Bowdoin College - Bowdoin Alumni

Bowdoin Alumni

Selected notable Bowdoin graduates include:

• William Pitt Fessenden (1823), U.S. Senator, U. S. Secretary of the Treasury
• Franklin Pierce (1824), U.S. President
• Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1825), poet
• Nathaniel Hawthorne (1825), novelist, author of The Scarlet Letter
• John Russwurm (1826), Founder of Freedom's Journal, the first African American newspaper in the United States
• John Parker Hale (1827), Congressman, U.S. Senator, Minister to Spain, Free Soil Presidential candidate 1852
• Oliver Otis Howard (1850), Civil War hero and founder of Howard University
• Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain (1852), Civil War hero and governor of Maine
• Melville Fuller (1853), Chief Justice, U.S. Supreme Court
• Thomas Brackett Reed (1860), U.S. Speaker of the House
• Dr. Augustus Stinchfield (1868), Mayo Clinic co-founder
• Admiral Robert Peary (1877), Arctic explorer
• Alfred Kinsey (1916), sex researcher
• Fred Tootell (1923), Olympic gold medalist
• Richard Hooker (1945), M*A*S*H creator
• Peter Buck (1952), co-founder of the Subway sandwich chain
• Thomas R. Pickering (1953), U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations, Russia, Israel, et al.
• George Mitchell (1954), U.S. Senate Majority Leader, U.S. Special Envoy to Northern Ireland and for Middle East Peace, Chairman of the Walt Disney Company, and lead investigator for Major League Baseball's 2007 steroid report
• William Cohen (1962), U.S. Senator, Secretary of Defense
• Kenneth Chenault (1973), CEO of American Express
• Christopher Hill (1974), Assistant Secretary of State, U.S. Ambassador to Iraq, South Korea, et al.
• Geoffrey Canada (1974), author and activist, CEO of Harlem Children's Zone
• Edwin M. Lee (1974), Mayor of San Francisco
• Stanley Druckenmiller (1975), investor, hedge fund manager
• Cynthia McFadden (1978), ABC News anchor
• Joan Benoit Samuelson (1979), Olympic gold medalist
• James Staley (1979), Head of Investment Banking at JPMorgan Chase
• Reed Hastings (1983), Netflix founder and CEO
• Angus Wall (1988), two-time Academy Award-winning film editor
• Paul Adelstein (1991), actor, best known for his roles in Prison Break (2005–07) and Private Practice (2007–present)
• Paul Miller, aka DJ Spooky, (1992), electronic and experimental hip hop musician.

Bowdoin graduates have led all three branches of the federal government, including both houses of Congress. Franklin Pierce (1826) was America's fourteenth President; Melville Weston Fuller (1853) served as Chief Justice of the United States; Thomas Brackett Reed (1860) was twice elected Speaker of the House of Representatives; and Wallace H. White, Jr. (1899) and George J. Mitchell (1954) both served as Majority Leader of the United States Senate.