This is a table of notable people affiliated with Princeton University, including graduates, former students, and former professors. Some noted current faculty are also listed in the main University article. Individuals are sorted by category and alphabetized within each category.

Elected politicians

• Bill Bradley A.B. 1965 - former basketball star, member of the Basketball Hall of Fame, former U.S. Senator
• Aaron Burr 1772 - 3rd Vice President of the United States
• Mitch Daniels Governor of Indiana
• Jonathan Dayton 1776 Speaker of the House of Representatives
• Bill Frist A.B. 1974 - Senate Majority Leader
• Thomas Kean - former Governor of New Jersey
• John F. Kennedy class of 1939 (left after first semester for medical reasons) - 35th President of the United States
• Jim Leach A.B. 1964 - U.S. Congressman
• Jim Marshall A.B. 1972 - U.S. Congressman
• James Madison 1771 - 4th President of the United States
• Claiborne Pell A.B. 1940 - former U.S. Senator
• Paul Sarbanes A.B. 1954 - U.S. Senator
• Eliot Spitzer A.B. 1981 - New York State Attorney General
• Adlai E. Stevenson A.B. 1922 - former governor of Illinois, Democratic presidential candidate, and United Nations ambassador
• Woodrow Wilson A.B. 1879 - 28th President of the United States, 13th president of Princeton University and governor of New Jersey

Government / Law / Public policy

• James Baker A.B. 1952 - Secretary of State under President George H. W. Bush
• Frank Carlucci A.B. 1952 - Secretary of Defense under President Ronald Reagan
• William Colby A.B. 1940 - director of the CIA under Presidents Richard M. Nixon and Gerald Ford
• (fictional) Mayor McDaniels of South Park
• Allen Dulles A.B. 1914, M.A. 1916 - director of the CIA under President Dwight D. Eisenhower
• John Foster Dulles A.B. 1908 - Secretary of State under President Dwight D. Eisenhower
• James V. Forrestal Class of 1915 (did not graduate) - Secretary of Defense under Harry Truman
• Robert Goheen A.B. 1940, M.A. 1947, Ph.D. 1948 - former president of Princeton, former U.S. Ambassador to India
• George F. Kennan A.B. 1925 - Cold War diplomat, architect of "containment" strategy.
• Ralph Nader A.B. 1955 - Green Party presidential candidate
• Richard Perle M.A. 1967 - neo-conservative policy expert
• Donald Rumsfeld A.B. 1954 - Secretary of Defense under Presidents Gerald Ford and George W. Bush
• George Shultz A.B. 1942 - Secretary of State under President Ronald Reagan
• Anne-Marie Slaughter A.B. 1980 - professor of politics and international affairs, dean of the Woodrow Wilson School, president of the American Society of International Law
• Ronald I. Spiers M.A. 1950 - retired U.S. Ambassador to the Bahamas and diplomat

Business

• James T. Aubrey, Jr. A.B. 1941 - president of CBS and MGM
• Jeff Bezos B.S.E. 1986 - founder of Amazon.com
• Richard Bott - A.B. in Chemical Engineering, current Vice Chairman of Morgan Stanley
• Malcolm Forbes A.B. 1941 - businessman and publisher
• Steve Forbes A.B. 1970 - son of Malcolm, businessman and publisher of Forbes magazine
• Carl Icahn A.B. 1957 - Corporate raider
• F. Thomson Leighton B.S.E. 1978 - cofounder of Akamai Technologies
• James S. McDonnell B.S 1921 - founded McDonnell Aircraft Corporation in 1939
• Eric Schmidt B.S.E. 1976 - CEO of Google
• Meg Whitman A.B. 1977 - CEO of eBay

Economics

• Gary Becker A.B. 1951 - Nobel laureate (Economics 1992)
• Alan Blinder A.B. 1967 - professor of economics, Vice Chairman of the Federal Reserve Board under President Bill Clinton
• James Heckman M.A. 1968, Ph.D 1971 - Nobel laureate (Economics 2000)
• Harold Shapiro Ph.D 1964 - professor of economics, president of Princeton until 2001
• Michael Spence A.B. 1966 - Nobel laureate (Economics 2001)

Mathematics/Science

• John Bardeen Ph.D 1936- Nobel laureate (Physics 1956 and 1972)
• Manjul Bhargava Ph.D 2001 - Mathematician, professor at Princeton University
• George Boolos, A.B. 1961 - Philosopher/logician, professor at MIT
• Eugenio Calabi Ph.D 1950 - Mathematician, professor at University of Pennsylvania
• Arthur Compton Ph.D 1916 - Nobel laureate (Physics 1927)
• Clinton Davisson Ph.D 1911 - Nobel laureate (Physics 1937)
• Charles Fefferman Ph.D 1969 - Mathematician, professor at Princeton University, winner of the (Fields Medal 1978)
• Richard Feynman Ph.D 1942 - Nobel laureate (Physics 1965)
• Michael Freedman Ph.D 1973 - Mathematician, professor at University of California at San Diego, winner of the (Fields Medal 1986)
• Phillip A. Griffiths Ph.D 1962 - Mathematician, professor at the Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton; and the secretary of the International Mathematical Union
• Robert Hofstadter Ph.D 1938 - Nobel laureate (Physics 1961)
• Nathan Jacobson Ph.D 1934 - Mathematician, professor at Yale University
• Serge Lang Ph.D 1951 - Mathematician, professor at Yale University
• George Lusztig Ph.D 1971 - Mathematician, professor at MIT
• Juan Maldacena Ph.D 1996 - Physicist, professor at the Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton
• Barry Mazur Ph.D 1959 - Mathematician, professor at Harvard University
• Edwin McMillan Ph.D 1933 - Nobel laureate (Chemistry 1951)
• John Milnor Ph.D 1954 - Mathematician, professor at SUNY-Stony Brook winner of the (Fields Medal 1962)
• John Nash, Ph.D 1950 - Nobel laureate (Economics 1994)
• Steven A. Orszag Ph.D 1966 - Applied mathematician, Percey F. Smith professor of Mathematics at Yale University
• Gian-Carlo Rota, A.B. 1953 - Mathematician, professor at MIT
• Richard Smalley Ph.D 1974 - Nobel laureate (Chemistry 1996)
• Norman Steenrod Ph.D 1936 - Mathematician, professor at Princeton University
• Terence Tao Ph.D 1996 - Mathematician, professor at UCLA
• John Tate Ph.D 1950 - Mathematician, professor at Harvard University and University of Texas
• Richard Taylor Ph.D 1988 - Mathematician, involved in the completing the proof of Fermat's Last Theorem, professor at Harvard University
• Kip Thorne Ph.D 1965 - Physicist, professor at Caltech
• Cumrun Vafa Ph.D 1985 - Physicist at Harvard University
• Steven Weinberg Ph.D 1957 - Nobel laureate (Physics 1979)
• John H. C. Whitehead Ph.D 1932 - Mathematician, professor at Oxford University
• Arthur Wightman Ph.D 1949 - Physicist, professor at Princeton University
• Frank Wilczek M.A. 1972, Ph.D. 1974 - Nobel laureate (Physics 2004)
• Edward Witten Ph.D 1976 - Physicist, professor at the Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton, winner of the (Fields Medal 1990)
• Steven Zucker Ph.D 1974 - Mathematician, professor at Johns Hopkins University
• Gregg J. Zuckerman Ph.D 1975 - Mathematician, professor at Yale University

Engineering/Technology

• Hal Abelson, A.B. 1969 - directed implementation of the Logo programming language for the Apple II, Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at MIT
• Alonzo Church, A.B. 1924, Ph.D.1927 - mathematician known for the Church-Turing thesis, developed the lambda calculus that exposed the "undecideability" problem and influenced the Lisp programming language
• Charles "Pete" Conrad, B.S.E. 1953 - astronaut, third man to walk on the moon
• Brian Kernighan Ph.D 1969, electrical engineering. Professor, computer science. Co-inventor of the awk programming language, and co-author of the definitive textbook The C Programming Language.
• Michael Stonebraker, S.B. 1965 - pioneer researcher in relational databases, founder of Ingres (acquired by Computer Associates) and Illustra Information Technologies (acquired by Informix) and initiator of PostgreSQL
• Alan Turing Ph.D 1938 - pioneering computer scientist, formulated the Turing machine and the Turing test. The Turing award is named in his honor.
• Robert Venturi A.B. 1947, M.F.A. 1950 - architect, Pritzker Prize laureate 1991
• Avi Wigderson Ph.D 1983 - theoretical computer scientist at the Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton, Nevanlinna Prize laureate 1994

Literature

• Ian Caldwell A.B. 1998 - co-authored the recent book The Rule of Four, set on the Princeton campus.
• Jonathan Safran Foer A.B. 1999 - author of Everything is Illuminated
• Frederick Buechner A.B. 1947 - Pulitzer Prize-nominated author
• José Donoso A.B. 1951 - Chilean author
• F. Scott Fitzgerald Class of 1917 (did not graduate) - author of The Great Gatsby
• Eugene O'Neill class of 1910 (did not graduate) - Nobel laureate (Literature 1936)
• David Remnick A.B. 1981 - editor of New Yorker Magazine
• Booth Tarkington A.B. 1893 - novelist
• Thornton Wilder M.A. 1925 - Our Town premiered at Princeton
• Edmund Wilson A.B. 1916 - literary critic
• John Norman Ph.D - sci-fi author and philosopher

Sports

• Hobey Baker A.B. 1914 - famous hockey player; college hockey's top individual award is named in his memory
• Moe Berg A.B. 1923 - baseball player and spy
• Bill Bradley A.B. 1965 - former basketball star, member of the Basketball Hall of Fame, former U.S. Senator
• Jeff Halpern A.B. 1999 - current NHL player; plays for the NHL team Washington Capitals
• Dick Kazmaier A.B. 1952 - Heisman Trophy winner 1952

Entertainment

• Dean Cain A.B. 1988 - actor, played Superman in the television series Lois and Clark: The New Adventures of Superman.
• David Duchovny A.B. 1982 - actor best known for his role in The X-Files
• José Ferrer A.B. 1933 - Academy Award and Tony Award-winning actor
• Charlie Gibson A.B. 1965 - TV morning show host
• Stanley Jordan A.B. 1981 - jazz guitarist
• Brooke Shields A.B. 1987 - actress, from "The Blue Lagoon" and the TV-Series "Suddenly Susan"
• Jimmy Stewart B.S. 1932 - actor
• Maria Ressa B.S. - CNN Anchor

Other

• James Caldwell, American Revolutionary soldier and chaplain
• (fictional) Mayor McDaniels of South Park
• Henry "Lighthorse Harry" Lee A.B. 1773 - American Revolutionary cavalry officer, father of Robert E. Lee
• Alan Lightman A.B. 1970 - physicist and novelist, professor at MIT
• Neil Rudenstine A.B. 1955 - former president of Harvard University
• George Rupp A.B. 1964 - former president of Columbia University
• Lowell Thomas M.A. 1916 - American traveller, broadcaster, and writer
• Cornel West Ph.D 1980 - professor of religion and African American studies