List of University of Chicago alumni

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

Nobel laureates

Main article: List of Nobel Laureates affiliated with the University of Chicago

• 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

Government

Heads of state or government

Name	Year	Notability	Reference
Marek Belka	(attended)	Prime Minister of Poland (2004–05)
William Lyon Mackenzie King	A.M. 1897	Prime Minister of Canada (1935–48)
Gonzalo Sánchez de Lozada	A.B. 1952	President of Bolivia (1993–97, 2002–03)
Álvaro Magaña	A.M. 1955	President of El Salvador (1982–84)
Hastings Banda	Ph.B. 1931	Prime Minister of Malawi (1964–66), President of Malawi (1966–94)

General

• Saul Alinsky (Ph.B. 1930) – labor organizer and political activist
• 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
• Ahmed Chalabi (Ph.D. 1969) – interim Oil Minister and Deputy Prime Minister of Iraq
• 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
• 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
• Frank H. Easterbrook (J.D. 1973) – Circuit Judge, United States Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals
• 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)
• 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
• 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)
• 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
• Edward Levi (A.B. 1932, J.D. 1935) – Attorney General of the United States (1975–77)
• 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–present)
• Michael W. McConnell (J.D. 1979) – Circuit Judge, United States Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals
• 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)
• 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)
• Pete Ricketts (A.B. 1986, M.B.A. 1991) – 40th Governor of Nebraska (2015–present)
• Bernie Sanders (Sc.B. 1964) – United States Senator (VT) United States House of Representatives
• 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
• 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
• Indiana Jones (fictional) – studied archaeology under professor Abner Ravenwood
• 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
• Jason Shaw (A.B. 1995) – model
• 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

See also: List of University of Chicago Booth School of Business alumni

• 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
• 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
• 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
• 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 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)
• 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
• 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
• Joe Mansueto (A.B. 1978, M.B.A. 1980) – Chairman and CEO of Morningstar, Inc.
• John Meriwether (M.B.A. 1973) – CEO and Principal of JWM Partners; former CEO of Long Term Capital Management
• 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)
• Philip J. Purcell (M.B.A. 1967) – former chairman and CEO of Morgan Stanley Dean Witter
• 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
• John W. Rogers, Jr. (Lab 1976) – Chairman and CEO of Ariel Capital Management; university trustee
• David Rubenstein (J.D. 1973) – co-founder of The Carlyle Group
• Nassef Sawiris (A.B. 1982) – CEO of Orascom Construction Industries (OCI)
• 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; member of the Chicago Mercantile Exchange and the Chicago Board of Trade
• 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

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)
• 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
• 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)
• Norman Ericson (Ph.D.) – Bible scholar, faculty at Trinity International University
• 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
• 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
• 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) – 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
• Samuel L. Stanley (A.B. 1976) – President-elect 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.
• 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])
• 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

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)
• 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)
• 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
• 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
• 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
• 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
• George Ricker Berry (Ph.D. 1895) – Semitic scholar, author, archaeologist, and Professor Emeritus of Colgate-Rochester Divinity School
• 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
• 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
• 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
• 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
• 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 V. Cameron (Ph.D. 1996) – financial analyst, economist and Adjunct Associate Professor of International and Public Affairs at Columbia University
• 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
• 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
• 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
• 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
• 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
• 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
• 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

Science and technology

• Robert McCormick Adams (Ph.B. 1947, A.M. 1952, Ph.D. 1956) – archeologist. Secretary Emeritus of the Smithsonian Institution
• 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
• 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
• 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
• 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
• 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