List of Massachusetts Institute of Technology alumni: Difference between revisions

For Massachusetts Institute of Technology faculty, lecturers, or researchers, see List of Massachusetts Institute of Technology faculty.

This list of Massachusetts Institute of Technology alumni includes students who studied as undergraduates or graduate students at MIT's School of Engineering, School of Science, Sloan School of Management, School of Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences, School of Architecture and Urban Studies, or Whitaker College.

Politics & Public Service

United States

• Les Aspin— US Congressman from Wisconsin, Clinton's first Secretary of Defense, Ph.D. (Economics) 1966
• Ben Bernanke - current Chair of the Federal Reserve Bank, Ph.D. (Economics) 1979
• Samuel Bodman - current Secretary of Energy (2005-present)
• Jun Choi — Mayor of Edison, New Jersey
• Jimmy Doolittle — Aeronautical engineer and U.S. Air Force general
• Luis A. Ferré — former governor of Puerto Rico
• Frank Kowalski - United States Representative from Connecticut
• N. Gregory Mankiw — Chairman of President Bush's Council of Economic Advisors Ph.D (Economics)
• Mark McClellan - head of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), former Commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration (FDA)
• Katharine Dexter McCormick — biologist, suffragette, funded research for The Pill
• David Nolan — Founder of United States Libertarian Party
• John Olver - member of the US House of Representatives for Massachusetts
• Joseph J. Romm — energy expert, author and consultant; former Acting Assistant Secretary of the U. S. Department of Energy.
• Francis Sargent - former Governor of Massachusetts
• George Schultz - Secretary of State during the Reagan administration, Ph.D. in Economics, 1949
• Pete Stark - member of the US House of Representatives for California
• John E. Sununu — United States Senator from New Hampshire
• John H. Sununu - Chief of Staff under President George H.W. Bush, 3-term Governor of New Hampshire, host of Crossfire

International

• Tadatoshi Akiba — Mayor of Hiroshima, Ph.D. (math) 1970
• Kofi Annan — Secretary-General of the United Nations
• Pedro Aspe Armella — Mexican Secretary of Finance, Ph.D. (Economics) 1978
• Virgilio Barco - former Colombian president
• Ahmed Chalabi — controversial Iraqi politician, now currently deputy prime minister of Iraq
• José Figueres Ferrer — president of Costa Rica
• C.D. Howe - Canadian politician and cabinet minister
• Rigoberto Omar Romero Martínez - former Honduras Sub-secretary of Planning (1984) and Sub-secretary of Transportation and Public Works (1985).
• David Miliband — British politician, cabinet minister for Communities and Local Government
• Mohammad Ali Najafi — former Vice President of Iran[1]
• Benjamin Netanyahu — former Prime Minister of Israel
• Milen Veltchev — Bulgarian financial minister (2001-2005)
• Robert Winters - Canadian politician

Architecture & Design

• Gordon Bunshaft 1933 - architect of Lever House, New York City
• Ogden Codman, Jr. — architect and interior designer
• Daniel Chester French 1871 - architect of the Lincoln Memorial
• Cass Gilbert 1880 - architect of the US Supreme Court Building
• Marion Mahoney Griffin 1894 - co-designer of the plan for Canberra, Australia
• Nathanael Herreshoff — naval architect-engineer, yacht designer
• Raymond Hood 1903 - architect of Rockefeller Center
• Lois Lilly Howe 1890 - second woman in the US to found an architecture firm
• Edward Lovett — Architect
• Myron Hunt – architect
• Steve Meretzky - computer game designer
• I. M. Pei — architect, Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, Cleveland, OH and Bank of China, Hong Kong
• Steve Russell — creator of the first videogame Spacewar!
• Louis Sullivan — architect
• Harry Mohr Weese - architect & historic preservation advocate
• Robert Taylor 1892 - architect of the Tuskegee Institute and MIT's first black graduate
• Rob Fisher 1961 - artist, including "American Dream" at the Philadelphia International Airport Arrivals Hall
• Miranda Goelz — Noted contemporary architect

Business & Entrepreneurship

Computers & Internet

• Joseph Alsop - Cofounder of Progress Software
• Richard Barry - Cofounder of Sycamore Networks
• Carly Fiorina — Former CEO of Hewlett-Packard
• Cecil H. Green - Cofounder of Texas Instruments
• William R. Hewlett — co-founder of Hewlett-Packard
• Danny Hillis — co-founder of Thinking Machines and former Disney fellow
• Mark Horowitz - founder of Rambus
• Irwin M. Jacobs - co-founder of Qualcomm with Andrew Viterbi, current chairman and former CEO. Former MIT professor (1959-1966)
• Brewster Kahle — internet archivist, founder of Alexa
• Mitch Kapor — software entrepreneur, founder of Lotus Corporation
• Steve Kirsch — inventor of the optical mouse, co-founder of Frame Technology Corporation and founder of Infoseek Corporation
• Pavel Krapivin - Cofounder of Doostang.com
• Daniel Lewin — founder of Akamai
• Jack Little — co-founder of The MathWorks, which created and sells MATLAB
• Patrick McGovern — founder of IDG/Computerworld
• Robert Metcalfe — entrepreneur, founder of 3Com; inventor of Ethernet
• Robert Noyce — integrated circuit pioneer, co-founder of Intel
• Ken Olsen — founder of Digital Equipment Corporation
• William Poduska - Computer engineer and entrepreneur, founder of Prime Computer and Apollo Computers
• William Porter — Founder of E*TRADE
• Allen Razdow — founder of Mathsoft Inc. & inventor of Mathcad
• Larry Roberts - Member of design group for original ARPANET, cofounder of Caspian Networks and Packetcom, former CEO of DHL
• Sheldon Roberts - one of the "Traitorous Eight" that founded Fairchild Semiconductor. Co-founder of Amelco which later became Teledyne
• Douglas T Ross —founder of SofTech
• Ray Stata — founder of Analog Devices
• Eric Swanson - Cofounder of Sycamore Networks
• Andrew Viterbi — inventor of the Viterbi algorithm and cofounder of Qualcomm
• Philippe Villers - founder of Computervision, which is now part of Parametric Technology Corporation

Manufacturing & Defense

• Mark A. Richardson inventor of the jet engine and designer of DiPT.
• Morris Chang - Chairman of the Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC) , the largest semiconductor foundry in the world
• Nick DeWolf - co-founder of Teradyne
• Donald Douglas — co-founder of McDonnell Douglas
• John Dorrance - founder of the Campbell Soup Company
• William Clay Ford, Jr. — Chairman and CEO of Ford Motor Company
• Kenneth Germeshausen - co-founder and the 1st 'G' of the defense contractor EG&G
• Herbert Grier- co-founder and the 2nd 'G' of the defense contractor EG&G
• George Hatsopoulos - founder of Thermo Electron Corporation
• Charles Koch - Co-owner, Chairman and CEO of Koch Industries, the largest private company in the US
• David H. Koch - Co-Owner of Koch Industries. Vice-Presidential Candidate for the Libertarian Party
• Jay Last - One of the "Traitorous Eight" that founded Fairchild Semiconductor. Co-founder of Amelco, which became Teledyne
• James McDonnell — co-founder of McDonnell Douglas
• Alan Mulally – President and CEO of Ford Motor Company
• William Emery Nickerson - founder of Gillette, now part of Procter & Gamble
• Willard Rockwell — founder of Rockwell International
• Henry Singleton - founder of Teledyne
• Alfred P. Sloan, Jr. — automobile entrepreneur, CEO of General Motors
• Martin Weinstein - founder of Tyco International
• Uncas Whitaker - founder of AMP Incorporated, now a division of Tyco International

Finance & Consulting

• Michael Beregovsky - Banker, philanthropist
• Richard Carrion — Chief Executive Officer of Banco Popular de Puerto Rico, and of Popular, Inc.
• Shantanurao Laxmanrao Kirloskar — founder of Kirloskar Group
• Mark Gorenberg - partner of the venture capital firm Hummer Winblad Venture Partners
• Arthur D. Little — entrepreneur, founder of the eponymous management consulting firm in 1886
• Tom Perkins — founder of VC firm Kleiner, Perkins, Caufield & Byers
• John S. Reed — Chairman of the New York Stock Exchange
• Arthur Samberg - Chairman of Pequot Capital Management
• Ed Seykota - Commodity trader
• Jim Simons - mathematician and philanthropist. Founder of Renaissance Technologies hedge fund
• John Thain - Chief Executive Officer of the New York Stock Exchange
• Kenichi Ohmae - Former Director of the Japan arm of McKinsey & Company, management consultants

Health care & Biotechnology

• Neil Pappalardo - founder of Medical Information Technology Inc. (Meditech)
• Robert A. Swanson — cofounder of Genentech
• Ron Williams, CEO of Aetna, beginning in January, 2006

Miscellaneous

• Aditya Birla - Industrialist, deceased
• Colin Angle - Cofounder of Irobot
• Joseph Chung - cofounded Art Technology Group with fellow MIT grad Jeet Singh
• Samuel Face - inventor and co-developer of advances in concrete & piezoelectric technologies
• Victor Kwok-king Fung — prominent Hong Kong billionaire businessman and political figure
• Eugenio Garza Sada - Mexican businessman, philanthropist and founder of the Tec de Monterrey (ITESM).
• Arthur Gelb - co-founder, former CEO and former Chair or TASC
• Helen Greiner -Cofounder of Irobot
• David McGrath - founder of TAD Resources, now part of Adecco
• Dana Mead - former CEO and Chair of Tenneco
• Stewart Nelson - founder of System Concepts
• Generoso Pope - business magnate, founder/owner of The National Inquirer
• Michael J. Saylor - Founder of MicroStrategy
• Jeet Singh - cofounded Art Technology Group with fellow MIT grad Joseph Chung
• Dr. F. Helmut Weymar - Founder of Commodities Corporation

Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences

• Steve Altes — humorist, National Medal of Technology recipient
• Harry Binswanger — philosopher, associate of Ayn Rand
• Idit Harel Capelton - educational psychologist and epistomologist
• Paige Hopewell - actress, How-to-Do Girls: Bikini Calculus
• Herbert Kalmus 1903 - inventor of Technicolor and star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame
• Charlie Korsmo 2000 - actor (including Can't Hardly Wait and Dick Tracy (movie))
• Paul Krugman — New York Times columnist, John Bates Clark Medal-winner, PhD (economics)
• Ned Lagin - Lagin played keyboards and synthesizer at a number of the Grateful Dead shows between 1970 and 1975 and on a few mid 1970s albums.
• Hugh Lofting — author of "Dr. Doolittle" (trained at MIT as civil engineer, 1904-05)
• Charles Murray — researcher and co-author of The Bell Curve
• Tom Scott 1966 - winner of Academy Awards for sound mixing for The Right Stuff and Amadeus
• Tom Scholz — founder of the rock group Boston and Scholz Research & Development, Inc., manufacturers of Rockman sound equipment
• John Underkoffler 1988 - science & technology advisor to Steven Spielberg
• Erland Van Lidth De Jeude — Hollywood actor and opera singer
• James Woods 1969 (dropped out) — actor
• Stefano Young — Bass player for House of Kabob

Education

• Larry Bacow 1972 - President of Tufts University
• William R. Brody 1965 - President of Johns Hopkins University
• Jared Cohon — president of Carnegie Mellon
• Norman Fainstein 1966 - President of Connecticut College
• William J. Hecht Sr. — Former Vice President of the MIT Alumni Association
• Leland B. Jackson - Professor of Electrical Engineering at The University of Rhode Island
• Shirley Jackson (physicist) - physicist, President of RPI
• Martin C. Jischke — President of Purdue University
• Piermaria Oddone - director of Fermilab
• Lawrence H. Summers — economist, former President of Harvard University
• Laura D'Andrea Tyson - Chairman of the CEA under Clinton. Former dean of the Haas School of Business. Current Dean of the London Business School
• Hal Varian - economist, founding dean of the School of Information at UC Berkeley

Science & Technology

• Buzz Aldrin - Second man to walk on the Moon
• Gordon Bell - computer engineer and manager, designer of the DEC PDP and manager of the VAX project.
• Barry Blesser — audio engineer, one-time president of the AES
• Manuel Blum, computer scientist, recipient of the Turing Award in 1995 for his studies in computational complexity theory
• Dan Bricklin — co-inventor of Visicalc, the first WYSIWYG PC spreadsheet program
• Wen Tsing Chow — missile guidance scientist and digital computer pioneer
• David D. Clark - led the development of TCP/IP -- the protocol that underlies the Internet
• Wesley A. Clark - computing pioneer, creator of the LINC (the first minicomputer)
• Fernando Corbato - Professor at MIT, Turing Award winner of 1990, co-founder of the Multics project
• Peter Denning -Computer scientists, co-founder of the Multics project
• Jack Dennis - Professor at MIT until 1987, co-founder of the Multics project.
• Whitfield Diffie — pioneer of public-key cryptography and the Diffie-Hellman protocol.
• K. Eric Drexler — nanotechnologist
• Harold Eugene "Doc" Edgerton — former MIT EECS professor, co-founder and is the "E" of the defense contractor giant EG&G, photography pioneer.
• Farouk El-Baz — Supervisor of Lunar Science Planning, Apollo Program, NASA
• Charles H. Ferguson - Technology policy expert and entrepreneur
• Carl Feynman — computer scientist, son of the physicist Richard Feynman
• Jim Gettys — one of the original developers of XWindows, former director of GNOME.
• Bill Gosper — one of the founders of the original hacker community, originator of hashlife
• George Ellery Hale - astronomer
• David A. Huffman — computer scientist known for Huffman coding used in lossless data compression
• Jerome C. Hunsaker - pioneering aeronautical engineer
• William Jeffrey - 13th Director, National Institute of Standards and Technology
• Leonard Kleinrock - computing and Internet pioneer, one of the key group of designers of the original ARPANET
• Loren Kohnfelder - Introduced the term of Public key certificate for Public key cryptography in secure network communication.
• Raymond Kurzweil — inventor and entrepreneur in synthesized-music keyboards, OCR and speech-to-text processing
• Leslie Lamport - Computing pioneer on temporal logic, developer of LaTeX
• Hiram Percy Maxim — Inventor of the "Maxim Silencer" and founder of the American Radio Relay League
• Douglas McIlroy - mathematician and engineer, an original developer of UNIX, member of the National Academy of Engineering
• Douglas J. Mink - astronomer
• Bradford Parkinson - co-inventor with Ivan Getting of the Global Positioning System
• Alan Perlis - Computer scientist, winner of the first Turing Award in 1966.
• Radia Perlman - Computer scientist, inventor of numerous data networking technologies, dubbed 'Mother of the Internet'
• Jerome Saltzer - MIT EECS professor (1966-1995) and computing pioneer, co-founder of the Multics project, Director of Project Athena
• George W. Santos — Pioneer in bone marrow transplantation
• Bob Scheifler - computer scientist, leader of the X Window System project, architect of Jini
• Oliver Selfridge - computer scientist, father of 'machine perception'
• Oliver R. Smoot - Namesake for Unit of measurement, President of ISO
• Ivan Sutherland - computing and Internet pioneer, one of the key group of original designers of the original ARPANET, Turing Award winner of 1988.
• Andrew Tanenbaum — computer scientist and creator of Minix, the precursor to Linux
• Ray Tomlinson - innovator of email systems, pioneered the use of the @ symbol for email
• Leonard H. Tower Jr. - Free Software activist and software hacker
• Edward Yourdon- computer pioneer, popularized the term [[Y2K Bug

Alumni Nobel laureates

• George Akerlof, Ph.D. 1966 - Economics, 2001
• Robert Aumann, S.M. 1952, Ph.D. 1955 - Economics, 2005
• Sid Altman, S.B. 1960 - Chemistry, 1989
• Kofi Annan, S.M. 1972 - Peace, 2001
• Elias James Corey Jr., S.B. 1948, Ph.D. 1951 - Chemistry, 1990
• Eric Cornell, Ph.D. 1990 - Physics, 2001
• Richard Feynman, S.B. 1939 - Physics, 1965
• Andrew Z. Fire, Ph.D. 1983, - Physiology/Medicine, 2006
• Murray Gell-Mann, Ph.D. 1951 - Physics 1969
• Leland H. Hartwell, Ph.D. 1964 - Medicine/Physiology, 2001
• H. Robert Horvitz, S.B. 1968 - Physiology/Medicine, 2002
• Henry W. Kendall, S.B. 1948, Ph.D. 1951 - Physics, 1990
• Lawrence Klein, Ph.D. 1944 - Economics, 1980
• Robert B. Laughlin, Ph.D. 1979 - Physics, 1998
• Murray Gell-Mann, Ph.D. 1951 - Physics, 1969
• Robert C. Merton, Ph.D. 1970 - Economics, 1997
• Robert S. Mulliken, S.B. 1917 - Chemistry, 1966
• Robert Mundell, Ph.D. 1956 - Economics, 1999
• Charles Pedersen, S.M. 1927 - Chemistry, 1987
• William D. Phillips, Ph.D. 1976 - Physics 1997
• Burton Richter, S.B. 1952, Ph.D. 1956 - Physics, 1976
• John Robert Schrieffer, S.B. 1953 - Physics, 1972
• William Shockley, Ph.D. 1936 - Physics, 1956
• George F. Smoot, S.B. 1966, Ph.D. 1970, - Physics, 2006
• Joseph Stiglitz, Ph.D. 1966 - Economics, 2001
• Carl E. Wieman, S.B. 1973 - Physics, 2001
• Robert Burns Woodward, S.B. 1936 - Chemistry, 1965

Alumni astronauts

Name	Degree	Year	Mission	Mission insignia
Buzz Aldrin	Sc.D	1963
Dominic Antonelli	BS	1989
Jerome Apt	Ph.D	1976
Kenneth Cameron	S.B., S.M.	1978, 1979
Gregory Chamitoff	Ph.D.	1992
Franklin Chang-Diaz	Sc.D.	1977
Phillip Chapman	S.M., Ph.D.	1964, 1967
Catherine Coleman	S.B.	1983
Timothy Creamer	S.M.	1992
Charles Duke	S.M.	1964
Anthony England	S.B., S.M., Ph.D.	1965, 1965, 1970
Edward Fincke	S.B., S.B.	1989
John Grunsfeld	S.B.	1980
Terry Hart	S.M.	1969
Frederick Hauck	S.M.	1966
Wendy Lawrence	S.M.	1988
Mark Lee	S.M.	1980
William B. Lenoir	S.B., S.M., Ph.D.	1961, 1962, 1965
Michael Massimino	S.M., S.M., Mechanical Engineer, Ph.D.	1988, 1988, 1990, 1992
Ronald McNair	Ph.D.	1976
Pamela Ann Melroy	S.M.	1984
Edgar Mitchell	Sc.D.	1964
Nicholas Patrick	S.M., Ph.D.	1990, 1996
Russell Schweickart	S.B., S.M.	1956, 1963
David Scott	S.M., Engineer in Aeronautics/Astronautics (E.A.A.)	1962, 1962
William Shepherd	S.M., Ocean Engineer	1978, 1978
Heidemarie Stefanyshyn-Piper	S.B., S.M.	1984, 1985
Daniel Tani	S.B., S.M.	1984, 1985
Robert Thirsk	S.M., M.S.	1978, 1998
Janice Voss	S.M., Ph.D.	1977, 1978
Neil Woodward	S.B.	1984

Sports

• Thomas Pelham Curtis 1894 - won Gold Medal in 110m hurdles at the inaugural Olympic Games
• Johan Harmenberg - epee fencer, gold medal winner in the 1980 Olympics, world champion
• Larry Kahn — tiddlywinks champion
• Linda Muri 1985, three-time world champion rower
• Jeff Sagarin 1970 — sports statistician
• Henry Steinbrenner 1927 - hurdler in the 1928 Olympics, father of George Steinbrenner
• Jason Szuminski 2000 - major league pitcher
• Steve Tucker 1991 - two-time member of the US Olympic rowing team

Miscellaneous

• Csaba Csere — automotive journalist, editor of Car and Driver
• Ray Magliozzi — radio personality (Car Talk)
• Tom Magliozzi — radio personality (Car Talk)
• Princess Ubol Ratana - of Thailand
• Ellen Spertus - Named "Sexiest Geek Alive"