Philomathean Society - Notable Philomatheans

Notable Philomatheans

Philomatheans have included at least seven United States Representatives, three United States Senators, two ambassadors, and the founder of the Philadelphia Museum of Art, The Daily Pennsylvanian, Mask and Wig and the Pennsylvania Punch Bowl. Prominent Philomatheans have included:

• Thomas M. Pettit, 1813, Director of the US Mint
• Henry Dilworth Gilpin, 1819, US Attorney General
• Robert James Walker, 1819, US Senator from Missouri, US Secretary of the Treasury, Governor of Kansas and debating nemesis of Henry Clay
• John Cadwalader, 1821, US Representative from Pennsylvania 1855 to 1857, US Judge for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania 1858-1879
• George Sharswood, 1828, founder, University of Pennsylvania School of Law and Chief Justice of Pennsylvania
• George Augustus Bicknell Jr., 1831, US Representative from Indiana 1877-1881
• Henry Morton, 1859, 162nd Moderator, member of the Committee to Translate the Rosetta Stone, and founding President of the Stevens Institute of Technology 1870-1902
• Persifor Frazer, 1862, Professor of Chemistry and Pioneering Chemist/Geologist/Naturalist
• William Pepper, 1862, University Provost 1881-1894
• Charles Custis Harrison, 1862, 176th Moderator, University Provost 1894-1910
• Robert Adams Jr., 1869, 196th Moderator, PA State Senator 1883-1886, US Minister to Brazil 1889-1890, US Representative from Pennsylvania 1893.
• Henry Galbraith Ward, 1870, 199th Moderator, Judge of US Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit 1907-1933
• Henry Laussat Geyelin, 1877, the first to wear red and blue as the University colors
• Eli Kirk Price, 1881, founder, Philadelphia Museum of Art
• George Wharton Pepper, 1887, US Senator from Pennsylvania, author and chronicler of the Senate
• Jasper Yeates Brinton, 1889, US Legal Advisor to Egypt, architect of the Egyptian court system and Justice of the Egyptian Supreme Court
• Josiah Harmar Penniman, 1890, Professor of English and University Provost 1921-1939
• Ellis Robins, 1904, businessman and public servant based in Rhodesia, ennobled as Baron Robins in 1958
• Alfred Bester, 1934, Recipient of the first Hugo Award for a Science Fiction Novel: The Demolished Man (1953), Science Fiction Grand Master (1988), and author of The Stars My Destination (1956)
• Carl Kaysen, 1940, director of the Institute for Advanced Study, MIT professor, and University Trustee Emeritus
• Hilary Putnam, 1948, philosopher, Walter Beverly Pearson Professor of Modern Mathematics and Mathematical Logic at Harvard University, and past president of the American Philosophical Association
• Arlen Specter, 1951, United States Senator from Pennsylvania