made pioneering contributions to WIFI technology
David Skellern – made pioneering contributions to WIFI technology
Richard H. Small – co-inventor of Thiele/Small parameters
Neville Thiele – co-inventor of Thiele/Small parameters
David Warren – inventor of the "black box" (flight data recorder)
Geology, archeology and oceanography
Nerilie Abram – climate scientist
Stephen Bourke
V. Gordon Childe
Sir Edgeworth David – geologist and Antarctic explorer
Anthony Haymet – Director of Scripps Institution of Oceanography
Basil Hennessy
Sir Douglas Mawson – geologist and Antarctic explorer
Beryl Nashar – geologist; first female PhD in geology at an Australian university (UTas); first female Dean of an Australian university
David O'Connor – Egyptologist
Timothy Potts
Karin Sowada
Griffith Taylor – Antarctic explorer; Professor of Geography at the University of Chicago; founder of the Geography department at the University of Toronto
Bruce Bolt – pioneer of engineering seismology; Professor of Earth and Planetary Science at the University of California, Berkeley
Herbert Huppert – FRS, Professor of Theoretical Geophysics and Foundation Director, Institute of Theoretical Geophysics, Cambridge University since 1989; Fellow of King's College, Cambridge since 1970
Bernard Mills – FRS, inventor of the Mills Cross Telescope
Edwin Ernest Salpeter – known for his contributions to astronomy; Professor of Physics, Emeritus at Cornell University
Veterinary and agricultural scientists
William Ian Beardmore Beveridge – Professor of Animal Pathology and Director of the Institute of Animal Pathology at Cambridge University from 1947 to 1975
Sir Ian Clunies Ross – Chairman Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation
Hugh McLeod Gordon – veterinary parasitologist
Charles MacKenzie AO, Michigan State University – significant contributor to filarial disease eradication in the peoples of Equatorial Africa
Gordon McClymont – agricultural scientist, ecologist, and educationist; foundation chair of the Department of Rural Science at the University of New England; originator of the term "sustainable agriculture"
Ross Perry – Australia’s first registered avian veterinarian; first to study and name Psittacine Beak and Feather Disease, for which he was co-discoverer of viral infection agent
Sanjaya Rajaram – World Food Prize Laureate and the Head of Wheat Programme from 1976 to 2001 at International Maize and Wheat Improvement Centre (CIMMYT), once referred to as "the greatest present-day wheat scientist in the world" by Norman Borlaug
See also
University of Sydney faculty
John Anderson – Challis Professor of Philosophy
Charles Badham – Professor of Classics and Logic
William Noel Benson – Demonstrator in the Department of Geology
Alison Betts – Professor of Silk Road Studies
Quentin Bryce – Principal of The Women's College, University of Sydney, 1997–2003; later Governor-General of Australia
John Burnheim – Professor of General Philosophy
Gregory Chamitoff – adjunct professor; later astronaut
James Crawford – Challis Professorship of International Law and Dean of the Faculty of Law; later justice of the International Court of Justice
William A. Foley – Professor of Linguistics; co-developer of Role and Reference Grammar
Robert Gilbert – Professor of Chemistry and Founding Director of the Key Centre for Polymer Colloids
Enoch Powell – Professor of Greek; later British politician
Leo Radom – Professor of Computational Chemistry
John Smith – Professor of Chemistry and Experimental Physics
James Stewart – Professor of Near Eastern Archaeology
Julius Stone – Challis Professor of Jurisprudence and International Law
Yanis Varoufakis – senior lecturer in economics; later Finance Minister of Greece during the Greek Debt Crisis of 2015
Roger Vaughan – Rector of St John's College, University of Sydney, 1874–1877; later archbishop of Sydney
George Winterton – Professor of Constitutional Law
The chancellor is elected by the fellows and presides at Senate meetings. In 1924, the executive position of vice-chancellor was created, and the chancellor ceased to have managerial responsibilities. Until 1860, the chancellor was known as the provost.
The vice-chancellor serves as the chief executive officer of the university, and oversees most of the university's day-to-day operations, with the chancellor serving in a largely ceremonial role. Before 1924, the vice-chancellors were fellows of the university, elected annually by the fellows. Until 1860, the vice-chancellor was known as the vice-provost. Since 1955, the full title has been Vice-Chancellor and Principal.
1851–53: Sir Charles Nicholson
1854–62: Francis Merewether
1863–65: Sir Edward Deas Thomson
1865–69: John Hubert Plunkett
1869–83: Robert Allwood
1883–86: Sir William Charles Windeyer
1887–89: Sir Henry Normand MacLaurin
1889–91: Sir Arthur Renwick
1891–92: Henry Chamberlain Russell
1892–94: Alfred Paxton Backhouse
1895–96: Sir Henry Normand MacLaurin
1896–99: Alfred Paxton Backhouse
1900–02: Sir Arthur Renwick
1902–04: Archibald Henry Simpson
1904–06: Sir Philip Sydney Jones
1906–08: Sir Arthur Renwick
1909–11: Sir William Portus Cullen
1911–14: His Honour Judge Alfred Paxton Backhouse
1914–17: Frank Leverrier
1917–19: Cecil Purser
1919–21: Sir David Gilbert Ferguson
1921–23: Frank Leverrier
1923–24: Cecil Purser
1924–28: Sir Mungo William MacCallum
1928–47: Sir Robert Strachan Wallace
1947–67: Sir Stephen Henry Roberts
1967–81: Sir Bruce Rodda Williams
1981–90: John Manning Ward
1990–96: Donald McNicol
1996 (acting): Derek John Anderson
1996–2008: Gavin Brown
2008–present Michael Spence
