Academia
- Joseph Addison Alexander – biblical scholar
- E. Digby Baltzell – sociologist, academic and author
- Leon Bass – educator, principal of Philadelphia's Benjamin Franklin High School
- Noam Chomsky – linguist
- Gordon Clark – Christian theologian, professor
- Leda Cosmides – evolutionary psychologist
- Philip D. Curtin – historian
- Marc Lamont Hill – professor, educational researcher, cultural critic, and activist
- Agnes Irwin – founder of the Agnes Irwin School, first dean of Radcliffe College
- Seymour S. Kety – neuroscientist, schizophrenia researcher
- Byard Lancaster – jazz artist, saxophone, flute
- Alain Locke – first black Rhodes Scholar, Father of the Harlem Renaissance
- Margaret Mead – anthropologist
- Howard M. Temin – Nobel colaureate in physiology or medicine, 1975
- Cornelius Van Til – Christian theologian, professor
- Lawrence Venuti – Translation scholar and historian
- Andrew Weil – medical doctor, established the field of integrative medicine
- Gayraud Wilmore – Christian theologian, professor
Read more about this topic: List Of People From Philadelphia