New York University - Faculty and Alumni

Faculty and Alumni

NYU counts 36 Nobel Prize winners by affiliation, 3 winners of the Abel prize, 10 National Medal of Science recipients, 16 Pulitzer Prize winners, 30 Academy Award winners, 4 Putnam Competition winners, Russ Prize, Gordon Prize, and Draper Prize winners, Turing Award winners, Emmy, Grammy, and Tony Award winners, MacArthur and Guggenheim Fellowship holders, and National Academy of Sciences members among its past and present graduates and faculty. NYU has been insistent that its faculty be active in instruction on the undergraduate and graduate level, as well as active in research.

As the largest private non-profit university in the country, NYU has one of the largest alumni bodies in the world. At the end of 2004, NYU had about 350,000 alumni. Of these, at least 17,000 live abroad. The New York University Office for Alumni Affairs oversees various activities such as class reunions, local NYU Club gatherings, NYU alumni travel, and Career Services. The Alumni club on campus is the Torch Club, located in Greenwich Village. In addition, the Princeton Club of New York (PCNY) has also invited New York University alumni for club membership.

Notable graduating classes include 1941, which graduated three later Nobel Prize laureates (Julius Axelrod, Gertrude B. Elion and Clifford Shull), Olympic Gold Medalist John Woodruff, sportscaster Howard Cosell and sociologist Morris Janowitz; 1957 included Pulitzer Prize winning author Frank McCourt and president of Technion-Israel Institute of Technology Josef Singer (NYU-Poly); 1970 included Thomas S. Popkewitz, professor of curriculum theory at the University of Wisconsin-Madison; 1974 included author Warren Farrell, Ph.D.; and 1977 included: former Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan; IRS Commissioner Mark Everson; INSEAD Dean Gabriel Hawawini; Pulitzer, Oscar and Tony Award winner John Patrick Shanley; NHL Commissioner Gary Bettman; physicist Lewis E. Little; NASDAQ CEO Robert Greifeld; Ma Ying-jeou president of Republic of China (Taiwan); Guillermo Endara president of Republic of Panama, Clive Davis music industry executive, and Cathy Minehan, Federal Reserve Chairman Boston.

NYU-Poly alumni include Peter Staeker, the current Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) president-elect, and Andrew Herrmann, the current president of the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE). Many Fortune 500 companies are currently being headed by NYU-Poly alumni, including Yahoo!, Lockheed Martin, Xerox, and AECOM.

NYU's longest teaching professor, Ernest Kurnow, was born Oct. 1912 and has been teaching at NYU since 1948 .

Since 1885, the most spirited undergraduate class has been awarded "The Bun". The award consisted of a bun enclosed in a long casket-like enclosure made of silver. The Bun was taken three times: in 1921, 1971, and 1981. The award was last returned in 2002 and currently resides in the Silver Center.