Columbia University - Notable People

Notable People

Three United States Presidents, twenty-six foreign Heads of State, nine Justices of the Supreme Court of the United States (including three Chief Justices) and 43 Nobel Prize winners are alumni of Columbia. Alumni also have received more than 35 National Book Awards and 115 Pulitzer Prizes. Today, two United States Senators and 16 Chief Executives of Fortune 500 companies hold Columbia degrees, as do three of the 25 richest Americans and 20 living billionaires. Attendees of King's College, Columbia's predecessor, included five Founding Fathers.

Former U.S. Presidents Theodore Roosevelt and Franklin Delano Roosevelt attended the law school. Other more recent political figures educated at Columbia include U.S President Barack Obama, Associate Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court Ruth Bader Ginsburg, former U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, former chairman of the U.S. Federal Reserve Bank Alan Greenspan, U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder, and U.S. Solicitor General Donald Verrilli Jr.. Dwight D. Eisenhower served as the thirteenth president of Columbia University from 1948 to 1953. The university has also educated 26 foreign Heads of State, including President of Georgia Mikheil Saakashvili, President of East Timor Jose Ramos Horta, President of Estonia Toomas Hendrik Ilves and other historical figures such as Wellington Koo, Gaston Eyskens, and T. V. Soong. The author of India's constitution Dr. B. R. Ambedkar was also an alumnus of Columbia. His bust is on display in the Lehman library.

Alumni of Columbia have occupied top positions in Wall Street and the rest of the business world. Notable members of the Astor family attended Columbia, while some recent business graduates include investor Warren Buffett, former CEO of PBS and NBC Larry Grossman, and chairman of Wal-Mart S. Robson Walton. CEO's of top Fortune 500 companies include James P. Gorman of Morgan Stanley, Robert J. Stevens of Lockheed Martin, Philippe Dauman of Viacom, Ursula Burns of Xerox, and Vikram Pandit of Citigroup.

In science and technology, Columbia alumni include: founder of IBM Herman Hollerith; inventor of FM radio Edwin Armstrong; inventor of the nuclear submarine Hyman Rickover; founder of Google China Kai-Fu Lee; scientists Stephen Jay Gould, Robert Millikan, Helium–neon laser inventor Ali Javan and Michael Pupin; chief-engineer of the New York City subway William Barclay Parsons; philosophers Irwin Edman and Robert Nozick; and economist Milton Friedman

Many Columbia alumni have gone on to renowned careers in the arts, such as the composers Richard Rodgers, Oscar Hammerstein II, Lorenz Hart, and Art Garfunkel. Four United States Poet Laureates received their degrees from Columbia. Columbia alumni have made an indelible mark in the field of American poetry and literature, with such people as Jack Kerouac, one of the pioneers of the Beat Generation, and Langston Hughes, a seminal figure in the Harlem Renaissance, having both attended the university. Other notable writers who attended Columbia include authors Isaac Asimov, J.D. Salinger, Upton Sinclair, and the journalist Hunter S. Thompson, who was primarily known for his works in the American magazine Rolling Stone.

University alumni have also been very prominent in the film industry, with 25 different alumni winning a combined 30 Academy Awards, more than any other school in the world. Some notable Columbia alumni that have gone on to work in film include directors Sidney Lumet (12 Angry Men) and Kathryn Bigelow (The Hurt Locker), screenwriters Howard Koch (Casablanca) and Joseph L. Mankiewicz (All About Eve), and actors James Cagney and Ed Harris.

  • Notable Columbia University Students

  • Theodore Roosevelt, President of the United States and Nobel Laureate, Columbia Law School

  • Alexander Hamilton, Founding Father and the first United States Secretary of the Treasury, Columbia College

  • Barack Obama, President of the United States and Nobel Laureate, Class of 1983, Columbia College

  • Franklin D. Roosevelt, President of the United States, Columbia Law School

  • Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States, Columbia Law School

  • Warren Buffett, CEO of Berkshire Hathaway and one of the world's wealthiest people, Columbia Business School

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