List of Columbia University people

This article needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. Find sources: "List of Columbia University people" – news · newspapers · books · scholar · JSTOR (July 2011) (Learn how and when to remove this message)

This is a partially sorted list of notable persons who have had ties to Columbia University. For further listing of notable Columbians see: Notable alumni at Columbia College of Columbia University; Columbia University School of General Studies; Columbia Law School; Columbia Business School; Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism; Columbia Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation; Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons; Columbia University Graduate School of Education (Teachers College); Fu Foundation School of Engineering and Applied Science; Columbia Graduate School of Arts and Sciences; Columbia University School of Professional Studies; Columbia University School of the Arts; the School of International and Public Affairs; and Barnard College. The following lists are incomplete.

As of the 2023 awards, 103 Nobel laureates have been affiliated with Columbia University as alumni or faculty. Among the 103 laureates, 72 are Nobel laureates in natural sciences;^[a] 46 are Columbia alumni (graduates and attendees) and 34 have been long-term academic members of the Columbia faculty; and subject-wise, 33 laureates have won the Nobel Prize in Physics, more than any other subject. This list considers Nobel laureates as equal individuals and does not consider their various prize shares or if they received the prize more than once. It includes alumni and faculty of Barnard College after 1900 and those of Bard College by 1944, as well as physicians and long-term medical staff of the Mary Imogene Bassett Hospital.

In the following list, the number following a person's name is the year they received the prize; in particular, a number with asterisk (*) means the person received the award while they were working at Columbia University (including emeritus staff). A name marked with a dagger (^†) indicates that this person has already been listed in a previous category (i.e., multiple affiliations).

Summary of Columbia University's Nobel Laureates

Category	Alumni	Professors of various ranks	Researchers or visitors
Total: 103	46	34	43
Physics (33)	Robert Millikan – 1923 Isidor Rabi – 1944 Julian Schwinger – 1965 Leon Cooper – 1972 James Rainwater – 1975 Arno Penzias – 1978 Val Fitch – 1980 Leon Lederman – 1988 Melvin Schwartz – 1988 Norman Ramsey – 1989 Martin Perl – 1995 Arthur Ashkin – 2018 John Clauser – 2022	Enrico Fermi – 1938 Isidor Rabi† – 1944* Hideki Yukawa – 1949* Willis Lamb – 1955 Polykarp Kusch – 1955* Tsung-Dao Lee – 1957* Charles Townes – 1964 James Rainwater† – 1975* Samuel Ting – 1976 Melvin Schwartz† – 1988 Leon Lederman† – 1988 Jack Steinberger – 1988 Norman Ramsey† – 1989 Horst Störmer – 1998*	Emilio Segrè – 1959 Maria Mayer – 1963 Hans Bethe – 1967 Murray Gell-Mann – 1969 Aage Bohr – 1975 Samuel Ting† – 1976 Steven Weinberg – 1979 Arthur Schawlow – 1981 Carlo Rubbia – 1984 Leon Lederman† – 1988 Daniel Tsui – 1998 John C. Mather – 2006 Giorgio Parisi – 2021
Chemistry (16)	Irving Langmuir – 1932 John H. Northrop – 1946 William H. Stein – 1972 Roald Hoffmann – 1981 Herbert Hauptman – 1985 Sidney Altman – 1989 William S. Knowles – 2001 Robert Grubbs – 2005 Robert Lefkowitz – 2012 Louis E. Brus – 2023	Harold Urey – 1934* Martin Chalfie – 2008* Martin Karplus – 2013 Joachim Frank – 2017* Louis E. Brus† – 2023*	Willard Libby – 1960 Luis Leloir – 1970
Physiology or Medicine (23)	Hermann J. Muller – 1946 Edward C. Kendall – 1950 Dickinson Richards – 1956 Joshua Lederberg – 1958 Konrad Bloch – 1964 George Wald – 1967 Konrad Lorenz – 1973 Baruch Blumberg – 1976 Baruj Benacerraf – 1980 Harold Varmus – 1989 Louis Ignarro – 1998 Richard Axel – 2004	Thomas H. Morgan – 1933 André Cournand – 1956* Dickinson Richards† – 1956* Eric Kandel – 2000* Richard Axel† – 2004* James Rothman – 2013	Hermann J. Muller† – 1946 Joshua Lederberg† – 1958 Konrad Bloch† – 1964 Salvador Luria – 1969 Baruch Blumberg† – 1976 Carleton Gajdusek – 1976 Daniel Nathans – 1978 Baruj Benacerraf† – 1980 Sune Bergström – 1982 Donnall Thomas – 1990 Linda Buck – 2004 David Julius – 2021
Economics (17)	Simon Kuznets – 1971 Kenneth Arrow – 1972 Milton Friedman – 1976 Robert Fogel – 1993 William Vickrey – 1996 Robert C. Merton – 1997 Alvin Roth – 2012	George Stigler – 1982 Gary Becker – 1992 William Vickrey† – 1996* Robert Mundell – 1999* James Heckman – 2000 Joseph Stiglitz – 2001* Edmund Phelps – 2006*	Milton Friedman† – 1976 Franco Modigliani – 1985 Robert Solow – 1987 Joseph Stiglitz† – 2001 David Card – 2021 Joshua Angrist – 2021
Literature (6)	Louise Glück – 2020	Orhan Pamuk – 2006	Gabriela Mistral – 1945 Joseph Brodsky – 1987 Nadine Gordimer – 1991 Derek Walcott – 1992 Orhan Pamuk† – 2006
Peace (8)	Theodore Roosevelt – 1906 Nicholas Butler – 1931 Barack Obama – 2009	Nicholas Butler† – 1931	Elie Wiesel – 1986 Al Gore – 2007 Liu Xiaobo – 2010 Leymah Gbowee – 2011 Maria Ressa – 2021

• Wallace Smith Broecker—(alumnus and faculty) Crafoord Prize in Geoscience (2006), Balzan Prize, National Medal of Science, Vetlesen Prize, among other awards
• Peter K. Gregersen—(MD 1976) Crafoord Prize in Polyarthritis (2013)^[1]
• Richard Lewontin—(MA, Ph.D. 1954) Crafoord Prize in Bioscience (2015)
• Peter Molnar (Ph.D. 1970 Geology) Crafoord Prize in Geosciences (2014)
• Walter Munk—(undergrad attendee) Crafoord Prize in Geoscience (2010); National Medal of Science, Vetlesen Prize, Kyoto Prize, among other awards
• Robert J. Winchester—(faculty) Crafoord Prize in Polyarthritis (2013)

• Francisco J. Ayala—(Ph.D. 1964) Templeton Prize for life's work in evolutionary biology and genetics (2010), National Medal of Science (2001), among other awards

• John Backus—(B.S. 1949, M.A. 1950 Mathematics) Inventor of Fortran programming language, Draper Prize^[2]
• Alfred Aho—(faculty, 1995 to present) professor of computer science; John von Neumann Medal (2003); ACM Turing Award (2020)
• Jeffrey Ullman—(B.S. 1963) professor of computer science at Stanford University; IEEE John von Neumann Medal (2010); ACM Turing Award (2020)

Founding Fathers of the United States are the political leaders who signed the Declaration of Independence or the United States Constitution, or otherwise participated in the American Revolution as leaders of the Patriots.

• Alexander Hamilton—Founding Father, American Revolutionary War officer and aide-de-camp to George Washington, initiator and co-author of The Federalist Papers, the first U.S. Secretary of the Treasury, economist, one of the first U.S. constitutional lawyers (picture appears on U.S. ten-dollar bill)
• John Jay—Founding Father, president of the Continental Congress, co-author of The Federalist Papers, second U.S. Secretary of Foreign Affairs, first chief justice of the United States Supreme Court, diplomat, architect of Jay's Treaty with Great Britain
• Robert Livingston—Founding Father, drafter of the Declaration of Independence, first U.S. Secretary of Foreign Affairs, U.S. Minister to France, negotiator of the Louisiana Purchase
• Gouverneur Morris—Founding Father, author of large sections of the Constitution of the United States, U.S. Minister Plenipotentiary to France, United States Senator from New York, creator of the Manhattan street grid system, a builder of the Erie canal
• Egbert Benson—Founding Father, member of the Continental Congresses; with Alexander Hamilton, delegate from New York to the Annapolis Convention; ratifier of the United States Constitution; served in the First and Second United States Congresses

• Theodore Roosevelt—(law, attended 1880 to 1881) (posthumous J.D., class of 1882),^[3] 26th president of the United States (1901–1909); hero of the Spanish–American War (Medal of Honor, posthumously awarded 2001); Nobel Peace Prize recipient; Governor of New York; Assistant Secretary of the Navy; professional historian, explorer, author
• Franklin Delano Roosevelt—(law, attended fall of 1904 to spring 1907) (posthumous J.D., class of 1907),^[3] 32nd president of the United States (1933–1945); consistently ranked as one of the three greatest U.S. presidents in scholarly surveys; Governor of New York; Assistant Secretary of the navy
• Dwight Eisenhower—34th president of the United States (1953–1961); Supreme Commander, Allied Expeditionary Force; president of Columbia University
• Barack Obama—(B.A. 1983) 44th president of the United States (2009–2017); Nobel Peace Prize recipient; Democratic senator from Illinois (2005–2008); first African-American president of the Harvard Law Review

• Daniel D. Tompkins—6th vice president of the United States, 4th governor of New York, declined appointment as United States Secretary of State by President James Madison
• Theodore Roosevelt—(Law) 25th vice president of the United States, organized and helped command the Rough Riders in the Spanish–American War, Medal of Honor

See also above at Nobel Laureates ("Alumni" and "Faculty") for separate listing of 41 notable faculty

• Richard Axel, molecular biology and neuroscience, 1999
• Jagdish Bhagwati, economics and law, 2001
• Martin Chalfie, biology, 2013^[10]
• Ruth DeFries, sustainable development, 2016
• Michael W. Doyle, international affairs, law, and political science, 2015
• Nabila El-Bassel, social work, and public health, 2019^[11]
• Wafaa El-Sadr, public health, 2013^[10]
• Saidiya Hartman, English and comparative literature, 2020^[12]
• Wayne Hendrickson, biochemistry and molecular biophysics
• Eric R. Kandel, neurobiology, behavior and learning, 1983
• Rosalind E. Krauss, art history, 2005
• Jeffrey Sachs, economics, 2016
• Simon Schama, history and art history
• Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, English and comparative literature, 2007^[13]
• Joseph Stiglitz, economics, 2001
• Gordana Vunjak-Novakovic, biomedical engineering, 2017

• Caroline Bynum, history, 1999
• Tsung-Dao Lee, theoretical physics

• Jacques Barzun, cultural history
• Ronald Breslow, organic chemistry, 1992
• Samuel Eilenberg, mathematics, 1974
• R. Kent Greenawalt, jurisprudence and constitutional law, 1991
• Louis Henkin, international law, 1981
• Donald Keene, Japanese Studies, 1988
• Grayson L. Kirk, University President, 1953–68
• Robert K. Merton, sociology, 1974
• Robert A. Mundell, economics
• Ernest Nagel, philosophy
• Isidor Isaac Rabi, physics, 1964
• Michael Riffaterre, semiotics, theory of literature and French literature, 1982
• Edward Said, comparative literature, literary theory, and cultural studies, 1992
• Meyer Schapiro, art history
• Sol Spiegelman, genetics and microbiology
• Fritz Stern, history, 1992
• Lionel Trilling, literature, 1970
• Jeremy Waldron, law, 2005, left Columbia in 2006

• Seth Low Professor of the University Lee C. Bollinger, law^[14]
• John Mitchell Mason Professor of the University Jonathan R. Cole, sociology
• John Mitchell Mason Professor Emeritus of the University Wm. Theodore de Bary, East Asian studies, 1979

• Nobel Prize Winners associated with Columbia University
• Nobel Prize Winners in Physics associated with Columbia University
• Columbians Ahead of Their Time—list of notable Columbians created by Columbia University for their 250th anniversary.
• After Columbia "Notable Alumni & Former Students" published by the Columbia University Office of Admission