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Monday, June 25, 2018

There are more than 500,000 living alumni of the University of Michigan. Notable alumni include computer scientist and entrepreneur Larry Page, actor James Earl Jones, and President of the United States Gerald Ford.

Alumni




Larry Page's University of Michigan commencement address - Larry Page delivers the commencement address at the University of Michigan on May 2, 2009. Read the full transcript of the video here: ...

Nobel laureates

  • Stanley Cohen (PhD 1949), co-winner of the 1986 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for discovering growth factors (proteins regulating cell growth) in human and animal tissue
  • Jerome Karle (Ph.D. 1944), Chief Scientist, Laboratory for the Structure of Matter, Naval Research Laboratory; Nobel Prize in Chemistry, 1985
  • Marshall Nirenberg (Ph.D. 1957), Chief of Biomedical Genetics, National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute, NIH; Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, 1968
  • H. David Politzer (BS 1969), physicist; professor at California Institute of Technology; Nobel Prize in Physics, 2004
  • Robert Shiller (BA 1967), economist, academic, and best-selling author
  • Richard Smalley (COE: BS 1965), chemist, Nobel Prize in 1996 for the co-discovery of fullerenes
  • Samuel C. C. Ting (BS 1959, PhD 1962), physicist, awarded Nobel Prize in 1976 for discovering the J/ψ particle
  • Thomas H. Weller (A.B. 1936, M.S. 1937), Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, 1954

Activists

  • Benjamin Aaron (LS&A 1937), scholar of labor law; director of the National War Labor Board during World War II; vice chairman of the National Wage Stabilization Board during the Truman administration
  • Ricardo Ainslie (Ph.D.), native of Mexico City, Mexico; Guggenheim award winner
  • Santos Primo Amadeo (B.A.), a.k.a. "Champion of Hábeas Corpus;" attorney and law professor at the University of Puerto Rico; Senator in the Puerto Rico legislature; counsel to the American Civil Liberties Union branch in Puerto Rico, established in 1937; winner of a Guggenheim award
  • Huwaida Arraf (LS&A: 1998), Palestinian rights activist; co-founder of the International Solidarity Movement; chair of the Free Gaza Movement
  • Jan BenDor (SOSW M.S.W.), women's rights activist, member of Michigan Women's Hall of Fame
  • Mary Frances Berry (LAW: JD/Ph.D.), former chairwoman of United States Civil Rights Commission
  • Cindy Cohn (LAW: J.D 1988), attorney for Bernstein v. United States, legal director for the Electronic Frontier Foundation
  • Richard Cordley (B.A. 1854), a abolitionist minister who served Lawrence, KS during the 19th century
  • George William Crockett (LAW: JD 1934), African American attorney; state court judge in Detroit, Michigan; US Representative; national vice-president of the National Lawyers Guild; participated in the founding convention of the racially integrated National Lawyers Guild in 1937, and later served as its national vice-president; first African American lawyer in the U.S. Department of Labor (1939â€"1943)
  • Clarence Darrow (LAW 1878), Leopold and Loeb lawyer, defense attorney for John T. Scopes
  • Terry Davis (BUS: MBA 1962), member of the UK Parliament for 28 years, now Secretary General of the Council of Europe and human rights activist
  • Geoffrey Fieger (B.A. 1974; M.A. 1976), attorney; defense attorney for Jack Kevorkian
  • Alan Haber, first President of the Students for a Democratic Society
  • Tom Hayden, author of Port Huron Statement; member of Chicago Seven; co-founder of Students for a Democratic Society; member of each house of California's Legislature
  • Alireza Jafarzadeh, Iranian activist and nuclear analyst
  • Lyman T. Johnson (AM 1931), history graduate; the grandson of slaves; successfully sued to integrate the University of Kentucky, opening that state's colleges and universities to African-Americans five years before the landmark Brown v. Board of Education ruling
  • Belford Vance Lawson, Jr., attorney who made at least eight appearances before the Supreme Court; attended Michigan and became the school's first African American varsity football player
  • Michael Newdow (LAW: JD 1988), made headlines by challenging the constitutionality of the Pledge of Allegiance
  • Carl Oglesby, writer, academic, and political activist; president of the radical student organization Students for a Democratic Society from 1965 to 1966
  • Milo Radulovich, became a symbol of the excesses of anti-Communism when he challenged his removal from the Air Force Reserve (judged a security risk) and his story was chronicled by Edward Murrow in 1953 on the television newsmagazine program See It Now; in 2008 the Board of Regents approved a posthumous Bachelor of Science degree with a concentration in physics
  • Ralph Rose, six-time Olympic medalist, began the tradition of refusing to dip the United States flag during opening ceremonies
  • Jack Hood Vaughn (BA, MA), second Director of the United States Peace Corps, succeeding Sargent Shriver
  • Raoul Wallenberg (ARCH: B.Arch. 1935), Swedish diplomat, rescued thousands of Jews during the Holocaust, primarily in Hungary
  • Jerry White (BUS: MBA 2005), co-founder and executive director of the Landmine Survivors Network
  • Hao Wu (BUS: MBA 2000), documentary filmmaker and blogger; controversially imprisoned by Chinese government for 5 months in 2006

Aerospace

In 2014, the College of Engineering celebrated its 100th anniversary.

  • Claudia Alexander (Ph.D. 1993), member of the technical staff at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory; the last project manager of NASA's Galileo mission to Jupiter; project manager of NASA's role in the European-led Rosetta mission to study comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko; once named UM's Woman of the Year
  • Robert A. Fuhrman (BS AE), pioneering Lockheed engineer who played a central role in the creation of the Polaris and Poseidon missiles; during more than three decades at Lockheed, he served as president of three of its companies: Lockheed-Georgia, Lockheed-California, and Lockheed Missiles & Space; became president and chief operating officer of the corporation in 1986 and vice chairman in 1988; retired in 1990
  • Edgar Nathaniel Gott (COE: 1909), early aviation industry executive; co-founder and first president of the Boeing Company; senior executive of several aircraft companies, including Fokker and Consolidated Aircraft
  • Robert Hall (COE: BSE 1927), designer of the Granville Brothers Aircraft Gee Bee Z racer that won the 1931 Thompson Trophy race; Grumman test pilot; credited with major role in the design of the Grumman F4F Wildcat, F6F Hellcat and TBM Avenger
  • Willis Hawkins (COE: BSE 1937), Lockheed engineer; contributed to the designs of historic Lockheed aircraft including the Constellation, P-80 Shooting Star, XF-90, F-94 Starfire, F-104 Starfighter and C-130 Hercules; later President of Lockheed
  • Clarence "Kelly" Johnson (COE: 1932 BSE, 1933 MSE, 1964 PhD (Hon.)), founder of the Lockheed Skunk Works; designer of the Lockheed P-38 Lightning, P-80 Shooting Star, JetStar, F-104 Starfighter, U-2 and SR-71 Blackbird; winner of the National Medal of Science
  • Edgar J. Lesher, aircraft designer; pilot; professor of aerospace engineering
  • Elizabeth Muriel Gregory "Elsie" MacGill (COE: MSE) OC, known as the "Queen of the Hurricanes"; first female aircraft designer
  • Joseph Francis Shea (BS 1946, MS 1950, PhD 1955), manager of the Apollo Spacecraft Program office during Project Apollo
  • Aisha Bowe (BS, MS 2009) NASA aerospace engineer and CEO of STEMBoard, a technology company.

Art, architecture, and design

See List of University of Michigan arts alumni

Arts and entertainment

See List of University of Michigan arts alumni

Astronauts

  • Daniel T. Barry, (Medical Internship) engineer, scientist, retired NASA astronaut
  • Theodore Freeman (COE: MSAE 1960), one of the third group of astronauts selected by NASA; died in T-38 crash at Ellington Air Force Base
  • Karl G. Henize (Ph.D. 1954), STS-51-F, 1985
  • James Irwin (COE: MSAE 1957), Apollo 15, 1971; first man to drive a lunar rover on the Moon
  • Jack Lousma (COE: BSAE 1959), Skylab 3 1973; STS-3, 1982
  • James McDivitt (COE: BSE AA 1959, ScD hon. 1965), graduated first in his class; Command Pilot Gemini 4, 1965; Commander Apollo 9; Program Manager for Apollo 12â€"16; Brigadier general, U.S. Air Force; vice president (retired), Rockwell International Corporation
  • Donald Ray McMonagle, (MBA 2003) retired USAF Colonel, USAF; became manager of launch integration at the Kennedy Space Center in 1997
  • David Scott (MDNG: 1949â€"1950; ScD hon. 1971), Apollo 15, 1971
  • James M. Taylor, (B.S. 1959) Air Force astronaut, test pilot
  • Ed White (COE: MSAE 1959, Hon. PhD Astronautics 1965), first American to walk in space (Gemini 4), 1965; died in Apollo 1 test accident, 1967
  • Alfred Worden (COE: MSAE 1964, Scd hon. 1971), Apollo 15, 1971

A campus plaza was named for McDivitt and White in 1965 to honor their accomplishments on the Gemini IV spacewalk. (At the time of its dedication, the plaza was near the engineering program's facilities, but the College of Engineering has since been moved. The campus plaza honoring them remains.) Two NASA space flights have been crewed entirely by University of Michigan degree-holders: Gemini IV by James McDivitt and Ed White in 1965 and Apollo 15 by Alfred Worden, David Scott (honorary degree) and James Irwin in 1971. The Apollo 15 astronauts left a 45-word plaque on the moon establishing its own chapter of the University of Michigan Alumni Association.

Belles lettres

See List of University of Michigan arts alumni

Business

See List of University of Michigan business alumni

Churchill Scholarship or Marshall Scholarship

Churchill Scholarships are annual scholarships offered to graduates of participating universities in the United States and Australia, to pursue studies in engineering, mathematics, or other sciences for one year at Churchill College in the University of Cambridge.

2011â€"2012 David Montague, Pure Mathematics

2009â€"2010 Eszter Zavodszky, Medical Genetics

2007â€"2008 Lyric Chen, BA in Political Science and Economics from the University of Michigan, Marshall Scholar 2007

2006â€"2007 Charles Crissman, Pure Mathematics

2005â€"2006 Christopher Hayward, Applied Mathematics and Theoretical Physics

2005â€"2006 Jacob Bourjaily, graduated with honors, degree in Mathematics, Physics Marshall Scholar 2005

1996â€"1997 Amy S. Faranski, Engineering

1993â€"1994 Ariel K. Smits Neis, Clinical Biochemistry

1990â€"1991 David J. Schwartz, Chemistry

1989â€"1990 Eric J. Hooper, Physics

1987â€"1988 Michael K. Rosen, Chemistry

1985â€"1986 Laird Bloom, Molecular Biology

1984â€"1985 Julia M. Carter, Chemistry

1979â€"1980 David W. Mead, Engineering, Chemical

Computers, engineering, and technology

  • Benjamin Franklin Bailey, studied electrical engineering; chief engineer of the Fairbanks Morse Electrical Manufacturing Company and Howell Electrical Motor Company; director of Bailey Electrical Company; vice-president and director of the Fremont Motor Corporation; became professor of electrical engineering at UM in 1913
  • Arden L. Bement Jr. (Ph.D. 1963), Director of the National Science Foundation (NSF); awarded the ANSI's Chairman's award in 2005
  • James Blinn (BS Physics and Communications Science 1970, MS Information and Control Engineering, 1972), 3D computer imaging pioneer; 1991 MacArthur Fellowship for his work in educational animation
  • Lee Boysel (BSE EE 1962, MSE EE 1963), did pioneering work on Metal-oxide semiconductor transistors and systems during his years at IBM, Fairchild Semiconductor and McDonnell (now McDonnell-Douglas) Aerospace Corporation; founded Four-Phase Systems Inc., which produced the first LSI semiconductor memory system and the first LSI CPU; president, CEO and chairman of Four-Phase, which was purchased by Motorola in 1981
  • John Seely Brown (Ph.D. 1970), former Chief Scientist of Xerox, co-author of The Social Life of Information
  • Jim Buckmaster (MED: MDNG), President and CEO of Craigslist since November 2000; formerly its CTO and lead programmer
  • Alice Burks (M.A. 1957), author of children's books and books about the history of electronic computers
  • Arthur W. Burks (Ph.D. 1941), member of the team that designed the Eniac computer as well as the IAS machine;frequent collaborator of John von Neumann; pioneer in computing education
  • Robert Cailliau (COE: MSc Computer, Information and Control Engineering 1971), co-developer of the World Wide Web; in 1974 he joined CERN as a Fellow in the Proton Synchrotron division, working on the control system of the accelerator; in 1987 became group leader of Office Computing Systems in the Data Handling division; in 1989, with Tim Berners-Lee, independently proposed a hypertext system for access to the CERN documentation, which led to a common proposal in 1990 and then to the World Wide Web; won the 1995 ACM Software System Award with Berners-Lee
  • Dick Costolo (LS&A: BA), former COO and former CEO of Twitter; founder of Feedburner, the RSS reader bought by Google in 2007
  • Edward S. Davidson, professor emeritus in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at the University of Michigan; IEEE award winner
  • Paul Debevec (ENG: BA CSE), researcher in computer graphics at the University of Southern California's Institute for Creative Technologies; known for his pioneering work in high dynamic range imaging and image-based modelling and rendering; honored by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences in 2010 with a Scientific and Engineering Academy Award
  • Tony Fadell (COE: BSE CompE 1991), "father" of the Apple iPod; created all five generations of the iPod and the Apple iSight camera
  • James D. Foley (Ph.D. 1969), professor at the Georgia Institute of Technology; co-author of several widely used textbooks in the field of computer graphics, of which over 300,000 copies are in print; ACM Fellow; IEEE Fellow; recipient of 1997 Steven A. Coons Award
  • Stephanie Forrest (PH.D.), Professor of Computer Science at the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque; recipient of ACM - AAAI Allen Newell Award 2011
  • Lee Giles (M.S.), co-creator of CiteSeer; David Reese Professor of Information Sciences and Technology, Pennsylvania State University; ACM Fellow; IEEE Fellow
  • John Henry Holland, first UM Computer Science PhD; originator of genetic algorithms
  • Larry Paul Kelley, founder of Shelby Gem Factory
  • Thomas Knoll (COE: BS EP 1982, MSE CI CE 1984), co-creator of Adobe Photoshop
  • Robert A. Kotick (MDNG), also known as Bobby Kotick; CEO, president, and a director of Activision Blizzard
  • John R. Koza (Ph.D. 1972), computer scientist; consulting professor at Stanford University; known for his work in pioneering the use of genetic programming for the optimization of complex problems
  • David Kuck (B.S.), professor at the Computer Science Department at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign 1965-1993; IEEE award winner
  • Chris Langton (Ph.D.), computer science; "father of artificial life"; founder of the Swarm Corporation; distinguished expellee of the Santa Fe Institute
  • Eugene McAllaster (BS 1889), distinguished Seattle naval architect and marine engineer with his own firm, McAllaster & Bennett; designer of Seattle's historic fireboat Duwamish (1909); consulting engineer on Seattle's massive Denny Hill and Jackson Street regrades
  • Sid Meier, considered by some to be the "father of computer gaming"; created computer games Civilization, Pirates!, Railroad Tycoon, SimGolf
  • Kevin O'Connor (BS EE 1983), founder of DoubleClick, initially sold for $1.2 billion, and later acquired by Google for $3.1 billion
  • Kunle Olukotun (Ph.D.), pioneer of multi-core processors; professor of electrical engineering and computer science at Stanford University; director of the Pervasive Parallelism Laboratory at Stanford; IEEE award winner
  • Larry Page (COE: BSE 1995), co-founder of Google; named a World Economic Forum Global Leader for Tomorrow (2002); member of the National Advisory Committee of the University of Michigan College of Engineering; with co-founder Sergey Brin, winner of 2004 Marconi Prize in 2004; trustee on the board of the X PRIZE; elected to the National Academy of Engineering in 2004
  • Eugene B. Power (BUS: BA 1927, MBA 1930); founder of University Microfilms Inc. (now ProQuest); K.B.E., hon.; president of the Power Foundation; honorary fellow of Magdalene College
  • Niels Provos (Ph.D.), researcher, secure systems and cryptography
  • Avi Rubin (Ph.D.), a leading authority on computer security; led the research team that successfully cracked the security code of Texas Instruments' RFID chip; holds eight patents for computer security-related inventions
  • Claude E. Shannon (COE: BS EE 1936, BA Math 1936), considered by some the "father of digital circuit design theory" and "father of information theory"; a paper drawn from his 1937 master's thesis, "A Symbolic Analysis of Relay and Switching Circuits", was published in the 1938 issue of the Transactions of the American Institute of Electrical Engineers; this won the 1940 Alfred Noble American Institute of American Engineers Award
  • Joseph Francis Shea (BS 1946, MS 1950, Ph.D. 1955), manager of the Apollo Spacecraft Program office during Project Apollo
  • Michael Stonebraker (MA 1967, Ph.D. 1971), computer scientist specializing in database research; founder of Ingres, Illustra, Cohera and StreamBase Systems; former CTO of Informix; received IEEE John von Neumann Medal in 2005
  • Irma M. Wyman (COE: BS 1949), systems thinking tutor; first female CIO of Honeywell
  • Niklas Zennström, founder of Skype; has a dual degree in business and computer science from Uppsala University; spent his final year in the US at the University of Michigan

Turing and Grace Murray Hopper Award winners

  • Frances E. Allen (M.Sc. 1957), first woman to win the Turing Award (2006); IBM computer science veteran; honored by the Association for Computing Machinery for her work on program optimization and Ptran: program optimization work that led to modern methods for high-speed computing
  • Edgar F. Codd (Ph.D. 1965), mathematician; computer scientist; laid the theoretical foundation for relational databases; received the Turing Award in 1981
  • Stephen A. Cook (A.B. 1961); Turing Award 1982; formalised the notion of NP-completeness in a famous 1971 paper, "The Complexity of Theorem Proving Procedures"
  • Bill Joy (COE: BSE CompE 1975, 2004 D.Eng. (Hon.)), co-founder of Sun Microsystems; given 1986 Grace Murray Hopper Award by the ACM for his work on the UNIX operating system
  • Jennifer Rexford (MSE 1993; PhD 1996), winner of ACM's 2004 Grace Murray Hopper Award for outstanding young computer professional of the year
  • Michael Stonebraker, computer scientist and Turing award winner specializing in database research

Criminals, murderers, and infamous newsmakers

  • François Duvalier (Public Health, 1944â€"45), repressive dictator, excommunication from the Catholic Church; estimates of those killed by his regime are as high as 30,000
  • Theodore Kaczynski (PhD 1967), better known as the Unabomber, one of UM's most promising mathematicians; earned his Ph.D. by solving, in less than a year, a math problem that his advisor had been unable to solve; abandoned his career to engage in a mail bombing campaign
  • Jack Kevorkian (MED: MD Pathology 1952), guilty of second-degree homicide after committing euthanasia by administering a lethal injection to Thomas Youk; spent eight years in prison
  • Nathan F. Leopold, Jr., thrill killer of Leopold and Loeb, transferred from Michigan in 1922 to the University of Chicago, before murdering 14-year-old Robert "Bobby" Franks
  • Richard A. Loeb (B.A. 1923), thrill killer of Leopold and Loeb, youngest graduate in the University of Michigan's history, murdered 14-year-old Robert "Bobby" Franks
  • Herman Webster Mudgett, a.k.a. H.H. Holmes (MED: MD 1884), 19th-century serial killer; one of the first documented American serial killers; confessed to 27 murders, of which nine were confirmed; actual body count could be as high as 250; took an unknown number of his victims from the 1893 Chicago World's Fair; his story was novelized by Erik Larson in his 2003 book The Devil in the White City

Educators

  • Frank Aarebrot, professor of comparative politics at University of Bergen
  • Theophilus C. Abbot (LL.D. 1890), third President of Michigan State University
  • Charles Kendall Adams (1861, 1862), historian; second President of Cornell University (1885â€"1892); President of the University of Wisconsin (1892â€"1902)
  • Dr. Khaled S. Al-Sultan (MS, applied mathematics; COE: Ph.D. in IOE), third rector of King Fahd University for Petroleum and Minerals, a public university in Dhahran, Saudi Arabia
  • Ida Louise Altman (A.B.), author of Emigrants and Society
  • Edgardo J. Angara (LAW: LLM 1964), Secretary of Agriculture (emeritus) and former Executive Secretary of the Philippines
  • James Rowland Angell (BA 1890), tenth President of Yale University
  • W. Brian Arthur (MA 1969), Lagrange Prize in Complexity Science 2008; Schumpeter Prize in Economics 1990; Guggenheim Fellow 1987â€"88; Fellow of the Econometric Society
  • John "Jack" William Atkinson (Ph.D. 1950), psychologist who pioneered the scientific study of human motivation, achievement and behavior
  • Robert F. Bacher, Ph.D., member of the Manhattan Project; professor of physics at Caltech; president of the Universities Research Association
  • Henry Moore Bates (Ph.B. 1890), dean of the University of Michigan Law School (1910â€"1939); Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences
  • William J. Beal (A.B. 1859, A.M. 1862); namesake of W. J. Beal Botanical Garden
  • Mary Frances Berry; Geraldine R. Segal Professor of American Social Thought, Professor of History at the University of Pennsylvania; Civil Rights Commissioner, 1980â€"2004
  • Lewis Binford Ph.D., archaeologist most known for his role in establishing the "New Archaeology" movement of the 1960s
  • Frank Nelson Blanchard (Ph.D. 1919), herpetologist and professor of zoology at the University of Michigan
  • Elise M. Boulding (Ph.D.), educator and author in the field of Peace & Conflict Studies
  • George W. Breslauer (A.B., A.M., Ph.D.), political science professor and Russia specialist at the University of California, Berkeley; Berkeley’s executive vice chancellor and provost
  • Allen Britton (Ph.D. 1949), music educator; former president of Music Educators National Conference
  • Urie Bronfenbrenner (Ph.D. 1942), helped create the federal Head Start program; credited with creating the interdisciplinary field of human ecology
  • Stratton D. Brooks (BA 1896), president of the University of Oklahoma and the University of Missouri
  • Thomas S. Burns (MA 1968, Ph.D. 1974), Samuel Candler Dobbs Professor Emeritus of History of Emory University
  • Gaylen J. Byker (LAW: JD), President of Calvin College; Offshore Energy Development Corporation Partner, Head of Dev
  • William Wallace Campbell (COE: BSE 1886), astronomer; tenth President of the University of California (1923â€"30); elected president of the National Academy of Sciences in 1931
  • Frederic G. Cassidy (Ph.D. 1938), Editor-in-Chief of the Dictionary of American Regional English from 1962 to his death in 2000
  • June Rose Colby (Ph.D. 1886), professor of literature 1892-1931; first woman at the University of Michigan to receive a Ph.D. by examination
  • Katharine Coman (AB 1880), social activist and economist; specialized in the development of the American West; professor of history 1883â€"1900; chaired the Economics Department; dean of Wellesley College, which named a professorship in her honor
  • Charles Horton Cooley (BA 1887; PhD 1894), sociologist, most known for his concept of the "looking glass self", which expanded William James's idea of self to include the capacity of reflection on one's own behavior
  • Joanne V. Creighton (Ph.D. in English literature), 17th president of Mount Holyoke College in South Hadley, Massachusetts; provost and professor of English 1990â€"1994 at Wesleyan University; Wesleyan's interim president 1994-1995
  • Natalie Zemon Davis (Ph.D. 1959) , Canadian and American historian of the early modern period; awarded the 2010 Holberg International Memorial Prize, worth 4.5 million Norwegian kroner (~$700,000 US), for her narrative approach to the field of history
  • Bueno de Mesquita (Ph.D. 1971), political scientist and game theoretician
  • John DiBiaggio (MA), president, University of Connecticut 1979â€"1985, Michigan State University 1985â€"1992, Tufts University 1992â€"2001
  • Paul Dressel (PhD), founding director of Michigan State University's Counseling Center
  • James Stemble Duesenberry, economist; made a significant contribution to the Keynesian analysis of income and employment with his 1949 doctoral thesis "Income, Saving and the Theory of Consumer Behavior'
  • Aaron Dworkin (A.B. 1997, M.M. 1998), 2005 MacArthur Fellow; founder and president of Detroit-based Sphinx Organization, which strives to increase the number of African-Americans and Latinos having careers in classical music
  • Richard A. English (MA 1961, MSW 1964, Ph.D. 1970); dean and professor of social work at the Howard University School of Social Work 1985â€"2003
  • W. Ralph Eubanks (M.A.), author, journalist, professor, public speaker, business executive, Guggenheim award winner
  • Yoon-Dae Euh (BUS: Ph.D. 1975), President of Korea University in Seoul; awarded honorary doctorate from Waseda University of Japan
  • Patrick Farrell (COE: Ph.D. mechanical engineering), named Provost for the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 2006
  • David Fasenfest (Ph.D. 1984), Associate Professor of Sociology at Wayne State University
  • Saul Fenster (Ph.D., 1959), 6th President of New Jersey Institute of Technology 1978â€"2002
  • Sidney Fine, professor of history at Michigan
  • Lewis Ransom Fiske (A.B. 1850; A.M.; LL.D. 1879), 2nd president of the Agricultural College of the State of Michigan (now Michigan State University) 1859-1862; president of Albion College 1877-1898
  • Neil Foley (Ph.D.), historian, Guggenheim award winner
  • Joseph S. Freedman (Masters of Information and Library Science 1990), Professor of Education at Alabama State University
  • David Friday, president of the U.S. state of Michigan's Michigan Agricultural College (now Michigan State University), 1922-1923; a graduate of the University of Michigan
  • Helen Beulah Thompson Gaige (1890â€"1976), herpetologist, curator of Reptiles and Amphibians for the Museum of Zoology at the University of Michigan and specialist in neotropical frogs
  • Edwin Francis Gay (AB 1890), first Dean of Harvard Business School, 1908â€"1919
  • Jane Gerety (Ph.D.), seventh President of Salve Regina University
  • C. Lee Giles (M.S.), David Reese Professor of Information Sciences and Technology, Professor of Computer Science and Engineering, Professor of Supply Chain and Information Systems, Pennsylvania State University; Fellow of the ACM, IEEE and INNS
  • Domenico Grasso (Ph.D. 1973), Vice President for Research and Dean of the Graduate College at the University of Vermont
  • Roy Grow, Kellogg Professor of International Relations, director of the International Relations program at Carleton College; his specialty is the political economy of East Asia, specifically China and Southeast Asia
  • Jack Guttenberg, professor of law at Capital University Law School
  • William W. Hagerty (COE:M.S. 1943, Ph.D. 1947), former president of Drexel University
  • Alice Hamilton (MED: MD 1893), toxicologist; scientist; first female faculty member at Harvard Medical School
  • Elaine Catherine Hatfield (BA), Professor of Psychology at the University of Hawaii; earned Ph.D. at Stanford; scholar who pioneered the scientific study of passionate love and sexual desire
  • Jessica Hellmann (B.S.) Professor of Ecology at the University of Minnesota
  • Clark Leonard Hull (M.A.), psychologist
  • Harry Burns Hutchins; fourth president of the University of Michigan (1909â€"1920); organized and led the law department at Cornell University from 1887 to 1894
  • Charlotte Johnson (JD 1988), vice president and dean of the college at Colgate University; dean of the College at Dartmouth as of July 2011
  • Lyman T. Johnson (AM 1931), the grandson of slaves; successfully sued to integrate the University of Kentucky, opening that state's colleges and universities to African-Americans five years before the landmark Brown v. Board of Education ruling
  • Michael P. Johnson (Ph.D. 1974), emeritus professor of sociology, Pennsylvania State University
  • Rosabeth Moss Kanter (MA 1965, Ph.D. 1967), first tenured female professor at Harvard Business School
  • Thomas F. Keller (Ph.D. 1960), Dean of Fuqua School of Business, 1974â€"96
  • Mark Kilstofte (D.M.A. 1992), composer; professor at Furman University, Greenville, South Carolina; Guggenheim award winner
  • George Kish (Ph.D.), cartographer
  • John E. Laird (B.S. 1975), computer scientist
  • Stanley Lebergott (BA, MA), former government economist; Wesleyan University professor
  • Li Enliang or E.L.li (Chinese: 李恩良, 1912â€"2008), civil engineer; educator; former Vice-president of Zhejiang University; former President of the Zhejiang University of Technology
  • Jeffrey S. Lehman (LAW: JD 1977), 11th President of Cornell University (2003â€"2005)
  • Rensis Likert (B.A. 1926 in Sociology and Economics), founder of the University of Michigan's Institute for Social Research and the director from its inception in 1946â€"1970
  • Howard Markel (A.B., English Literature, 1982; M.D., 1986), George E. Wantz Distinguished Professor of the History of Medicine at the University of Michigan, Guggenheim Fellow, Member of the National Academy of Medicine, author, pediatrician, medical journalist
  • Paul Robert Milgrom (A.B. 1970), economist
  • Martha Minow (LS&A: A.B. 1975), named Dean of Harvard Law School in 2009
  • James Moeser (Ph.D. 1967), ninth chancellor of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, 2000â€"present
  • Mayo Moran (LAW: LLM 1992), named Dean of the University of Toronto Faculty of Law in 2005
  • Carroll Vincent Newsom (Ph.D. 1931), eleventh NYU President; President of Prentice Hall
  • Marjorie Hope Nicolson (A.B. 1914), first female President of Phi Beta Kappa, Guggenheim award winner
  • Eugene A. Nida (Ph.D.), linguist, developer of the dynamic-equivalence Bible-translation theory
  • Nicholas Nixon (B.A. 1969), photographer, known for portraiture and documentary photography, and for championing the use of the 8x10 inch view camera; Guggenheim award winner
  • Mary Beth Norton (B.A. 1964), American historian; Mary Donlon Alger Professor of American History, Department of History at Cornell University; Guggenheim award winner
  • Norman Ornstein (MA Political Science, PhD 1974 Political Science), Scholar: Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences, Stanford University.
  • Scott E. Page (B.A. 1985), social scientist
  • Alice Elvira Freeman Palmer (A.B. 1876, PhD. Hon 1882), appointed head of the history department at Wellesley College in 1879; named the acting president of Wellesley in 1881; became its president in 1882
  • Constantine Papadakis (Ph.D.), Drexel University President 1995â€"2009
  • Clara Claiborne Park (1923â€"2010), instructor at Williams College; author; raised awareness of autism
  • Michael Posner (PhD), psychologist; winner of the National Medal of Science
  • John Oren Reed (1856â€"1916), Ph.D. at Jena (1897); professor of physics
  • Shai Reshef (M.A.) (Hebrew: שי רשף‎), Israeli businessman; educational entrepreneur; founder and president of University of the People, a non-profit, tuition-free, online academic institution dedicated to the democratization of higher education
  • Tom Rochon (B.A., M.A. and Ph.D.), eighth president of Ithaca College, 2008â€"present
  • Henry Wade Rogers (BA 1874, MA 1877); University of Michigan's Professor of Law 1883, Law School Dean 1885â€"1890; President of Northwestern University 1890â€"1900
  • Jonathan Rosenbaum, President of Gratz College
  • Robert Rosenzweig, President (emeritus), Association of American Universities, a consortium of research universities
  • Joseph Everett Rowe (BSE EE/Math 1951, MSE 1952, PhD EE 1955), joined Michigan faculty in 1953; Director of the Electron Physics Laboratory; Chair of EECS; Dean of Engineering, Provost of Case Western Reserve University
  • John Ruhl (BS Physics 1987), Professor of Physics at UCSB and Case Western Reserve University; primary investigator of the ACBAR, Boomerang, South Pole Telescope, and Spider Telescope projects; author of Princeton Problems in Physics
  • Alexander Ruthven (Ph.D. 1906); President of the University of Michigan
  • Lucy Maynard Salmon (B.A. 1876, M.A. 1883), American historian; Professor of History, Vassar College, 1889â€"1927; member of the American Historical Association's Committee of Seven
  • Floyd VanNest Schultz (Ph.D. EE 1950), Educator and Electrical Engineering Scientist
  • Robert Scott (LAW: SJD 1973), Dean University of Virginia School of Law 1991â€"2000
  • Wilfrid Sellars (B.A. 1933), philosopher and Rhodes Scholar
  • Al Siebert (M.A., Ph.D. 1965), Menninger Fellow; Resiliency Center Director; author of The Resiliency Advantage: Master Change, Bounce Back from Setbacks, awarded the 2006 Independent Publishers' award for Best Self-Help Book
  • Holly Martin Smith, Distinguished Professor of Philosophy at Rutgers University
  • Andrew A. Sorensen (MPH 1966), President of the University of Alabama 1996â€"2002; President, University of South Carolina 2002â€"
  • William Spoelhof (MA 1937), President of Calvin College 1951â€"76; namesake of Asteroid 129099 Spoelhof
  • Claude Steiner (Ph.D. 1965), founding member and teaching fellow of the International Transactional Analysis Association
  • Clarence Stephens (Pd.D.); the teaching techniques he introduced at Potsdam, and earlier at Morgan State, have been adopted by many mathematics departments across the country
  • George Sugihara (B.S. 1973), theoretical biologist; has worked across a wide variety of fields, including landscape ecology, algebraic topology, algal physiology and paleoecology, neurobiology, atmospheric science, fisheries science, and quantitative finance
  • Leonard Suransky, winner of the Des Lee Visiting Lectureship in Global Awareness at Webster University
  • Beverly Daniel Tatum (Ph.D.), President of Spelman College (2002â€"); clinical psychologist; author of Why Are All the Black Kids Sitting Together in the Cafeteria?; professor, chair of psychology department, Dean (1989â€"2001), acting President (2002) of Mount Holyoke College
  • G. David Tilman (Ph.D. 1976), ecologist, Guggenheim award winner
  • Amos Tversky (Ph.D. 1965), long-time collaborator with Daniel Kahneman; co-founder of prospect theory in economics; died of cancer before Kahneman received the Nobel prize and was featured prominently and fondly in his Nobel speech
  • Zalman Usiskin (Ph.D.), educator; Director of the University of Chicago School Mathematics Project
  • Charles M. Vest (COE: MSE 1964, PhD 1967), President (emeritus) of MIT 1990â€"2004; elected in 2007 to a six-year term as president of the National Academy of Engineering
  • Robert W. Vishny (AB, highest distinction, 1981), economist and the Eric J. Gleacher Distinguished Service Professor of Finance at the University of Chicago Graduate School of Business; prominent representative of the school of behavioural finance; his research papers (many written jointly with Andrei Shleifer, Rafael LaPorta and Josef Lakonishok) are among the most often cited recent research works in the field of economic sciences
  • Robert M. Warner (MA 1953, Ph.D.), Dean Emeritus, University of Michigan’s School of Information (the former School of Library Science) 1985â€"92; professor emeritus of the School of Information; appointed sixth archivist of the United States in July 1980 by President Jimmy Carter; continued to serve under President Ronald Reagan through April 15, 1985
  • Albert H. Wheeler (SPH: Ph.D.), life-sciences professor and politician in Ann Arbor; the city's first African-American mayor, 1975â€"1978; became assistant professor of microbiology and immunology at Michigan in 1952; eventually became the university's first tenured African-American professor
  • B. Joseph White (BUS: Ph.D. 1975), 16th president of the University of Illinois
  • Jerome Wiesner (COE: BS 1937, MS 1938, PhD 1950), MIT Provost 1968â€"1971; President of MIT 1971â€"1980
  • Edwin Willits (A.B. 1855), the first Assistant U.S. Secretary of Agriculture under Norman Jay Coleman for Grover Cleveland's first administration; President of Michigan Agricultural College
  • Phyllis Wise (M.S. 1969, Ph.D. 1972), University of Washington provost or Chief Academic officer; manages $3 billion annual budget
  • Frank Wu (LAW: JD 1991), named Dean of Hastings Law School in 2009

University presidents

  • Charles Kendall Adams (1861, 1862), historian; second President of Cornell University (1885â€"1892); President of the University of Wisconsin (1892â€"1902)
  • Rodolfo Arévalo, president, Eastern Washington University
  • David Arnold, president, American University in Cairo
  • Charles E. Bayless (MBA), president of West Virginia University Institute of Technology
  • Warren E. Bow (M.A.), president of Wayne State University
  • Johnathan Brand (M.A.), 15th president Cornell College
  • Detlev Bronk (Ph.D. 1926), scientist, educator, and administrator; credited with establishing biophysics as a recognized discipline; President of Johns Hopkins University from 1949 to 1953; President of The Rockefeller University from 1953 to 1968
  • Sean T. Buffington, president, University of the Arts, Pennsylvania
  • Benjamin Cluff (B.A.), first president of Brigham Young University; the school's third principal
  • Barbara Couture, president, New Mexico State University
  • Joanne Creighton, president, Mount Holyoke College
  • James Danko (MBA), appointed 21st president of Butler University in 2011
  • David Eisler, president, Ferris State University
  • Sister Janet Eisner, president, Emmanuel College, Massachusetts
  • Antonio Flores, president and chief executive officer of the Hispanic Association of Colleges and Universities
  • Deborah Freund (MPH, MA, Ph.D.), president of Claremont Graduate University
  • Allan Gilmour (MBA), inaugurated as 11th president of Wayne State University in 2011
  • Larry J. Goodman, president, Rush University and Rush University Medical Center
  • Thomas J. Haas, president, Grand Valley State University
  • Eugene Habecker (Ph.D.), 30th president of Taylor University
  • Walter Harrison, president, University of Hartford, Connecticut; vice president for university relations
  • John M. Hilpert, president, Delta State University, Mississippi
  • Cindy Hill, Wyoming Superintendent of Public Instruction since 2011, received master's degree from the University of Michigan
  • Eric R. Jensen (Master, Ph.D.), 19th president of Illinois Wesleyan University (2015â€")
  • Richard G. Jewell, president, Grove City College, Pennsylvania
  • Raynard S. Kington (MED), former deputy director of the National Institutes of Health; 13th president of Grinnell College; earned his medical degree from the University of Michigan at age 21
  • Kathy Krendl, president, Otterbein College (Ohio)
  • John S. Kyser, president, Northwestern State University (Louisiana)
  • James Raymond Lawson, (Ph.D.), president, Fisk University (1967-1975)
  • Wallace D. Loh (Ph.D.), president University of Maryland
  • Maud Mandel (born 14 June 1967) is Professor of History and Judaic Studies and Dean of the College at Brown University and President-elect of Williams College in March 2018.
  • Eugene R. Milhizer (LAW: JD), named Ave Maria President in 2009; dean of Ave Maria School of Law; prior to his arrival at AMSL, he served as a U.S. Army Judge Advocate for 21 years
  • James L. Muyskens, president, Queens College-CUNY
  • William H. Payne (1836-1907), Chancellor of the University of Nashville and President of Peabody College (both of which later merged with Vanderbilt University), 1887-1901
  • Ruth Person, chancellor, UM-Flint
  • Scott Ransom, president, University of North Texas Health Science Center
  • William Craig Rice, president, Shimer College
  • Austin Scott, tenth President of Rutgers College (now Rutgers University), 1891-1906
  • James Spaniolo, president, The University of Texas at Arlington
  • Rev. Gerard J. Stockhausen, president, University of Detroit Mercy
  • Carl Strikwerda (Ph.D.), William & Mary’s Dean of the Faculty of Arts & Sciences; named 14th president of Elizabethtown College in Pennsylvania in 2011
  • Beverly Daniel Tatum, president, Spelman College
  • Charles M. Vest, president, National Academy of Engineering; former president, MIT
  • David L. Warren, president, National Association of Independent Colleges and Universities
  • Richard F. Wilson (ED 1978), president, Illinois Wesleyan University
  • Michael T. Wood, president, Capitol College, Maryland
  • Moses Ochonu, professor of African History at Vanderbilt University,

Fiction, nonfiction

See List of University of Michigan arts alumni.

Fictional Wolverines

  • In Ally McBeal, the character Billy, played by Gil Bellows, is a Michigan student.
  • In 24, Nadia Yassir has a B.A. in Languages from the university.
  • In A Tree Grows in Brooklyn by Betty Smith, Francie prepares to take classes at the University of Michigan.
  • In Air Force One, U.S. President James Marshall, played by Harrison Ford, attended the University of Michigan.
  • In American Pie and other films in the series, Kevin Myers, played by Thomas Ian Nicholas, attends Michigan.
  • In Answer This!, Christopher Gorham plays UM student Paul Tarson.
  • In Bad Company, Laurence Fishburne plays a corrupt intelligence analyst who is a Michigan graduate.
  • In Blindspot, Rob Brown plays an FBI agent and former Michigan student-athlete.
  • In The Big Chill, Michael Gold, played by Jeff Goldblum, worked at The Michigan Daily.
  • In The Company You Keep, Brit Marling plays a University of Michigan Law student.
  • In Continental Divide, Allen Garfield plays the role of Max Bernbaum, an All-American football player from Michigan.
  • In Entourage, Ari Gold, earned his J.D./M.B.A at the Ross School of Business.
  • In The Five Year Engagement, Emily Blunt plays UM student Violet Barnes, a post-doctoral fellow in psychology.
  • In Freaks and Geeks, Lindsay leaves for the academic summit at the University of Michigan.
  • In Ghostbusters in 2016, Melissa McCarthy plays Abby Yates a University of Michigan graduate
  • In The Good Place, Kristen Bell plays Eleanor Shellstrop, a Michigan law graduate
  • In The Green Lantern, Guy Gardner, is a superhero alum who double majored in education and psychology. He played football with another superhero, Steel.
  • In House, Dr. Gregory House earned his M.D. from Michigan's medical school. Lisa Cuddy, played by Lisa Edelstein, was in the pre-med program at Michigan.
  • In Justified, Neal McDonough plays former UM MBA Robert Quarles, a violent sociopath.
  • In Last Man Standing (U.S. TV series), Tim Allen plays Mike Baxter, a University of Michigan graduate and the highly opinionated marketing director for a chain of sporting goods stores.
  • In Lost, the Dharma Initiative was founded in 1970 by two doctoral candidates, Gerald and Karen DeGroot, while studying at the university.
  • In Love and Honor, Teresa Palmer plays an undergraduate caught up in the movement to end the war in Vietnam.
  • In Mad Men, "Smitty" Smith (Patrick Cavanaugh) tells one of his fellow characters that he is a graduate of the University of Michigan.
  • In No Strings Attached, Adam Franklin, played by Ashton Kutcher, and Emma Kurtzman, played by Natalie Portman, both attended the university.
  • In Parks & Recreation, Chris Traeger, announces he and his partner Ann are moving to Ann Arbor because he has "a job lined up at the University of Michigan.
  • In Perception, Kelly Rowan who plays the character Dr. Caroline Newsome/Natalie Vincent, a University of Michigan Medical school graduate.
  • In Sister, Sister, Tia Landry, played by Tia Mowry, attends the University of Michigan.
  • In Sleeping with Other People, Alison Brie plays a woman who becomes an aspiring medical student at the University of Michigan.
  • In The Sopranos, Ronald Zellman, played by Peter Riegert, is a Michigan graduate.
  • In The West Wing, Leo McGarry, played by John Spencer, attended the University of Michigan.
  • In Shameless, Jimmy/Steve, played by Justin Chatwin, attended the University of Michigan.
  • In True Believer, the character Roger Baron, played by Robert Downey Jr., is a Michigan Law graduate.
  • In The Upside of Anger, Keri Russell plays Emily Wolfmeyer, an aspiring dancer
  • In Why Him?, Megan Mullally plays the Michigan educated mother of the lead character

Finance

  • Peter Borish, investor and trader

Journalism, publishing, and broadcasting

  • Roz Abrams MA, news co-anchor for CBS; reporter and anchor for almost 30 years, including 18 years with WABC in New York
  • Sam Apple, publisher and editor-in-chief of The Faster Times
  • Dean Baker (PhD, Economics), blogger for The American Prospect
  • Ray Stannard Baker (MDNG LAW: 1891), biographer of Woodrow Wilson
  • Margaret Bourke-White (MDNG: 1922â€"1924), photographer and journalist
  • Jon Chait (BA 1994), Senior Editor for The New Republic
  • Jeff Cohen, founder of Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting; left the group to produce Donahue on MSNBC
  • Ann Coulter (LAW: JD 1988), conservative author and attorney
  • Rich Eisen (BA 1990), host of sportstalk TV/radio show, The Rich Eisen Show, and journalist for NFL Network and CBS Sports; former ESPN anchor
  • Larry Elder (LAW: JD 1977), talk radio show host, author, and TV show host
  • Win Elliot, sports announcer and journalist
  • John Fahey (BUS: MBA 1975), President and CEO of the National Geographic Society; former chairman, president and CEO of Time Life, Inc.; one of Advertising Age's top 100 marketers
  • Bill Flemming (B.A.), television sports journalist
  • Martin Ford (BSE 1985), author of Rise of the Robots: Technology and the Threat of a Jobless Future, winner of the 2015 Financial Times and McKinsey Business Book of the Year Award
  • James Russell Gaines (1973), former managing editor of Time Magazine
  • Gloria D. Gibson (Ph.D.), first Black female reporter WCVB-TV; first female radio drivetime News Anchor in Nation's capital (WWDC-AM&FM); Primetime TV News Anchor in Washington, DC; International Broadcaster Voice of America
  • Arnold Gingrich (1925), founder and publisher of Esquire
  • Todd Gitlin (MA 1966, Political Science), professor of journalism,; social critic
  • Wendell Goler, Fox News White House correspondent
  • Gael Greene, food critic
  • George Zhibin Gu, journalist and consultant
  • Sanjay Gupta (MD: 1993), CNN anchor, reporter and senior medical correspondent; Emmy winner
  • Raelynn Hillhouse (HHRS: MA, PHD 1993), national security expert and blogger (The Spy Who Billed Me); novelist; political scientist
  • Dana Jacobson (B.A. 1993), ESPN anchorwoman
  • Alireza Jafarzadeh, senior Foreign Affairs Analyst for Fox News Television and other major TV networks; author of The Iran Threat: President Ahmadinejad and the Coming Nuclear Crisis
  • Leon Jaroff (COE: BSE EE, BS EM 1950), a mainstay for the Time Inc. family of publications since he joined as an editorial trainee for LIFE magazine in 1951; moved to Time in 1954, and became its chief science writer in 1966; named a senior editor in 1970, a post he kept until he semi-retired in 2000
  • Paul Kangas, stockbroker for twelve years; host of Nightly Business Report since it was a local Florida program in 1979
  • William F. Kerby (AB 1920s), chairman of Dow Jones and Company
  • Laurence Kirshbaum (AB 1966), founder of LJK Literary Management; chairman of Time Warner Book Group
  • Melvin J. Lasky (MA History), combat historian in France and Germany during WWII;assistant to the U.S. Military Governor of Berlin in early postwar years; founder and editor of the anti-Communist journal Encounter, which was in 1966 shown to be secretly financed by the CIA
  • Daniel Levin, writer
  • Ann Marie Lipinski, former editor of the Chicago Tribune; 1987 Pulitzer Prize winner
  • Richard Lui (MBA), journalist; MSNBC news anchor; former news anchor for five years at CNN Worldwide
  • John Madigan (BUS: BBA 1958, MBA 1959), Chairman and CEO (emeritus), Tribune Company
  • Wednesday Martin, journalist, memoirist, anthropologist
  • Robert McHenry, encyclopedist and author; editor-in-chief (emeritus) of the Encyclopædia Britannica
  • John J. Miller, National Political Reporter for the National Review
  • Pam Moore, weekday anchor of KRON 4 News on weekdays; winner of George Foster Peabody Award for her five-part series, “About Race,” an Emmy for her series on HMOs, and the Associated Press Television-Radio Award for “Mercury Rising”
  • Sara Moulton (AB 1974), executive chef of Gourmet magazine; former host of the Food Network shows Sara's Secrets and Cooking Live
  • Paul Scott Mowrer, journalist and Pulitzer Prize winner
  • Davi Napoleon (AB 1966; AM 1968), writes a monthly feature for Live Design; former columnist for TheaterWeek and InTheater
  • Daniel Okrent (BA 1969), public editor of New York Times; editor-at-large of Time Inc.; Pulitzer Prize finalist in history (Great Fortune, 2004); founding father of Rotisserie League Baseball
  • Marvin Olasky (Ph.D. 1976), conservative pundit
  • Susan Orlean (AB), staff writer for The New Yorker
  • Norman Ornstein, American Enterprise Institute Senior Fellow
  • Phil Ponce (LAW: JD 1974), Chicago television journalist, host of Chicago Tonight on WTTW
  • David Portnoy (1999, Education), founder of Barstool Sports
  • William E. Quinby,(AB 1858, MA 1861), owner of the Detroit Free Press and United States Ambassador to the Netherlands
  • Rob Reinhart (BA, 1983), broadcaster, writer, producer and host of syndicated radio program Acoustic Cafe
  • P. Anthony Ridder (AB 1962), president emeritus of the Knight Ridder newspaper chain
  • Evan Rosen (BA), journalist, strategist, author of The Culture of Collaboration
  • Adam Schefter, former Denver Post and Denver Broncos correspondent for 15 years; ESPN and NFL Network contributor
  • William Schmidt (B.A.), named associate managing editor for resources and planning in 2003 for The New York Times; in 1987 was among seven reporters and two editors at the Times who shared the Pulitzer Prize for National Reporting for articles about the causes of the Challenger disaster
  • John Schubeck, television reporter and anchor, one of the few to anchor newscasts on all three network owned-and-operated stations in one major market
  • Samuel Spencer Scott, president of Harcourt, Brace & Company from 1948 until his retirement in 1954
  • David Shuster, television journalist with Current TV; talk radio host; former anchor for MSNBC; has also worked for Fox News and CNN
  • Rob Siegel (1993), editor-in-chief of The Onion; screenplay writer for The Wrestler
  • Carole Simpson (BA 1962), former ABC News correspondent; Emerson College professor
  • Fanchon Stinger (BA 1993), television anchor for WXIN-Fox 59 Indianapolis; winner of 12 Television Emmy Awards
  • Bert Randolph Sugar (LAW: JD 1961); former editor at The Ring, Boxing Illustrated, and Fight Game magazines; wrote more than 80 books on boxing, baseball, horse racing, and sports trivia
  • Amy Sullivan, contributing editor for Time magazine, covers religion and politics; also writes for the magazine's political blog, Swampland
  • Jerald F. ter Horst (also known as Jerald Franklin ter Horst) (BA 1947), Gerald Ford's short-term press secretary
  • Chuck Townsend (LS&A: BA), President and CEO of Conde Nast
  • Peter Turnley, photojournalist known for documenting the human condition and current events
  • John Voelker (LAW: 1928), author of Anatomy of a Murder
  • Mike Wallace (A.B. 1939), TV journalist, longtime host of 60 Minutes; winner of 20 Emmys and three Peabodys
  • David Weir, editor and journalist, Editor in Chief at Keep Media as of 2007
  • Margaret Wente (B.A.), writer for The Globe and Mail, 2006 winner of the National Newspaper Award for column-writing; has edited leading business magazines Canadian Business and ROB
  • David Westin (BA, with honors and distinction; LAW: JD summa cum laude 1977), president of ABC News
  • Roger Wilkins (AB 1953, LAW: LLB 1956, HLHD 1993), journalist of the Washington Post; shared the Pulitzer Prize for his Watergate editorials
  • Tracy Wolfson, reporter for CBS Sports
  • Bob Woodruff (LAW: JD), ABC Nightly News anchor, replaced Peter Jennings
  • Robin Wright, author, Washington Post
  • Eric Zorn, columnist and blogger for the Chicago Tribune
  • Daniel Zwerdling, investigative radio journalist for NPR News
  • Svida Alisjahbana (BA 1988), CEO of Femina Indonesia, Indonesia's leading women's magazine

Law, government, and public policy

MacArthur Foundation award winners

As of 2017, 26 Michigan alumni â€" 16 undergraduate students and 10 graduate students â€" have been awarded a MacArthur fellowship.

  • James Blinn (BS Physics 1970; MSE 1972; Communications Science 1970; MS Information and Control Engineering 1972)
  • Caroline Walker Bynum (BA 1962), Medieval scholar; MacArthur Fellow
  • Eric Charnov (B.S. 1969), evolutionary ecologist
  • William A. Christian (Ph.D. 1971), religious studies scholar
  • Shannon Lee Dawdy (M.A. 2000, Ph.D. 2003), 2010 fellowship winner; assistant professor of anthropology at the University of Chicago
  • Philip DeVries (B.S. 1975), biologist
  • William H. Durham (Ph.D. 1973), anthropologist
  • Aaron Dworkin (B.A. 1997, M.A. 1998), Fellow, founder, and president of Detroit-based Sphinx Organization, which strives to increase the number of African-Americans and Latinos having careers in classical music
  • Steven Goodman (B.S. 1984), adjunct research investigator in the U-M Museum of Zoology's bird division; conservation biologist in the Department of Zoology at Chicago's Field Museum of Natural History
  • David Green (B.A. 1978; MPH 1982), Executive Director of Project Impact
  • Ann Ellis Hanson (B.A. 1957; M.A. 1963), visiting associate professor of Greek and Latin
  • John Henry Holland (M.A. 1954; Ph.D. 1959), professor of electrical engineering and computer science, College of Engineering; professor of psychology, College of Literature, Science, and the Arts
  • Vonnie McLoyd (M.A. 1973, Ph.D. (1975), developmental psychologist
  • Denny Moore (B.A.), linguist, anthropologist
  • Nancy A. Moran (Ph.D. 1982), evolutionary biologist; Yale professor; co-founder of the Yale Microbial Diversity Institute
  • Cecilia Muñoz (B.A. 2000), Senior Vice President for the Office of Research, Advocacy and Legislation at the National Council of La Raza (NCLR), White House Director of Intergovernmental Affairs
  • Dimitri Nakassis (B.A. 1997), a 2015 MacArthur Fellow; joined the faculty of the University of Toronto in 2008; currently an associate professor in the Department of Classics
  • Richard Prum (Ph.D. 1989), William Robertson Coe Professor of Ornithology; Head Curator of Vertebrate Zoology at the Peabody Museum of Natural History at Yale University
  • Mary Tinetti (B.A. 1973; M.D. 1978), physician; Gladys Phillips Crofoot Professor of Medicine and Epidemiology and Public Health at Yale University; Director of the Yale Program on Aging
  • Amos Tversky,(PhD. 1965), psychologist
  • Karen K. Uhlenbeck (B.A. 1964), mathematician
  • Jesmyn Ward (M.F.A. 2005) writer of fiction
  • Julia Wolfe (B.A. 1980), classical composer
  • Henry Tutwiler Wright (B.A. 1964), Albert Clanton Spaulding Distinguished University Professor of Anthropology in the Department of Anthropology; Curator of Near Eastern Archaeology in the Museum of Anthropology at the University of Michigan; 1993 MacArthur Fellows Program
  • Tara Zahra (M.A. 2002; Ph.D. 2005); fellow with the Harvard Society of Fellows (2005â€"2007) prior to joining the faculty of the University of Chicago; 2014 MacArthur Fellow
  • George Zweig (B.A. 1959), physicist who conceptualized quarks ("aces" in his nomenclature)

Mathematics

  • Ralph H. Abraham, mathematician
  • Kenneth Ira Appel (Ph.D.), mathematician; in 1976, with colleague Wolfgang Haken at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, solved one of the most famous problems in mathematics, the four-color theorem
  • Edward G. Begle (MA 1936), mathematician known for his role as the director of the School Mathematics Study Group, the primary group credited for developing what came to be known as New Math
  • Marjorie Lee Brown (Ph.D. 1949/1950), arguably the first African-American woman to earn a doctorate in mathematics
  • Harry C. Carver (B.S. 1915), mathematician and academic; a major influence in the development of mathematical statistics as an academic discipline
  • Brian Conrey (Ph.D. 1980), mathematician; executive director of the American Institute of Mathematics
  • George Dantzig (M.A. Math 1937), father of linear programming; studied at UM under T.H. Hildebrandt, R.L. Wilder, and G.Y. Rainer
  • Carl de Boor (Ph.D. Mathematics 1966), known for pioneering work on splines, National Medal of Science 2003; John von Neumann Prize from the Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics in 1996
  • Dorothy Elizabeth Denning, information security researcher; author of four books and 140 articles; at Georgetown University, she was the Patricia and Patrick Callahan Family Professor of computer science and director of the Georgetown Institute of Information Assurance; professor in the Department of Defense Analysis at the Naval Postgraduate School
  • Sister Mary Celine Fasenmyer (Ph.D. 1946), mathematician noted for her work on hypergeometric functions and linear algebra; published two papers which expanded on her doctorate work and would be further elaborated by Doron Zeilberger and Herbert Wilf into "WZ theory", which allowed computerized proof of many combinatorial identities
  • Walter Feit (Ph.D. 1955), winner of the 7th Cole Prize in 1965; known for proving the Feitâ€"Thompson theorem
  • David Gale (MA 1947), mathematician and economist
  • Frederick Gehring (AB 1946), T. H. Hildebrandt Distinguished University Professor Emeritus of Mathematics; recipient of the 2006 AMS Leroy P. Steele Prize for Lifetime Achievement; taught at Michigan from 1955 until his retirement in 1996; invited three times to address the International Congress of Mathematicians; in 1989 elected to the National Academy of Sciences; in 1997, the Frederick and Lois Gehring Chair in Mathematics was endowed
  • Seymour Ginsburg (Ph.D. 1952), pioneer of automata theory, formal language theory, database theory, and computer science; his work was influential in distinguishing theoretical computer science from the disciplines of mathematics and electrical engineering
  • Thomas N.E. Greville (Ph.D. 1933), mathematician; specialized in statistical analysis as it concerned the experimental investigation of psi
  • Earle Raymond Hedrick (A.B. 1896), mathematician; vice-president of the University of California
  • Theophil Henry Hildebrandt, UM instructor of mathematics starting in 1909, where he spent most of his career; chairman of the department from 1934 until his retirement in 1957; received the second Chauvenet Prize of the Mathematical Association of America in 1929
  • Meyer Jerison (Ph.D. 1950), mathematician known for his work in functional analysis and rings, especially for collaborating with Leonard Gillman on one of the standard texts in the field, Rings of Continuous Functions
  • D.J. Lewis (PhD 1950), mathematician specializing in number theory; chaired the Department of Mathematics at the University of Michigan (1984â€"1994); director of the Division of Mathematical Sciences at the National Science Foundation
  • James Raymond Munkres, Professor Emeritus of mathematics at MIT, author of classic textbook Topology
  • Ralph S. Phillips (Ph.D.), mathematician; academic; known for his contributions to functional analysis, scattering theory, and servomechanisms
  • Kenneth H. Rosen (B.A.), author and mathematician
  • Leonard Jimmie Savage (B.S. 1938, Ph.D. 1941), author of The Foundations of Statistics (1954); rediscovered Bachelier and introduced his theories to Paul Samuelson, who corrected Bachelier and used his thesis on randomness to advance derivative pricing theory
  • Joel Shapiro (Ph.D.), mathematician; leading expert in the field of composition operators
  • Isadore M. Singer (B.A. 1944), winner of the Abel Prize, the "Nobel of mathematics", and the Bôcher Memorial Prize
  • Stephen Smale (B.S. 1952, M.S. 1953, Ph.D. 1957), Fields Medal winner; winner of the 2007 Wolf Prize in mathematics; 1965 Veblen Prize for Geometry, awarded every five years by the American Mathematical Society; 1988 Chauvenet Prize from the Mathematical Association of America; 1989 Von Neumann Award from the Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics
  • George W. Snedecor (MA 1913), mathematician and statistician
  • Edwin Henry Spanier (PhD 1947), mathematician at the University of California at Berkeley, working in algebraic topology
  • Frank Spitzer (BA, PhD), mathematician who made fundamental contributions to probability theory, including the theory of random walks, fluctuation theory, percolation theory, and especially the theory of interacting particle systems; his first academic appointments were at the California Institute of Technology (1953â€"1958); most of his academic career was spent at Cornell University, with leaves at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton and the Mittag-Leffler Institute in Sweden
  • Norman Steenrod (A.B. 1932), algebraic topologist, author of The Topology of Fiber Bundles; believed to have coined the phrase "abstract nonsense," used in category theory
  • Clarence F. Stephens (Ph.D.), ninth African American to receive a Ph.D. in mathematics; credited with inspiring students and faculty at SUNY Potsdam to form the most successful United States undergraduate mathematics degree programs in the past century
  • Robert Simpson Woodward (A.B. 1872); professor of mechanics, mathematical physics at Columbia (1899â€"1904); President of the American Mathematical Society (1899-1900); in 1904 became President of the newly formed Carnegie Institution

Medicine

  • Wallace Calvin Abbott (MED: MD 1885), founder of Abbott Laboratories, one of the first American physicians to adopt a new technique to distill alkaloids (the parts of medicinal plants that have therapeutic effect) into a solid form
  • John Jacob Abel (PHARM: Ph.D. 1883), North American "father of pharmacology"; discovered epinephrine; first crystallized insulin; founded the department of pharmacology at Michigan; in 1893 established the department of pharmacology at the newly founded Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine; first full-time professor of pharmacology in the United States
  • Rhoda Alani, dermatologist, chair of the dermatology department at Boston University
  • Susan Anderson (1897), one of the first female physicians in Colorado
  • Robert C. Atkins (BA 1951), developed the Atkins Diet
  • William Henry Beierwaltes (B.S. 1938, MED: MD 1941), champion of the use of radioiodine together with surgery in thyroid diagnosis and care; lead author of first book on nuclear medicine, 1957's Clinical Use of Radioisotopes
  • Elissa P. Benedek (M.D. 1960), child and adolescent psychiatrist, forensic psychiatrist, adjunct clinical professor of psychiatry at the University of Michigan
  • David Botstein (PhD 1967); leader in the Human Genome Project; director of Princeton's Lewis-Sigler Institute for Integrative Genomics
  • Alexa Canady (AB 1971, MED: MD 1975), became first African-American female neurosurgeon in the country when she was 30; chief of neurosurgery at Children's Hospital of Michigan in Detroit for almost 15 years
  • Benjamin S. Carson (MED: MD 1977), former director of pediatric neurosurgery at Johns Hopkins Hospital
  • Arul Chinnaiyan (MED: MD 1999), cancer researcher; recipient of the 28th annual American Association for Cancer Research Award for Outstanding Achievement
  • Thomas Benton Cooley (MED: 1895), pediatrician; hematologist; professor of hygiene and medicine at the University of Michigan; son of Thomas McIntyre Cooley, first Chairman of the Interstate Commerce Commission
  • Ronald M. Davis (A.B. 1978), 162nd President of the American Medical Association; Director of the Center for Health Promotion and Disease Prevention at the Henry Ford Health System in Detroit
  • Paul de Kruif (PhD 1916), author of Microbe Hunters
  • Julio Frenk (SPH: M.P.H. 1981, MA 1982, Ph.D. 1983), Minister of Health for Mexico
  • Raymond Gist, president of the American Dental Association
  • Sanjay Gupta (MD: 1993), CNN anchor, reporter and senior medical correspondent; former neurosurgeon
  • Cyril H. Haas (MED: M.D. 1904), medical missionary to Turkey 1910â€"1951; built clinic in Adana and treated over 20,000 patients annually; Silver Medal of Turkish Tuberculosis Association, 1962 (posthumous)
  • Lucy M. Hall (MED: M.D. 1878), first woman ever received at St Thomas' Hospital's bedside clinics
  • Alice Hamilton (MED: M.D. 1893), specialist in lead poisoning and industrial diseases; known as the "Mother of Industrial Health;" in 1919 became the first woman on the faculty at Harvard Medical School; the first woman to receive tenure there; honored with her picture on the 55-cent postage stamp; winner of the Lasker Award
  • Nancy M. Hill (MED: MD 1874), Civil War nurse and one of the first female doctors in the US
  • Jerome P. Horwitz (PhD 1950), synthesized AZT in 1964, a drug now used to treat AIDS
  • Joel Lamstein (B.S. 1965), co-founder and president of John Snow, Inc. (JSI) and JSI Research & Training Institute, Inc., international public health research and consulting firms
  • Josiah K. Lilly Jr. (1914 college of pharmacy), Chairman and President of Eli Lilly
  • Howard Markel (MED: MD 1986), physician, medical historian, best-selling author, medical journalist, and member of the National Academy of Medicine, George E. Wantz Distinguished Professor of the History of Medicine at the University of Michigan, Guggenheim Fellow
  • William James Mayo (MED: MD 1883), co-founder of the Mayo Clinic
  • Richard T. Miyamoto (MED: MD 1970), elected a member of the Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of Sciences in 2005
  • Leonard Andrew Scheele (BA 1931), US Surgeon General 1948-1956
  • Eric B. Schoomaker (BS 1970, MED: MD 1975), Major General; Commander of the North Atlantic Regional Medical Command and Walter Reed Army Medical Center; former commanding general of the U.S. Army Medical Research and Materiel Command at Fort Detrick
  • Thomas L. Schwenk (MED: MD 1975), dean of the University of Nevada School of Medicine
  • John Clark Sheehan (MS 1938, PhD 1941), chemist who pioneered the first synthetic penicillin breakthrough in 1957
  • Norman Shumway (MDNG), heart transplantation pioneer; entered the University of Michigan as a pre-law student, but was drafted into the Army in 1943
  • Parvinder Singh (PHARM: Ph.D. 1967), Chairman of Ranbaxy in 1993 until his death in 1999; the market capitalization of the Company went up from Rs.3.5 to over Rs. 7300 Crores during this period
  • Dr. Homer Stryker (MED: M.D. 1925), founder of Stryker Corporation
  • Dr. William Erastus Upjohn (MED: M.D. 1875), inventor of the first pill that dissolved easily in the human body
  • Chi Van Dang (BA, MD), Vice Dean of Research, Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine

Military

  • Samuel C. Phillips (M.S. 1950), director of the Apollo program from 1964 to 1969, director of the National Security Agency from 1972 to 1973, commander of Air Force Systems Command from 1973 to 1975.

Newsmakers

  • Bill Ayers (B.A. 1968), co-founder of the radical Weathermen
  • Rick Bayless (doctoral student, linguistics), chef who specializes in traditional Mexican cuisine with modern interpretations; known for his PBS series Mexico: One Plate at a Time
  • Benjamin Bolger (BA 1994), holds what is said to be the largest number of graduate degrees held by a living person
  • Mamah Borthwick (BA 1892), mistress of architect Frank Lloyd Wright who was murdered at his studio, Taliesin
  • Napoleon Chagnon (Ph.D.), anthropologist, professor of anthropology
  • Rima Fakih (BA), 2010 Miss USA
  • Geoffrey Fieger (BA, MA), attorney based in Southfield, Michigan
  • Robert Groves (PhD 1975), 2009 Presidential nominee to head the national census; nomination stalled by Republican opposition to use of "sampling" methodology, which Groves had already stated would not be used
  • Janet Guthrie (COE: B.Sc. Physics 1960), inducted into the International Motorsports Hall of Fame in 2006; first woman to race in the Indianapolis 500; still is the only woman to ever lead a Nextel Cup race; top rookie in five different races in 1977 including the Daytona 500 and at Talladega; author of autobiography Janet Guthrie: A Life at Full Throttle
  • Alireza Jafarzadeh, whistle-blower of Iran's alleged nuclear weapons program when he exposed in August 2002 the nuclear sites in Natanz and Arak, and triggered the inspection of the Iranian nuclear sites by the UN for the first time; author of The Iran Threat: President Ahmadinejad and the Coming Nuclear Crisis
  • Carol Jantsch (BFA 2006), the sole female tuba player on staff with a major U.S. orchestra, believed to be the first in history; at 21, the youngest member of the Philadelphia Orchestra
  • Morris Ketchum Jessup (MS Astronomy), author of ufological writings; played role in "uncovering" the so-called "Philadelphia Experiment"
  • Adolph Mongo (BGS 1976), political consultant
  • Jerry Newport (B.A. Mathematics), author with Asperger syndrome whose life was the basis for the 2005 feature-length movie Mozart and the Whale; named "Most Versatile Calculator" in the 2010 World Calculation Cup
  • Tony Ridder (LS&A: B.A. 1962), CEO of Knight Ridder 1995â€"2006
  • Jane Scott, rock critic for The Plain Dealer in Cleveland, Ohio; covered every major local rock concert; until her retirement in 2002 she was known as "The World’s Oldest Rock Critic;" influential in bringing the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame to Cleveland
  • Michael Sekora (B.S. 1977), founder and director of Project Socrates, the intelligence community's classified program that was tasked with determining the cause of America's economic decline
  • Robert Shiller (B.A. 1967), economist; author of Irrational Exuberance
  • Jerome Singleton (COE: IEOR), Paralympic athlete, competing mainly in category T44 (single below knee amputation) sprint events
  • Jerald F. ter Horst (BA 1947), briefly President Ford's press secretary

Not-for-profit

  • Larry Brilliant (SPH: MPH 1977, Economic Development and Health Planning), head of Google Foundation (holds assets of $1Bn); co-founder of the Well; in 1979 he founded the Seva Foundation, which has given away more than $100 million; CEO of SoftNet Systems Inc., a global broadband Internet services company in San Francisco that at its peak had more than 500 employees and $600 million capitalization
  • Mark Malloch Brown (MA), Chef de Cabinet, no.2 rank in the United Nations system; Deputy Secretary-General
  • John Melville Burgess (BA 1930, MA 1931, Hon DHum 1963), diocesan bishop of Massachusetts and the first African American to head an Episcopal diocese
  • Stephen Goldsmith (LAW: JD), Marion County district attorney for 12 years; two-term mayor of Indianapolis (1992â€"1999); appointed senior fellow at the Milken Institute (economic think tank) in 2006; his work in Indianapolis has been cited as a national model
  • Lisa Hamilton (LAW: JD), named in 2007 president of the UPS Foundation; previously its program director
  • Bill Ivey (BA 1966), chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts 1998â€"2001, credited with restoring the agency's credibility with Congress; appointed by President Clinton
  • Bob King (B.A. 1968), President of the UAW
  • Rajiv Shah (AB), former director of agricultural development for the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, nominated in 2009 as chief scientist at the United States Department of Agriculture and undersecretary of agriculture for research, education and economics; Administrator for the United States Agency for International Development
  • Michael J. Smith (BUS: MBA, COE: BSE, CFA), named chief investment officer of the $2.5 billion Charles Stewart Mott Foundation in 2006; former president of the Financial Analysts Society of Detroit
  • Sterling Speirn (LAW: JD), President and CEO Kellogg Foundation (assets of $7.3 billion)
  • Stacey Davis Stewart (BUS: MBA 1987), President and CEO of Fannie Mae Foundation
  • Jack Vaughn, United States Peace Corps Director
  • John George Vlazny (M.A. 1967), Roman Catholic prelate; Metropolitan Archbishop of the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Portland
  • Mark Weisbrot (Ph.D., economics), economist and co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research in Washington, D.C.; co-author, with Dean Baker, of Social Security: The Phony Crisis

Pulitzer Prize winners

As of 2017, 35 of Michigan's matriculants have been awarded a Pulitzer Prize. By alumni count, Michigan ranks fifth (as of 2018) among all schools whose alumni have won Pulitzers.

  • Natalie Angier (MDNG), studied for two years at Michigan; nonfiction writer; science journalist for The New York Times; won 1991 Pulitzer Prize for Beat Reporting
  • Ray Stannard Baker (LAW: attended 1891); published 15 volumes about Wilson and internationalism, including an 8-volume biography, the last two volumes of which won the 1940 Pulitzer Prize for Biography
  • Leslie Bassett, winner of 1966 Pulitzer Prize in Music for Variations for Orchestra, premiered in Rome in 1963 by the RAI Symphony Orchestra under Feruccio Scaglia
  • Daniel Biddle, 1987 Pulitzer Prize for Investigative Reporting, Philadelphia Inquirer, with H. G. Bissinger and Fredric N. Tulsky
  • Howard W. Blakeslee, journalist; the Associated Press's first full-time science reporter; won the Pulitzer Prize for Reporting in 1937
  • Edwin G. Burrows (B.A. 1964), won the 1999 Pulitzer Prize for history for the Gotham: A History of New York City to 1898
  • John Ciardi (M.A. 1939), Pulitzer Prizeâ€"winning poet, "Blue Skies"
  • George Crumb (MUSIC: PhD 1959), composer and 1968 Pulitzer Prize winner
  • Sheri Fink (B.S. 1990), 2010 Pulitzer Prize for Investigative Reporting for The Deadly Choices at Memorial
  • Robin Givhan (M.A. journalism), 2006 Pulitzer Prize for Criticism
  • Amy Harmon (B.A.), 2008 Pulitzer Prize for Explanatory Reporting for a series titled "The DNA Age"
  • Stephen Henderson (1992), former editorial page editor for The Michigan Daily, won Pulitzer Prize for Commentary in 2014; as Editorial Page Editor of the Detroit Free Press, he was honored for his reports on the bankruptcy of Detroit
  • Charlie LeDuff (B.A.), one of several reporters who worked on the New York Times series "How Race is Lived in America," which won a Pulitzer Prize in 2001
  • David Levering Lewis (MDNG), historian; two-time winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Biography or Autobiography
  • Ann Marie Lipinski (1994), former editor of the Chicago Tribune; 1987 Pulitzer Prize winner
  • Joseph Arnold Livingston graduated with an A.B. Degree from the University of Michigan in 1925. Won a Pulitzer Prize in 1965.
  • Andrew C. McLaughlin (B.A. J.D.); author of A Constitutional History of the United States, winner of 1936 Pulitzer Prize for History
  • William McPherson (MDNG 1951-1955), Pulitzer Prize for Distinguished Criticism in 1977
  • Arthur Miller (AB 1938), playwright; Pulitzer Prize and Tony Award-winning author
  • Howard Moss, won the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry for Selected Poems in 1971
  • Edgar Ansel Mowrer (A.B. 1913), Pulitzer Prize-winning (1933) journalist and author known for his writings on international events
  • Paul Scott Mowrer (1913), journalist; Pulitzer Prize winner in 1929
  • Lisa Pollak (BA, American Culture), 1995 Ernie Pyle award for human interest writing; 1997 Pulitzer Prize for Feature Writing
  • Roger Reynolds (COE: BSE), composer; his 25-minute-long piece for string orchestra, Whispers out of Time, won the 1989 Pulitzer Prize for music
  • Eugene Robinson, Michigan Daily Co-Editor-in-Chief in 1973â€"74; awarded a Pulitzer in April 2009 for his Washington Post commentaries on the 2008 presidential campaign
  • Theodore Roethke (A.B. 1929, M.A.), poet; winner of the 1954 Pulitzer Prize for his collection The Waking
  • William Schmidt (B.A.), former deputy managing editor and foreign correspondent from The New York Times; shared Pulitzer Prize for National Reporting for team coverage of the Challenger shuttle explosion, 1987
  • Heather Ann Thompson (B.A., M.A.), historian, author, activist, and speaker
  • David C. Turnley (B.A. 1977), photographer
  • Claude H. Van Tyne (B.A. 1896), 1930 Pulitzer Prize for History for his book The War of Independence
  • Michael Vitez, journalism fellow; Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist; author
  • Josh White, journalist; worked with a team covering the Virginia Tech shooting massacre, which won the 2008 Pulitzer Prize
  • Roger Wilkins (AB 1953, LAW: LLB 1956, HLHD 1993), journalist of the Washington Post; shared the Pulitzer Prize for his Watergate editorials
  • Julia Wolfe (B.A.), composer; winner of a 2015 Pulitzer
  • Taro Yamasaki (MDNG), Pulitzer Prize-winning photographer

Rhodes Scholars

  • Lawrence C. Hull 1907
  • Willard T. Barbour 1908
  • James K. Watkins 1911
  • Brand Blanshard 1913
  • William A. Pearl 1916
  • Ralph M. Carson 1918
  • Albert C. Jacobs 1921
  • Bertrand Harris Bronson 1922
  • John P. Dawson 1924
  • Edgar H. Ailes 1927
  • Allan Seager 1930
  • Glen D. Gosling 1931
  • Samuel Beer 1932
  • George C. Tilley 1932
  • Wilfred Sellars 1934
  • Martin Wagner1935
  • R. V. Roosa 1939
  • Robert L. Taylor 1947
  • David W. Baad 1957
  • Gary R. Noble 1958
  • Mark R. Killingsworth 1967
  • Ihor Fedorowycz 1980
  • Leah Niederstadt 1994
  • Fiona Rose 1998
  • Joseph S. Jewell 2005
  • Abdul El-Sayed 2009
  • David Moore 2015

Science

  • Isabella Abbott (MS 1942), ethnobotanist, specialized in algae; more than 200 algae owe their discovery and scientific names to her
  • Eben Alsberg (M.S.E. 1998, Ph.D. 2002), tissue engineer; Professor of Biomedical Engineering and Orthopaedic Surgery, Case Western Reserve University
  • Werner Emmanuel Bachmann (Ph.D. 1926), chemist; pioneer in steroid synthesis; carried out the first total synthesis of a steroidal hormone, equilenin; winner of a Guggenheim award
  • Jordan Barkus (B.S.E. 2012), mechanical engineer and mathematics minor; 3x Intramural Inner Tube Water Polo Champion
  • Frank Benford (1910), an electrical engineer and physicist known for Benford’s Law, also devised in 1937 an instrument for measuring the refraction index of glass.
  • John Joseph Bittner (Ph.D. 1930), geneticist and cancer biologist, made contributions on the genetics of breast cancer
  • John M. Carpenter (M.S. 1958, Ph.D. 1963), nuclear engineer, Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science
  • Rajeshwari Chatterjee (Ph.D. 1953), pioneer in Indian microwave engineering
  • Kathryn Clark (PhD. 1990), NASA's Chief Scientist for Human Space Flight; Chief Scientist for the International Space Station; President of Docere LLC.
  • Bernhard Dawson (B.S., Ph.D. 1933), U.S.-born Argentinian astronomer; namesake of Dawson crater
  • David Mathias Dennison, physicist who made contributions to quantum mechanics, spectroscopy, and the physics of molecular structure; Guggenheim award winner
  • Gerald R. Dickens (Ph.D. 1996), Professor of Earth Science at Rice University
  • Charles Fremont Dight (MED 1879), medical professor; promoter of the human eugenics movement in Minnesota
  • William Gould Dow (COE: MSE 1929), pioneer in electrical engineering, space research, and nuclear engineering; former chairman of EECS Department
  • Douglas J. Futuyma (Ph.D.), author of the widely used textbook Evolutionary Biology, and Science on Trial: The Case for Evolution, an introduction to the creation-evolution controversy; President of the Society for the Study of Evolution; President of the American Society of Naturalists; editor of Evolution and the Annual Review of Ecology and Systematics; received Sewall Wright Award from the American Society of Naturalists; Guggenheim Fellow; Fulbright Fellow; member of National Academy of Sciences
  • Frank Gill (BS, PhD 1969), ornithologist; author of the standard textbook Ornithology; editor of the encyclopedic series Birds of North America; former president of the American Ornithologists' Union
  • Moses Gomberg (PhD 1894), U-M professor of chemistry; discovered organic free radicals in 1900
  • Billi Gordon, PhD (BGS 1997), works in functional neuroimaging and brain research at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA; investigates the pathophysiology of stress as antecedent to obesity-related diseases at the UCLA Gail and Gerald Oppenheimer Family Center for the Neurobiology of Stress; included on list of "30 Most Influential Neuroscientists Alive Today"
  • Arnold B. Grobman (B.A.), zoologist
  • Craig Halberstadt, inventor of the incubator to speed up skin cell growth in biology
  • Martin Harwit (MS), studied under Fred Hoyle; designed the first liquid-helium-cooled rockets for boosting telescopes into the atmosphere; investigated airborne infrared astronomy and infrared spectroscopy for NASA; Bruce Medal 2007; National Air and Space Museum Director 1987â€"95
  • Clara H. Hasse (Ph B 1903), botanist
  • Duff Holbrook (M.S.), wildlife biologist and forester, reintroduced wild turkeys to much of South Carolina
  • Jerome Horowitz (Ph.D.), developed AZT, an antiviral compound used in the treatment of AIDS
  • Edward Israel (AB 1881), astronomer and Arctic explorer
  • Emil John Konopinski (1933, MA 1934, PhD 1936), patented a device that made the first hydrogen bomb with Dr. Edward Teller; member of the Manhattan Project
  • Diane Larsen-Freeman (Ph.D), linguist
  • Zachary J. Lemnios (COE: BSEE), Director of Defense Research and Engineering; former Chief Technology Officer at MIT Lincoln Laboratory
  • Armin O. Leuschner (BS Math 1888), astronomer at Berkeley, first graduate student at Lick Observatory; devised a simplification of differential corrections; improved the methodology for determining the courses of planetoids and comets; oversaw a survey of all the known minor planets; founded the Astronomy Department at Berkeley and served as director of its student observatory for 40 years, which was renamed in his honor days after his death; James Craig Watson Medal 1916; Bruce Medal 1936; American Astronomical Society; namesake of Asteroid 1361 Leuschneria
  • Homer Martin (COE: MSE ChE 1936, PhD 1938), key figure in the development of aviation fuel for the Allies in World War II
  • Homer A. Neal (PhD 1966), Director of the ATLAS Project; board member, Ford Motors (1997â€"); Smithsonian Institution Board of Regents
  • Harald Herborg Nielsen (Ph.D.), physicist who performed pioneering research in molecular infrared spectra
  • Antonia Novello (MED: 1974), first female US Surgeon General
  • James Arthur Oliver (MSC 1937; Ph.D. 1942), herpetologist; director of the Bronx Zoo, the American Museum of Natural History and the New York Aquarium; the only person ever to have held the directorship at all three institutions
  • Donald Othmer (MSC 1925; Ph.D. 1927), co-founded and co-edited the 27-volume Kirkâ€"Othmer Encyclopedia of Chemical Technology in 1947; chairman of Polytechnic University Chemical Engineering Department (1937â€"1961); invented the Othmer still, which concentrated the acetic acid needed to produce cellulose acetate for motion picture film; awarded 40 patents at Kodak
  • Felix Pawlowski (COE: MSE 1914), eyewitness to demonstrations by the Wright brothers and other early pioneers of aviation; saw Prof. Herbert Sadler launch the nation's first program in aeronautical engineering
  • Raymond Pearl (Ph.D. 1902), one of the founders of biogerontology
  • Henry Pollack (Ph.D. 1963), emeritus professor of geophysics at the University of Michigan
  • Albert Benjamin Prescott (MED: 1864), chemist; dean of the school of pharmacy in 1876; director of the chemical laboratory in 1884; president of the American Chemical Society in 1886; president of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in 1891; president of the American Pharmaceutical Association in 1900
  • Edwin William Schultz (A.B. 1914), pathologist; Guggenheim award winner
  • Shirley E. Schwartz (BS 1957), chemist and research scientist at General Motors
  • Homi Sethna (M.A. 1946), former Chairman of Atomic Energy Commission of India; in 1976 became the first chairman of Maharashtra Academy of Sciences in Pune, Maharashtra
  • Frank Spedding (1925), chemist; developed an ion exchange procedure for separating rare earth elements, purifying uranium, and separating isotopes; Guggenheim award winner
  • Joseph Beal Steere (A.B. 1868), ornithologist
  • Marie Tharp (MS Geology), oceanographic cartographer whose work paved the way for the theories of plate tectonics and continental drift
  • Juris Upatnieks (MSE EE 1965), with Emmett Leith created the first working hologram in 1962
  • Steven G. Vandenberg (Ph.D. 1955), behavior geneticist
  • James McDonald Vicary, market researcher; pioneered the notion of subliminal advertising in 1957
  • James Craig Watson (BA 1857, MA 1859), astronomer, established the James Craig Watson Medal
  • John V. Wehausen (BS 1934, MS 1935, Ph.D. 1938), researcher in hydrodynamics
  • Nancy Wexler (Ph.D. 1974), geneticist, Higgins Professor of Neuropsychology at Columbia University
  • Terry Jean Wilson (BS), Antarctic researcher
  • Ta You Wu (Ph.D. 1933), "the father of Chinese physics"
  • Zhu Guangya (Chinese: 朱光亚 (Ph.D. 1950), nuclear physicist; academician of Chinese Academy of Sciences; vice chairman of 8th and 9th Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference; led the development of China's atomic and hydrogen bomb programs
  • George Zweig (BS 1959), a graduate student when he published "the definitive compilation of elementary particles and their properties" in 1963, the work that led up to his theory about the existence of quarks in 1964; considered to have developed the theory of quarks independently of Murray Gell-Mann
  • Kathleen Weston (BS Biology 1929), world renowned toxicologist, worked on the Salk polio vaccine, taught from the Sunday school level to the medical school level for over 50 years

National Medal of Science Laureates/National Medal of Technology and Innovation

  • Fay Ajzenberg-Selove, German-American nuclear physicist
  • Detlev Wulf Bronk, credited with establishing biophysics as a recognized discipline
  • John W. Cahn, scientist, winner of the 1998 National Medal of Science
  • Stanley Cohen (Ph.D.), biochemist; 1986 Nobel Prize Laureate in Physiology and Medicine
  • Carl R. de Boor, German-American mathematician
  • George Dantzig (M.A.), mathematician called by some the "father of linear programming"
  • Harry George Drickamer, born Harold George Weidenthal, pioneer experimentalist in high-pressure studies of condensed matter
  • Donald N. Frey (Ph.D.), Ford Motor Company product manager; National Medal of Technology winner
  • Willis M. Hawkins, aeronautical engineer for Lockheed for over fifty years
  • George W. Housner, authority on earthquake engineering; National Medal of Science laureate
  • Clarence L. Johnson, system engineer, aeronautical innovator
  • Isabella L. Karle, x-ray crystallographer
  • Dr. Donald L. Katz (Ph.D.), chemist, chemical engineer
  • Marshall Warren Nirenberg (Ph.D.), biochemist and geneticist
  • Michael Posner, psychologist
  • Claude E. Shannon, mathematician, electronic engineer, cryptographer; "the father of information theory"
  • Isadore Singer, Institute Professor in the Department of Mathematics at MIT
  • Stephen Smale, mathematician
  • Karen K. Uhlenbeck, professor of mathematics
  • Harold Horton Sheldon, professor of physics
  • Donald Dexter Van Slyke (Ph.D.), Dutch American biochemist

Sports

See List of University of Michigan sporting alumni

References


CSE History | CSE @ Michigan
CSE History | CSE @ Michigan. Source : www.eecs.umich.edu

NOTE: The University of Michigan Alumni Directory is no longer printed, as of 2004. To find more recent information on an alumnus, you must log into the Alumni Association website to search their online directory.

External links


International | Alumni Association of the University of Michigan
International | Alumni Association of the University of Michigan. Source : alumni.umich.edu

  • University of Michigan Alumni
  • Famous U-M Alumni
  • Alumni association of the University of Michigan
  • UM Alumni Information

Shantanu Gupta's Website
Shantanu Gupta's Website. Source : web.eecs.umich.edu

 
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