Cornellians are persons affiliated with Cornell University, commonly including alumni, current and former faculty members, students, and others. Here follows a list of notable Cornellians.

Alumni

Nobel laureates - Graduates

• George W. Beadle (Ph.D. 1930) - Nobel laureate (Physiology/Medicine 1958)
• Pearl S. Buck (M.A. 1926) - author of the Pulitzer Prize winning novel, The Good Earth, and Nobel Prize laureate (1938, literature).
• Robert F. Engle (M.S. 1966, Ph.D. 1969) - co-winner of the 2003 Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences for work modeling the volatility of time-series data
• Robert Fogel (B.A. 1948) - Nobel laureate (Economics 1993).
• Sheldon Lee Glashow (A.B. 1954) - Nobel laureate (Physics 1979).
• Robert W. Holley (Ph.D. 1947) - Nobel laureate (Physiology/Medicine 1968)
• Barbara McClintock (B.S. 1923, A.M. 1925, Ph.D. 1927) - Nobel laureate (Physiology/Medicine 1983).
• Toni Morrison (A.M. 1955) - author and Nobel Prize for Literature laureate.
• John R. Mott (B.A. 1888) - Nobel laureate (Nobel Peace Prize 1946)
• Douglas D. Osheroff (M.S. 1971, Ph.D.1973) - Nobel laureate (Physics 1996).
• Isidor Isaac Rabi (B.Chem. 1919) - Nobel laureate (Physics 1944).
• Steven Weinberg (A.B. 1954) - Nobel laureate (Physics 1979).

Government / Law / Public Policy

• Rob Andrews (J.D. 1982) - U.S. Representative from New Jersey's first congressional district.
• Sandy Berger (B.A. 1967) - National Security Advisor to President Bill Clinton.
• Samuel Bodman, (B.S. 1961) - Deputy Secretary of the U.S. Treasury Department and United States Secretary of Energy under President George W. Bush.
• Barber B. Conable (A.B. 1942, LL.B. 1948) - president of the World Bank from 1986 to 1991, Congressional Representative (R-New York) for nine consecutive terms
• Joseph B. Foraker - Governor of Ohio and Senator
• Stephen Friedman (A.B. 1959) - assistant for economic policy to President George W. Bush, and director of the National Economic Council.
• Ruth Bader Ginsburg (A.B. 1954) - U.S. Supreme Court associate justice.
• Stephen Hadley (B.A. 1969) - National Security Advisor to George W. Bush.
• Philip H. Hoff (1951) - The first Democratic Governor of Vermont since the Civil War
• Jerome H. Holland (B.S. 1939, M.S. 1941) - businessman; president of Delaware State College (1953–60) and of Hampton Institute (1960–70); U.S. ambassador to Sweden (1970–73); national chairman of the American Red Cross (1979–85).
• Alan Keyes (transferred to Harvard) - Former diplomat and Republican candidate for President (twice) and Senate (twice from Maryland, once from Illinois).
• Goodwin Knight - 31st Governor of California
• Stephen D. Krasner (A.B. 1963) - professor of political science at Stanford University, appointed Director of Policy Planning at the United States State Department by Condolezza Rice
• Sol Linowitz (J.D. 1931) - Diplomat, Ambassador, Chairman of Xerox, Presidential Medal of Freedom recipiant
• Hu Shih (B.A. 1914) - Chinese philosopher, poet, statesman; championed vernacular Chinese as a literary language.
• Lee Teng-hui (Ph.D. 1968) - President of the Republic of China (Taiwan).
• Edmund Muskie (LL.B. 1939) - Governor of Maine; U.S. senator, presidential candidate, Secretary of State.
• Janet Reno (B.A. 1960) - United States Attorney General under Bill Clinton.
• William P. Rogers (LL.B. 1937) - United States Attorney General and Secretary of State.
• Michael Ross (1981) - Convicted Serial killer; scheduled to be executed January 26th, 2005, by the State of Connecticut.
• Kathleen M. Sullivan (A.B. 1976) - professor at Stanford University, dean of Stanford Law School from 1999-2004
• Paul Wolfowitz (A.B. 1965) - United States Deputy Secretary of Defense under George W. Bush, President of the World Bank.
• William Vollmann - Journalist, Author of numerous books on war, including a seven volume treatise on violence

Business

• Dr. Ken Blanchard - management consultant, co-author The One Minute Manager
• Jeff Bleustein (B.S. 1960, M.M.E. 1961) - CEO of Harley-Davidson
• Willis Haviland Carrier (M.E. 1901) - founder of the Carrier Corporation
• Barber B Conable (A.B. 1942, LL.B. 1948) - Congressional representative 1965–85; World Bank president 1986–91
• Adolph Coors (A.B. 1907) - co-founder of the Coors beer brewing company.
• Joseph Coors (B.S. 1939) - co-founder of the Coors beer brewing company.
• Pete Coors (B.S. 1969) - Coors brewery executive and 2004 Senatorial Candidate.
• Alonzo Galloway Decker, Jr. (B.E.E. 1929) - CEO of Black and Decker
• Jonathan Dolgen - Chairman of Viacom
• David Duffield (B.E.E. 1962, M.B.A. 1964) - co-founder of PeopleSoft software company
• David Edgerton - co-founder of Burger King restaurant chain
• Edward A. Fox (M.S. 1981, Ph.D. 1983) - first employee and president of Sallie Mae
• Frank E. Gannett (A.B. 1898) - founder of Gannett media company
• Irwin Jacobs (B.E.E. 1956) - founder of Qualcomm, a Fortune 500 company
• Herbert F. Johnson (A.B 1922) and Samuel C Johnson (A.B 1950) - founder/first executives of SC Johnson and the Johnson family businesses
• Austin Kiplinger (A.B. 1939) - journalist, editor of The Kiplinger Letter , founder of Kiplinger's Personal Finance magazine, winner of the Peabody Award
• Charles Lee (B.S. 1962) - CEO of Verizon
• Oscar Gustave Mayer (B.A. 1934) - CEO of Oscar Mayer
• Jim McLamore - co-founder of Burger King restaurant chain.
• Perry Odak - CEO of Ben and Jerry's
• Frederick Douglass Patterson (Ph.D. 1933) - educator, philanthropist, and founder of the United Negro College Fund; recipient of the Presidential Medal of Freedom 1987
• Tom Peters (B.C.E. 1965, M.E.C. 1966) - business management motivational guru
• Lewis Platt (B.S.M.E. 1964) - former CEO of Hewlett-Packard, chairman of Boeing
• Charles E. Sporck - CEO of National Semiconductor
• M. Carey Thomas - Founder and first president of Bryn Mawr
• Ratan N Tata (B.Arch. 1962) - Chairman of Tata Sons (India's wealthiest business group)
• Sanford I. Weill (A.B. 1955)- CEO of Citigroup and co-founder of Salomon Smith Barney, the second largest securities investment firm in the world

Medicine

• Dr. Robert Atkins (M.D. 1955) - creator of the Atkins Diet and an author on health and nutrition.
• Urie Bronfenbrenner (A.B. 1938) - pioneering researcher in human development
• Jane Brody (B.S. 1962) - author and journalist on health and nutrition
• Dr. Joyce Brothers (B.S. 1947) - author, psychologist, and television personality.
• Anthony S. Fauci (M.D. 1966) - director of NIH’s National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases; recipient of the 2002 Albany Medical Center Prize in Medicine and Biomedical Research.
• Dr. Henry Heimlich (A.B. 1941, M.D. 1943) - inventor of the Heimlich maneuver.
• Helen Irlen (B.S. 1967) - developer of a color-filtered treatment for a certain type of dyslexia known as Scotopic Sensitivity Syndrome or Irlen Syndrome.
• Dr. C. Everett Koop (M.D. 1941) - Surgeon General of the United States from 1982 to 1989
• Philip Levine (M.D. 1923) - immuno-hematologist ; discovered the Rh factor in blood in 1939.

Social Sciences

• Robert F. Engle (M.S. 1966, Ph.D. 1969) - co-winner of the 2003 Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences for work modeling the volatility of time-series data
• Robert Fogel (B.A. 1948) - Nobel laureate (Economics 1993).
• Francis Fukuyama (A.B) - political economist and philosopher.
• Claudia Goldin - noted economist
• Julian Steward (B.A. 1925) - Anthropologist best known for his development of a scientific theory of cultural evolution

Science and Technology

Carl Sagan

• John Casper Branner (1882, geologist, second president of Stanford University
• Willis Haviland Carrier (M.E. 1901) - inventor of modern air conditioning technology, founder of the Carrier Corporation
• Milislav Demerec (PhD 1923 - geneticist and long serving director of the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory
• William F. Friedman (B.S.) - Considered by many to be one of the greatest cryptologists of all time,
• Paul Graham (AB) - co-founder of ViaWeb , noted author and evangelist of Lisp, creator of Bayesian spam filters.
• Wilson Greatbatch (B.E.E. 1950) - one of the early developers of the implantable artificial pacemaker.
• Leroy Grumman (M.E. 1916) - founder of Grumman Aerospace Corporation
• Jeff Hawkins (1979) - inventor of the PalmPilot and founder of Palm, Inc. and Handspring
• Laurens Hammond (M.E. 1914) - inventor of the Hammond organ
• Dr. Irwin Jacobs (B.E.E. 1954) - UCSD and MIT engineering professor, pioneer of CDMA wireless technology, cofounder and CEO of Qualcomm, philanthropist, husband of philanthropist Joan Jacobs (1954).
• David Starr Jordan (M.S. 1872) - spent undergraduate years at Cornell, was a Smithsonian Institution associate, became president of Indiana University and founding president of Stanford University.
• Douglas McIlroy (B.E.P. 1954) - Inventor of the pipes and filters architecture of UNIX and the entire software componentry concept
• Thomas Midgley (M.E. 1911) - inventor of Freon and tetra-ethyl lead.
• Robert Tappan Morris, Jr. - computer worm author
• Roger Morse (B.S. 1950, M.S. 1953, Ph.D. 1955) - apiculture author, teacher, researcher
• Steven Squyres (B.S. 1978, Ph.D. 1981) - astronomer, principal science investigator for the Mars rovers Spirit and Opportunity; former student of Carl Sagan
• Ted Taylor (PhD 1956) - Director of Project Orion and designer of many small nuclear weapons

NASA Astronauts

• Ellen S. Baker (M.D. 1978) - astronaut
• Daniel T. Barry (B.S.E.E. 1975) - astronaut
• Jay C. Buckey, Jr. (B.S.E.E., 1977) - astronaut
• Martin J. Fettman (B.S. 1976, M.S. 1970, D.V.M 1970) - astronaut
• Mae Jemison (M.D. 1981) - chemical engineer, physician, teacher, and astronaut; member of National Women's Hall of Fame
• G. David Low (B.S.M.E. 1980) - astronaut
• Edward T. Lu (B.S.E.E. 1984) - astronaut
• Donald A. Thomas (M.S. 1980, Ph.D. 1982) - astronaut

Literature

• Diane Ackerman (M.F.A. 1973, Ph.D. 1979) - author, poet, and naturalist.
• Eric Alterman - liberal author and columnist.
• Harold Bloom - literary and cultural scholar-critic.
• Murray Burnett (A.B. 1931) -- author of the play Everybody Comes to Rick's , which was turned into the film Casablanca
• Margaret Bourke-White (A.B. 1927) - photojournalist.
• Ann Coulter (A.B. 1985) - conservative author and columnist.
• Richard Fariña - author and musician.
• Jesse Redmon Fauset (A.B 1905) - literary editor and mentor; author; active in the Harlem Renaissance.
• Alice Fulton (M.F.A. 1982) - poet, author, feminist, MacArthur Fellow.
• William Gass (Ph.D. 1954) - author, essayist
• John Hassell (A.B. 1991) - journnalist, co-winner of Pulitzer Prize for newspaper reporting
• Toni Morrison (M.A. 1955) - novelist; Nobel Prize, Pulitzer Prize for Beloved, author of Song of Solomon.
• Thomas Perry (A.B. 1969) - novelist; Edgar Award winner.
• Thomas Pynchon (A.B. 1959) - author, Gravity's Rainbow.
• Laura Riding - poet, novelist, essayist, short story writer, leader in modernism.
• Matt Ruff (B.A. 1988)- author.
• Kurt Vonnegut - author of Slaughterhouse-Five and Breakfast of Champions.
• E. B. White (A.B. 1921) - American essayist, co-author of The Elements of Style, author of Charlotte's Web.
• Sheryl WuDunn (A.B. 1981) - journalist at the New York Times, co-winner in 1990 of the Pulitzer Prize for her coverage on the Tiananmen Square protests of 1989, winner of the George Polk Award in 1989, and winner of the Overseas Press Club in 1990.

Entertainment / Music / Sports

• Bruce Arena (B.S 1973) - Coach of the United States men's national soccer team
• Gary Bettman (B.S. 1974) - commissioner of the NHL
• Harry Chapin (did not graduate) - musician.
• Ken Dryden (A.B. 1969) - NHL Hockey Hall of Fame goalie
• Richard Farina - author and folksinger.
• Allen Funt (A.B. 1934) - producer, created Candid Camera show (arguably the first "reality television").
• Eric Garcia (B.A. 1992) - Writer, Author of Matchstick Men
• Harold Gould (A.M. 1948, Ph.D. 1953) - stage, screen, and television actor.
• Greg Graffin (PhD Zoology 1991) - Lead singer in the band Bad Religion
• John Hassell (1991) - Pulitzer Prize winner
• Sidney Kingsley (A.B. 1928) - playwright, screenwriter, winner of the Pulitzer Prize in 1934 for the drama Men in White
• Arthur Laurents (A.B. 1937) - playwright, screenwriter, director, author, credits include Rope, and Gypsy
• Huey Lewis - rock musician (Huey Lewis and the News).
• Bill Maher (A.B. 1978) - comedian and Politically Incorrect satirist.
• Ed Marinaro (1972) - actor and football player, runner-up for the 1971 Heisman Trophy Award, acted on Hill Street Blues
• Adolphe Menjou (B.S. Engineering) - Actor, famous for his roles in The Sheik and The Three Musketeers, and Paths of Glory. Nominated for an Academy Award, has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame
• Robert Moog (Ph.D. 1965) - inventor of the Moog music synthesizer.
• Pedro Pablo Morales (J.D. 1994) - two-time gold medalist in swimming, 1992 Summer Olympics.
• Frank Morgan (did not graduate) - actor, played The Wizard in The Wizard of Oz, Academy Award recipiant
• Joe Nieuwendyk - NHL Stanley Cup Champion
• Bill Nye (B.S., MEng 1977) - the Science Guy.
• Keith Olbermann (B.S. 1979) - television sports and news commentator.
• Christopher Reeve (A.B. 1974) - actor, best known for Superman.
• Richard J. Price (B.S. 1971) - novelist (The Wanderers) and Academy Award nominated screenwriter (The Color of Money)
• Steve Reich (A.B. 1957) - composer
• Jason Reich (B.A. 1998) - Emmy Award winning writer for The Daily Show with Jon Stewart
• Dick Schaap (B.S. 1955) - sports newscaster on ABC and ESPN, twice winner of the Emmy Award, author and coauthor of thirty-three books
• Thelma Schoonmaker (A.B. 1961 ) - film editor, received the Academy Award for Raging Bull and The Aviator
• Cary Sherman (1968) - President of the Recording Industry Association of America
• Jimmy Smits (M.F.A. 1982) - actor.
• Tim Squyres (A.B. 1981) - Academy Award nominated film editor, best known for Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon
• Franchot Tone - Nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actor for Mutiny on the Bounty, has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame
• Hugh Troy (did not graduate) - Artist, Famous prankster
• Mary Woronov (did not graduate) - Actress, member of Andy Warhol's The Factory
• Peter Yarrow (A.B. 1959) - folksinger (Peter, Paul and Mary).

Architecture

• Richard Meier (B.Arch. 1957) - architect; Pritzker Architecture Prize winner.
• Gisue Hariri (B.Arch. 1980) and Mojgan Hariri (B.Arch. 1981) - New York City–based architects.
• Ricardo Zurita (B.Arch. 1984) - architect
• E. Stewart Williams (B.Arch.) - architect

Faculty

Nobel laureates

• Hannes Alfven - Nobel laureate (Physics 1960).
• Hans Bethe - Nobel laureate (Physics 1967 - for nuclear physics, notably nuclear fusion and stellar nucleosynthesis
• Peter J.W. Debye - Nobel laureate (Chemistry 1936).
• Pierre-Gilles de Gennes - Nobel laureate (Physics 1991).
• Vincent du Vigneaud - Nobel laureate (Chemistry 1955).
• Manfried Eigen - Nobel laureate (Chemistry 1967).
• Richard Ernst - Nobel laureate (Chemistry 1991).
• Richard P. Feynman - nuclear physics, especially quantum electrodynamics; Nobel laureate (Physics 1965).
• Paul J. Flory - Nobel laureate (Chemistry 1974).
• Robert F. Furchgott - Nobel laureate (Physiology/Medicine 1998).
• Roald Hoffmann - theoretical chemistry, Nobel laureate (Chemistry 1981).
• Robert W. Holley - Nobel laureate (Physiology/Medicine 1968).
• David Lee - Nobel laureate (Physics 1996).
• Peter B. Medawar - Nobel laureate (Physiology/Medicine 1960).
• Robert C. Richardson - Nobel laureate (Physics 1996).
• Amartya Sen - A.D. White Professor-at-Large - Economics, Nobel Prize winner
• Wole Soyinka - Nobel laureate (Nobel Prize for Literature 1986).
• James B. Sumner - Nobel laureate (Chemistry 1946).

Other notable faculty

• Anthony Appiah - African Studies philosopher and novelist
• Felix Adler - Early 20th Century Jewish rationalist and social reformer
• Liberty Hyde Bailey - Founder of the 4-h movement
• Allan Bloom, Government - author of Closing of the American Mind
• Joan Jacobs Brumberg . Human Development; Feminist, Gender, and Sexuality Studies - scholar in adolescence, body image and eating disorders, and related fields
• John Cleese, A.D. White Professor-at-Large - Comedian and actor
• Eugene Borisovich Dynkin, Mathematics
• Mitchell Feigenbaum - Physicist whose pioneering studies in chaos theory led to the discovery of the Feigenbaum constant
• David Feldshuh - Author of the play Miss Evers' Boys which won an American Play Award , was nominated for a Pulitzer. The movie version won five Emmy Awards
• Thomas Gold - astrophysicist, coined the term Magnetosphere
• Jane Goodall, A.D. White Professor-at-Large - Primatology. renowned naturalist
• Anthony Grafton - One of the leading scholars of the Renaissance
• Juris Hartmanis - 1993 Turing Award recipient
• Allen Hatcher - Mathematics
• John Hopcroft - 1986 Turing Award recipient

Charles Evans Hughes

• Charles Evans Hughes, Law, Presidential Candidate, Chief Justice of the United States Supreme Court
• Karel Husa - Composer probably best known for his "Music for Prague 1968,"
• Saunders Mac Lane - Developer of algebra's Category Theory
• Norman Malcolm - Philosophy - notable Ludwig Wittgenstein scholar
• Richard Meier (B.Arch 1957) - architect
• Cynthia McKinney, Frank H.T. Rhodes University Professor - controversial Democrat in the U.S. House of Representatives
• Bill Nye - Television personality in popular science, "The Science Guy"
• Vladimir Nabokov - Russian and English language author
• Jean W. Pape (M.D. 1975), Medicine: pioneering infectious disease expert
• John Pilger, Frank H.T. Rhodes University Professor - left-wing journalist
• John Rawls - philosopher, author of A Theory of Justice (1971), Political Liberalism, and The Law of Peoples
• Janet Reno (B.A. 1960) - United States Attorney General under Bill Clinton.
• Clinton Rossiter - Government
• Carl Sagan - Space Sciences
• John Sanford - Inventor of the gene gun
• Duncan Sheik Schwartz Center Resident Artist - Alternative Musician, Grammy-nominated singer-songwriter
• Steven Squyres (B.S. 1978, Ph.D. 1981), Space Sciences - principal science investigator for the Mars rovers Spirit and Opportunity; former student of Carl Sagan
• Steven H. Strogatz - Theoretical and Applied Mechanics
• Steven Stucky (DMA 1978) - Pulitzer Prize winner
• John Szarkowski - Influential photography curator, historian, and critic
• Edward B. Titchener - Philosopher, inventor of structuralism
• William Thurston, Mathematics, Fields medal winner
• Kenneth Wilson - Nobel laureate (Physics 1982).
• Robert R. Wilson - The youngest group leader on the Manhattan Project, The first director of Fermilab
• Hendrik Willem van Loon - Author of the first book to be awarded the Newbery Medal for an outstanding contribution to children's literature.

Fictional Cornellians

• Prince Hrubal of Northern Transylvania - character in Alan Furst's spy thriller, Kingdom of Shadows
• Charles Foster Kane, played by Orson Welles - title character in Citizen Kane
• Vicky Lathum, played by Tara Reid in the American Pie movie franchise
• Sideshow Mel - character on The Simpsons an animated television sitcom
• Neil - character in Dirty Dancing, attends the Cornell School of Hotel Management
• Ling Woo - character in Ally Mcbeal was the editor of Cornell Law Journal

University Presidents

External links

• Cornell University Program for A.D. White Professors-at-Large

• Listing of A.D. White Professors-at-Large Includes all appointees to present day.