List of Swarthmore College people

Nobel laureates">Nobel Prize">Nobel laureates

[MacArthur Fellows]

List of alumni

Architecture

• Frances Halsband - FAIA, former Dean of School of Architecture at Pratt Institute
• Margaret Helfand - FAIA
• Steven Izenour
• Marianne McKenna - RIBA

  Arts, film, theatre, and broadcasting

• Joseph Altuzarra – fashion designer, winner of the 2011 CFDA/Vogue Fashion Fund Award
• Lisa Albert – television producer and writer, Mad Men, Beautiful People, Living Single, Becker, Murphy Brown, Major Dad
• Mark Alburger – composer; founder / music director of San Francisco Composers Chamber Orchestra; music director of Goat Hall Productions; founder / editor-publisher of 21st-Century Music.
• Miyuki Baker – mixed-media artist and activist
• Peter Bart – Vice President and Editor-in-Chief of Variety
• Al Carmines – composer of Off-Broadway musicals; pastor
• Bruce Cratsley - American photographer specialized in still lifes, portraits of friends, and gay life in New York City
• Marshall Curry – documentary filmmaker of Street Fight, , Racing Dreams, and Point and Shoot; 2006 Oscar nominee for Documentary Feature; 2006 News & Documentary Emmy Award nominee for Outstanding Continuing Coverage of a News Story: Long Form; 2012 Oscar nominee for Documentary Feature
• David Dye – radio personality and host of the World Cafe
• Michael Forster Rothbart – photojournalist
• Alexandra Grant – visual artist
• Evan Gregory – member of The Gregory Brothers
• Steven Izenour – architect; co-author of Learning from Las Vegas
• Nicholas Kazan – screenwriter
• H. C. Robbins Landon – musicologist
• Stephen Lang – Tony Award-nominated actor and playwright; star of Gods and Generals, Gettysburg, Tombstone, and Terra Nova
• Cynthia Ling Lee - dancer, choreographer, and dance scholar
• Michael Lessac - theater, television, and film director and screenwriter.
• David Linde – Executive Producer of Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon and Y Tu Mamá También; co-founder of Focus Features; Co-Chair of Universal Studios
• Beth Littleford – former Daily Show correspondent, Comedy Central personality, and actress, Dog With a Blog
• Dana Lyons – independent singer/songwriter
• Richard Martin – art and fashion historian; former Curator-in-Chief of the Costume Institute at the Metropolitan Museum of Art
• Dawn Porter – documentary filmmaker, director of Gideon's Army, nominee for News & Documentary Emmy Award
• Ike Schambelan – founder, Theater Breaking Through Barriers in New York City
• Peter Schickele – composer, often under the comic pseudonym P. D. Q. Bach
• Aaron Schwartz – actor, director and copyright lawyer in Toronto
• Tom Snyder – founder of Soup2Nuts animation studio; co-creator and Executive Producer, Dr. Katz, Professional Therapist; Executive Producer, Home Movies
• Robert Storr – Dean of the Yale School of Art; curator; painter; critic; director of Venice Biennale 2007
• Darko Tresnjak – Director, Artistic Director of the Old Globe Shakespeare Festival in San Diego; CA; 2014 Tony Award winner for Best Direction of a Musical, A Gentleman's Guide to Love and Murder
• Kenneth Turan – movie reviewer, Los Angeles Times
• Robert C. Turner – ceramic artist
• Michael J. Weithorn – television producer and writer, The King of Queens, Family Ties, Ned & Stacey, The Goldbergs
• Paul Williams – founder and publisher of Crawdaddy!
• Jenny Yang – writer and comedian, majored in Political Science.
• Michał Zadara – Polish theatre director

  Business

• Charles Andes – chairman of the Franklin Institute science museum in Philadelphia and Chairman of the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts
• Peter Cohan – President, Peter S. Cohan & Associates
• David L. Cohen – businessman, attorney, and political figure in Pennsylvania
• John Diebold – founder of Diebold Group, Diebold, Inc., and The Diebold Institute for Public Policy
• John D. Goldman – CEO, Richard N. Goldman & Co. Insurance Services; President, San Francisco Symphony
• Jerome Kohlberg, Jr. – billionaire ; co-founder, Kohlberg Kravis Roberts & Co.
• Frederick W. Kyle – Chairman, BioRexis Pharmaceutical Corporation
• Eugene M. Lang – founder of REFAC Technology Development Corporation, philanthropist
• Nick Martin – founder and CEO of TechChange
• Thomas B. McCabe – Chairman, the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve, President, Scott Paper
• Arthur S. Obermayer – founder of the Moleculon Research Corporation; Jewish-American philanthropist.
• Thomas Rowe Price, Jr. – founder of T. Rowe Price
• Kate Warne – Principal, Investment Strategist, Edward Jones Investments
• Robert Zoellick – former president of the World Bank

  Economics

• Dean Baker – macroeconomist; co-founder and co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research
• Robert Cooter – scholar in law and economics, Professor at UC Berkeley School of Law
• Andre Gunder Frank – German-American economic historian and sociologist; developer of dependency theory
• Diana Furchtgott-Roth – former Chief Economist of the United States Department of Labor, former chief of staff of President George W. Bush's Council of Economic Advisers, senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute
• Michael Greenstone – 3M Professor of Environmental Economics at MIT, director of the Hamilton Project
• Peter J. Katzenstein – Walter S. Carpenter, Jr. Professor of International Studies at Cornell University; member of the Council on Foreign Relations
• Clark Kerr – industrial economist, first chancellor of University of California, Berkeley, twelfth president of the University of California
• William N. Kinnard – former Director of the Institute of Urban Research; Founding Director of the Center for Real Estate and Urban Economics; leading author, lecturer, and expert on the topic of real estate valuation; his text, Income Property Valuation, published in 1971, is still considered a classic in the field
• Arnold Kling – founder and co-editor of EconLog, a popular economics blog
• Thomas Bayard McCabe – Chairman of the Federal Reserve Board
• Jeffrey Miron – chairman of the Department of Economics at Boston University, 1992-1998; director of undergraduate studies in the Harvard University Department of Economics, director of economic studies at the Cato Institute
• William Poole – eleventh president of the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis
• Edward C. Prescott – winner of 2004 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economics
• Iqbal Quadir – founder of Gonofone and GrameenPhone; founder and Director of the Legatum Center for Development and Entrepreneurship at MIT
• Hans Stoll – The Anne Marie and Thomas B. Walker, Jr. Professor of Finance and Director of the Financial Markets Research Center at Vanderbilt University's Owen Graduate School of Management; former president of American Finance Association
• Peter Temin – economic historian, Elisha Gray II Professor of Economics at Massachusetts Institute of Technology
• E. Roy Weintraub – Professor of Economics at Duke University focusing on the history of the interconnection between mathematics and economics in the twentieth century
• Martin Weitzman – Environmental economist and Professor of Economics at Harvard University
• Gavin Wright – Economic historian and Professor of Economics at Stanford University
• Christopher Udry – King Professor of Economics at Northwestern University; co-founder and co-director of the Global Poverty Research Lab at the Kellogg School of Management

  Education

• Patrick Awuah, Jr. – founder, Ashesi University, Ghana's first liberal arts college
• David Baltimore – President of Caltech; Nobel Prize winner
• Nancy Y. Bekavac – first female president of Scripps College
• Detlev W. Bronk – former President, Johns Hopkins University
• William Boulding, dean of the Fuqua School of Business at Duke University
• Kimberly Wright Cassidy – President, Bryn Mawr College
• Paul Courant – Provost, University of Michigan
• Sean M. Decatur – President, Kenyon College
• Christopher Edley, Jr. – Dean of University of California, Berkeley School of Law
• Neil R. Grabois – former Provost, Williams College; former President, Colgate University
• Tori Haring-Smith – President, Washington and Jefferson College
• Rachel Jacobs CEO of ApprenNet and social activist
• John H. Jacobson – former President, Hope College
• Clark Kerr – first Chancellor, the University of California, Berkeley and 12th President, the University of California
• Sara Lawrence-Lightfoot – Emily Hargroves Fisher Professor of Education at Harvard Graduate School of Education; Chairman of the Board, John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation; first African-American woman in Harvard University's history to have an endowed professorship named in her honor
• Richard Wall Lyman – former President, Stanford University
• Christina Hull Paxson - President-elect, Brown University
• David H. Porter – former President, Skidmore College
• Robert Prichard – former President, University of Toronto
• Lawrence Schall – President, Oglethorpe University
• Alan Valentine – former President, University of Rochester
• Helen Magill White – first woman in the US to earn a Ph.D.
• Phyllis Wise – Provost, University of Washington
• Mary Schmidt Campbell – President, Spelman College

  Historians

• Margaret Lavinia Anderson – University of California, Berkeley
• Pamela Kyle Crossley – Dartmouth College
• Philip Curtin – Distinguished professor of African history, Johns Hopkins University
• Jonathan Dewald – SUNY Distinguished Professor of History, State University of New York at Buffalo
• Linda Gordon – New York University
• Linda Grant DePauw – George Washington University
• Pieter M. Judson – Swarthmore College
• Thomas Laqueur – University of California, Berkeley
• David Montgomery – Yale
• John H. Morrow Jr. – University of Georgia at Athens
• Nayan Shah – University of California at San Diego
• Gavin Wright – Stanford University
• Tara Zahra – University of Chicago

  Humanities and law

• T. Alexander Aleinikoff – Dean, Georgetown University Law Center
• Elizabeth S. Anderson – John Dewey Distinguished University Professor of Philosophy and Women's Studies, University of Michigan
• Adrienne Asch – founding director of the Center for Ethics at Yeshiva University
• Ellen Ash Peters – Chief Justice, Connecticut Supreme Court
• Leo Braudy – University and Leo S. Bing Professor of English and American Literature, University of Southern California
• Peter Berkowitz – The Tad and Dianne Taube Senior Fellow at Stanford University's Hoover Institution
• Anne Pippin Burnett - American classical scholar best known for her work on Greek literature, especially tragedy and the lyric poetry of the archaic and early classical periods
• Cora Diamond – Emeritus Professor of Philosophy, University of Virginia
• Frank H. Easterbrook – Judge, United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit
• Christopher Edley, Jr. – Dean, University of California, Berkeley School of Law
• Marjorie Garber – Director, the Humanities Center at Harvard University; Shakespeare scholar; cultural critic
• Allan Gibbard – Professor of Philosophy, University of Michigan
• Ruth Wilson Gilmore – abolitionist and prison scholar
• Michael Hardt – Professor of Literature, Duke University; author of Empire.
• Gilbert Harman – Professor of Philosophy, Princeton University
• Geoffrey C. Hazard Jr., law professor
• James C. Hormel – former dean, University of Chicago Law School
• Ray Jackendoff – Professor of Linguistics – Tufts University
• David Lewis – Professor of Philosophy, Princeton University
• Wilma A. Lewis – former United States Attorney, District of Columbia
• Eben Moglen – professor of law and legal history, Columbia University; general counsel and board member at the Free Software Foundation; co-author of the original GNU General Public License
• Alexander Nehamas – Professor of Humanities and Comparative Literature, Princeton University
• Alexander Mitchell Palmer – United States Attorney General
• Barbara Partee – Emeritus Professor of Linguistics and Philosophy, University of Massachusetts Amherst
• Jed S. Rakoff – legal scholar, judge on the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York
• Charles F.C. Ruff – Special Prosecutor during the Watergate scandal, defender of Anita Hill during confirmation hearings for Clarence Thomas, counsel to President Bill Clinton during the Lewinsky scandal
• Mary M. Schroeder – Chief Judge, United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit
• Stewart J. Schwab – Dean and Professor of Law, Cornell Law School
• Mark D. Schwartz – attorney in private practice; former first vice president of Prudential-Bache Securities's public-finance department
• Peter Unger – Professor of Philosophy, New York University
• Christina Crosby – Professor of English Literature, Professor of English, Feminist, Gender, and Sexuality Studies, Wesleyan University

  Natural science, medicine, and engineering

• Ted Abel – Professor of Biology at the University of Pennsylvania.
• Margaret Allen – first female heart transplant surgeon
• Dave Bayer – math consultant, A Beautiful Mind
• Christopher F. Chyba – Professor at Princeton University
• Paul Crowell – Professor of Physics, University of Minnesota
• Bruce T. Draine – astrophysicist; author of "Physics of the Interstellar and Intergalactic Medium"; Professor of Astrophysical Sciences at Princeton
• Sandra Moore Faber – astronomer, member of the National Academy of Sciences and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, diagnosis and repair of the Hubble Space Telescope's spherical aberration, design of the DEep Imaging Multi-Object Spectrograph for the Keck Telescope on Mauna Kea in Hawaii
• Neil Gershenfeld – Associate Professor of at MIT, director of MIT's
• John J. Hopfield – Professor of Molecular Biology at Princeton University; member of the National Academy of Sciences, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the American Philosophical Society
• Tyler Lyson – curator of vertebrate paleontology at the Denver Museum of Nature and Science
• Robert MacPherson – mathematician at the Institute for Advanced Study and Princeton University; National Academy of Sciences Award in Mathematics ; Leroy P. Steele Prize ; Heinz Hopf Prize
• Holbrook Mann MacNeille – mathematician; professor; Scientific Director of the Office of Scientific Research and Development; chief of the Fundamental Research Branch of the United States Atomic Energy Commission
• John C. Mather – Senior Astrophysicist, Infrared Astrophysics Branch at NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center; 2006 Nobel laureate in physics for his work on the cosmic microwave background
• Rogers McVaugh – professor of botany; UNC herbarium's curator of Mexican plants; Adjunct Research Scientist of the Hunt Institute in Carnegie Mellon University; Professor Emeritus of botany in the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor
• Newton Morton – population geneticist, one of the founders of the field of genetic epidemiology
• Ted Nelson – computer visionary; coined the term "hypertext"
• Frank Oski – Director of Pediatrics at Johns Hopkins School of Medicine
• Sally Ride – astronaut and physicist, first American woman in space, attended for three semesters
• Nancy Roman – astronomer; one of "the inspirational women" of NASA
• Anne Schuchat – Acting Director of the National Center for Infectious Diseases, Centers for Disease Control
• Maxine Frank Singer – biochemist, president of the Carnegie Institution of Washington since 1988
• Charlotte Moore Sitterly – astronomer; identified chemical elements in the sun using spectroscopy
• Karen Strier – professor of biological anthropology at the University of Wisconsin–Madison
• Joseph Takahashi – neuroscientist at Northwestern University; member of the National Academy of Sciences; Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigator; identified key genes involved in mammalian circadian rhythms
• Emma Vyssotsky - astronomer at the University of Virginia
• Peter J. Weinberger – computer scientist; former head of CS Research at Bell Labs; inventor of the AWK programming language

  Politics and government

• Samuel Assefa – Ethiopian Ambassador to the United States
• Erica Barks-Ruggles – U.S. Ambassador to Rwanda
• Paul Booth - Labor leader - Executive assistant to the president of AFSCME
• William H. Brown, Jr. – parliamentarian, the United States House of Representatives
• Armond Budish – Democratic Minority Leader of Ohio House of Representatives
• Dennis Cheng – national finance director of the 2016 presidential campaign of Hillary Clinton
• Scott Cowger – Democratic state legislator from Maine
• Peter Deutsch – Democratic member of the House of Representatives, 1993–2005; represented Florida's 20th congressional district
• Michael Dukakis – Governor of Massachusetts; Democratic nominee in the 1988 presidential election
• Christiana Figueres – Executive Secretary of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change
• Robert P. George – member, President's Council on Bioethics; professor, Princeton University
• Leon Henderson – administrator of the Office of Price Administration, 1941-1942
• James Hormel – former ambassador to Luxembourg, first openly gay U.S. Ambassador
• Eugene M. Lang – philanthropist, founder of the I Have A Dream Foundation; 1996 recipient of the Presidential Medal of Freedom
• Carl Levin – Democratic U.S. Senator from Michigan
• Alice Paul – women's suffrage leader from 1913 onwards, author of first Equal Rights Amendment proposal
• Robert D. Putnam – social capital theorist, author of Bowling Alone, Harvard University professor
• Antoinette Sayeh – Minister of Finance, Liberia
• William C. Sproul – 27th governor of Pennsylvania
• Chris Van Hollen – Democratic United States Senator from Maryland
• Cathy Wilkerson – radical activist and former member of the Weather Underground, known for being present at the 1970 Greenwich Village townhouse explosion
• James Morrison Wilson, Jr. – career diplomat; Foreign Service officer; Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for East Asia and Pacific; U.S. Deputy Representative for Micronesian Status Negotiations; Department of State Coordinator for Humanitarian Affairs
• Carl Wittman – writer, LGBT rights activist and member of the national council of Students for a Democratic Society
• Molly Yard – former President of the National Organization for Women

  Psychology

• Adele Diamond – pioneer in developmental cognitive neuroscience; professor at The University of British Columbia
• Eugene Galanter – pioneer in cognitive psychology and psychometrics; Professor Emeritus, Columbia University
• Carol Gilligan – recipient of Grawemeyer Award; professor at New York University
• Isabel Myers – co-creator of the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator
• Robert Rescorla – co-creator of the Rescorla-Wagner model; professor at University of Pennsylvania

  Sports

• Ed Ayres – ultramarathon runner; winner of JFK 50 Mile; editor and publisher of Running Times magazine
• Robin Carpenter – professional road cyclist
• Ben Clime – NFL player
• Eran Ganot - college basketball head coach
• Dick Hall – former Major League Baseball pitcher; appeared in three World Series for the Baltimore Orioles, 1969–71
• Ladule Lako LoSarah – international footballer for the Republic of South Sudan
• Morgan Langley – player with the Philadelphia Union in Major League Soccer
• Tiny Maxwell – College Football Hall of Fame player and referee
• Curly Ogden - Major League Baseball pitcher
• Jack Ogden - Major League Baseball pitcher

  Writers, journalists, and publishers

• Eliot Asinof –writer, especially about baseball
• Ed Ayres – environmentalist; writer; editor; publisher of Running Times magazine; author of God's Last Offer: Negotiating for a Sustainable Future and Crossing the Energy Divide: Moving from Fossil-Fuel Dependence to a Clean Energy Future
• Peter Bart – Vice President and Editor-in-Chief of Variety
• David G. Bradley – chair of The Atlantic Monthly and National Journal Group, Inc.
• Ben Brantley – chief theater critic of The New York Times
• Heywood Hale Broun – sportswriter and CBS Sports commentator
• Arthur Chu – columnist and former contestant on Jeopardy!
• Diane Di Prima – Beat generation poet
• Kurt Eichenwald – New York Times reporter and author of books on white-collar crime
• Julie Falk – Executive Director of Bitch Media
• Jonathan Franzen – author of The Corrections; winner of the 2001 National Book Award for Fiction
• Daisy Fried – poet, author of My Brother is Getting Arrested Again and She Didn't Mean to Do It
• Gregory Gibson – author of Gone Boy, Demon of the Waters, and Hubert’s Freaks
• Justin Hall – pioneer blogger
• Adam Haslett – author of You Are Not a Stranger Here ; stories in The New Yorker, The Nation, The Atlantic Monthly, Zoetrope All-Story, and National Public Radio’s Selected Shorts
• Arlie Russell Hochschild, sociologist and author
• Marni Hodgkin, children's book editortech
• Anick Jesdanun, technology reporter, editor, and the first "internet writer" in the history of the Associated Press history
• Josef Joffe – Editor in Chief, Die Zeit
• Christopher Lehmann-Haupt – journalist, book review and obit editor for New York Times
• Cynthia Leive – Editor in Chief, Glamour
• Helen Reimensnyder Martin – novelist
• James A. Michener – novelist
• Victor Navasky – publisher and Editorial Director of The Nation ; Chair of Columbia Journalism Review
• Yongsoo Park - novelist; author of the novels Boy Genius, Las Cucarachas, the essay collection The Art of Eating Bitter : a Hausfrau Dad's Journey with Kids, and the memoir Rated R Boy: Growing Up Korean in 1980s Queens
• Drew Pearson – journalist
• Jon Raymond – novelist, short story writer, and co-writer of the films Old Joy and Wendy and Lucy
• Rishi Reddi – short story writer
• Rudy Rucker – cyberpunk novelist; winner of two Philip K. Dick Awards
• Norman Rush – novelist, winner of the 1991 National Book Award for Mating
• William Saletan – Chief National Correspondent for Slate.com; author of Bearing Right: How Conservatives Won the Abortion War
• Mark Vonnegut – physician and author, son of Kurt Vonnegut; his memoir of schizophrenia The Eden Express opens with his Swarthmore graduation
• Nora Waln – journalist and memoirist on China and Nazi Germany
• Micah White – creator of Occupy Wall Street
• Mary Wiltenburg – journalist
• Valerie Worth – poet and writer; especially known for her children's poems

  College leadership

Presidents

• Valerie Smith, 2015–
• Rebecca Chopp, 2009–2014
• Alfred H. Bloom,1991–2009
• David W. Fraser, 1982–1991
• Theodore W. Friend, 1973–1982
• Robert D. Cross, 1969–1971
• Courtney C. Smith, 1953–1969
• John W. Nason, 1940–1953
• Frank Aydelotte, 1921–1940
• Joseph Swain, 1902–1921
• William W. Birdsall, 1898–1902
• Charles De Garmo, 1891–1898
• William Hyde Appleton, 1889–1891
• Edward Hicks Magill, 1871–1889
• Edward Parrish, 1865–1871

  Notable professors

Current faculty

• Alan Baker, philosophy
• Theodore B. Fernald, linguistics
• K. David Harrison, linguistics
• Gerald Levinson, music
• Donna Jo Napoli, linguistics

  Former faculty

• Solomon Asch, psychology
• W. H. Auden, literature
• Frank Aydelotte, Swarthmore President
• Monroe Beardsley, philosophy
• Brand Blanshard, philosophy
• Daniel J. Boorstin, history
• Richard Brandt, philosophy
• Ralph Bunche, political science
• Bruce Cumings, international relations
• Robert Gallucci
• Kenneth Gergen, psychology
• Lila R. Gleitman, linguistics
• Harold Clarke Goddard, English, Shakespeare studies
• Rush D. Holt, Jr., physics
• Raymond F. Hopkins, political science
• Nannerl O. Keohane, political science
• Robert Keohane, political science
• Wolfgang Köhler, psychology
• James Kurth, political science, editor of Orbis
• Joseph Leidy, natural history
• George W. Lewis, engineering
• Kenneth Lieberthal, political science
• Louis Massiah, black studies, film and media studies
• Judith Moffett, English
• Jonathan D. Moreno
• Scott Nearing, economics
• Frederic Pryor, economics
• Maria L. Sanford, history
• Barry Schwartz, psychology
• Wolfgang F. Stolper, economics
• Judith G. Voet, chemistry and biochemistry
• Hans Wallach, psychology
• Kenneth Waltz, political science
• Clair Wilcox, economics

  National awards and honors (since the 1970s)

• 135 Fulbright Scholarships
• 30 Rhodes Scholarships
• 8 Marshall Scholarships
• 13 Luce Scholarships
• 2 Mitchell Scholarships
• 68 Watson Fellowships
• 21 Truman Scholarships
• 2 National Book Awards