Washington University - Notable People

Notable People

• Washington University counts more than 114,000 living alumni, 26 Rhodes Scholars, and 22 Nobel laureates affiliated with the university as faculty or students.

• Notable recent graduates of the college include: former Missouri Senator Jim Talent, Nevada Senator Chic Hecht, and former Nebraska Congressman Hal Daub; George Zimmer, founder of Men's Wearhouse; Avram Glazer, chairman of Manchester United; Pulitzer Prize-winning journalists Ken Cooper and Hank Klibanoff; Jon Feltheimer, CEO of Lionsgate films; actors Peter Sarsgaard (Boys Don't Cry, An Education, Flight Plan) and Harold Ramis (Ghostbusters, Caddyshack); baseball player Dal Maxvill; and science-show host Deanne Bell (Design Squad).

• Earlier undergraduate alumni include J. C. R. Licklider, pioneer in artificial intelligence; Charles Nagel, founder of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce; Julian Hill, co-inventor of nylon; Clyde Cowan, co-discoverer of the neutrino; James R. Thompson, Governor of Illinois; David R. Francis, Governor of Missouri; William H. Webster, former Director of the FBI and U.S. Ambassador to Belgium Sam Fox; Edward Singleton Holden, President of the University of California; Thomas Lamb Eliot, President of Reed College; and Abram L. Sachar, founding President of Brandeis University. Graduates of the College of Architecture include George Hellmuth, Gyo Obata, and George Kassabaum, founders of HOK, the world's fourth-largest architectural firm.

• The School of Medicine graduated Nobel laureates Earl Sutherland, Edwin Krebs, and Daniel Nathans. Businessman and adventurer Steve Fossett earned his MBA from the business school. Doctoral alumni include the former Presidents of Johns Hopkins, Clemson, Wake Forest, Morehouse, Mount Union, Yonsei, and Hong Kong University of Science and Technology. An alumnus of the Graduate School of Architecture, C. P. Wang (M.Arch 1973), designed Taipei 101, the world's second-tallest building.

• Famous students who dropped out: Charles Eames (who was expelled for defending modernist architecture); Tennessee Williams (who left in protest of not winning the poetry prize); Enterprise Rent-a-Car founder Jack C. Taylor (who withdrew to fight in World War II); actor Robert Guillaume (who withdrew to study opera); Pulitzer Prize winner Bill Dedman (who left to become a newspaper reporter); and IQ-record holder Marilyn vos Savant (who says she withdrew because she was bored).

• List of Washington University faculty and staff (past and present): economist and Nobel Memorial Prize winner Douglass North; husband and wife biochemists and co-Nobel Prize winners Carl and Gerty Cori; physicist and Nobel Prize winner Arthur Holly Compton; novelists Stanley Elkin and William Gass; poets Carl Phillips and Mary Jo Bang; architect Fumihiko Maki; neurologist and Nobel Prize winner Rita Levi-Montalcini; sex researchers William Masters and Virginia Johnson; Poets Laureate Howard Nemerov and Mona Van Duyn; sociologist and "outlaw Marxist" Alvin Ward Gouldner; attorney, former Counsel to Vice-President Al Gore and former Tennessee Attorney General Charles Burson; writer and culture critic Gerald Early; Economist, and former Chair of President Ronald Reagan's Council of Economic Advisors, Murray Weidenbaum; chemist Joseph W. Kennedy, co-discoverer of the element plutonium; computer scientist Jonathan S. Turner, internationally renowned expert in computer networking; computer scientist Raj Jain, pioneer in the field of network congestion; and Law Professor Troy A. Paredes, currently on leave as a commissioner of the SEC.