100 Notable alumni of Bates College

Nicholas Andrew Basbanes is an American author who writes and lectures about authors, books, and book culture. His subjects include the "eternal passion for books" (A Gentle Madness); the history and future of libraries (Patience & Fortitude); the "willful destruction of books" and the "determined effort to rescue them" (A Splendor of Letters); "the power of the printed word to...

Stella James Sims was an African-American science professor who held positions at Storer College, Virginia University of Lynchburg, and Bluefield Colored Institute.

Henry Wilkins Chandler was an American lawyer, newspaperman, politician, and federal official. Born a freeman, he was the first African American graduate from Bates College in Lewiston, Maine. He served two terms in the Florida State Senate.

Albert Augustus Newman was an American businessman, merchant and banker who is most known as the founder and president of Newman Dry Goods Company.

Frederick Hayes was an American military officer, Union Army engineer, and early manager of Pfizer who served in the American Civil War and was awarded a Medal of Honor.

Morton Aaron Brody was a United States district judge of the United States District Court for the District of Maine from 1991 to 2000.

John True Abbott was an American diplomat and lawyer who served as the United States Ambassador to Colombia from 1889 to 1893.

Donald Barrows Partridge was an American lawyer, jurist, and politician from the U.S. state of Maine. Partridge served in the United States House of Representatives for a single term in the 1930s and was a Republican Party leader in Oxford County during the 1920s and 30s.

Carroll Lynwood Beedy was a U.S. Representative from Maine from 1921 to 1935.

Grenville C. Emery was an educator, author, head master and founder of what is now the Harvard-Westlake School in Los Angeles, California.

George Colby Chase was an American intellectual and professor of English who served as the second President of Bates College succeeding its founder, Oren Burbank Cheney, from March 1894 to November 1919.

Daniel J. McGillicuddy was a United States representative from Maine.

Robert Kinney was an American businessman, fishery entrepreneur, and philanthropist. He was the chief executive officer of General Mills from 1973 to 1981, previously the chief financial officer. He was appointed Trustee Chair Emeritus of his alma mater, Bates College, in Lewiston, Maine, and served for 27 years.

Nathan Cook Brackett was an abolitionist, Free Will Baptist pastor, first president of Storer College, and chairman and co-founder of Bluefield State College.

Erwin Dain Canham was an American journalist and author. He was best known for his work as the longest-serving editor of The Christian Science Monitor. He also was the first, and last, Resident Commissioner of the Northern Mariana Islands as it was in the process of becoming a commonwealth of the United States; and he was very active in various...

Lillian M. N. Stevens was an American temperance worker and social reformer, born at Dover, Maine. She helped launch the Maine chapter of the Woman's Christian Temperance Union (W.C.T.U.), served as its president, and was elected president of the National W.C.T.U. after the death of Frances Willard. Stevens also served as Editor-in-chief of the W.C.T.U.'s organ, The Union Signal.

Jeff Cook is an American soccer coach. He was most recently the head men's soccer coach at Pennsylvania State University. Cook resigned from Penn State in November 2025 to take a position within Major League Soccer.

Harlan Ware Holden was an American athlete who competed at the 1912 Summer Olympics in the track and field 800-meter run and in the exhibition baseball tournament. Holden was one of four Americans who played for the Swedish team. Harlan attended Bates College in Lewiston, Maine.

Albert Moore Spear was the Chief Justice of the Maine Supreme Judicial Court and President of the Maine Senate.

Harry Donald Lord was an American professional baseball player who played for the Boston Americans/Red Sox, Chicago White Sox and Buffalo Blues from 1907 to 1915.

Jamie Merisotis is the current president and CEO of Lumina Foundation, a private organization in the United States that aims to increase the number of Americans holding high-quality degrees, certificates, and credentials to 60% by 2025. With an endowment of $1.6 billion, Merisotis leads the foundation's efforts towards this goal.

Robert E. Witt is an American businessman, and academic administrator. He is the former Chancellor of the University of Alabama System, concurrently serving as the Chairman of the Council of Presidents of Alabama’s public colleges and universities.

Ru Freeman is a Sri Lankan born writer and activist whose creative and political work has appeared internationally, including in the UK Guardian, The Boston Globe, and the New York Times. She is the author of the novels A Disobedient Girl, and On Sal Mal Lane (Graywolf Press), a NYT Editor’s Choice Book. Both novels have been translated into multiple...

Charles Russell Clason was a Republican member of the United States House of Representatives from Massachusetts and an attorney. Clason was born in Gardiner, Maine. He attended Bates College, and received his law degree from Georgetown University. Clason went on to Oxford University as a Rhodes Scholar.

William J. Prendergast IV is a United States Army major general who has served as the commanding general of 40th Infantry Division since October 2024. He most recently served as the deputy commanding general for Army National Guard of the United States Army Futures Command. He served as Commander, Joint Task Force – Civil Support; Commander, Contingency Command Post 1...

Natasha Friend is an American author. Her first three books are the award-winning, young adult novels Perfect, Lush, and Bounce.

Karen Hastie Williams was an American lawyer and company director.

Matthew Manuel Tavares is an American illustrator and writer of children's picture books.

Holman Staples Melcher was an American military officer, businessman, and politician active during the Reconstruction Era. A faction of historians and soldiers controversially contend that he led the downhill bayonet charge of Little Round Top during the Battle of Gettysburg. Aside from his feats during the American Civil War, he served two one-year terms as the Mayor of Portland, Maine,...

Nelson Dingley Jr. was a journalist and politician from the U.S. state of Maine.

Sidney Perham was a U.S. representative and the 33rd governor of Maine and was an activist in the temperance movement.

Major Ralph Lowell was a World War I veteran, banker, and philanthropist from Boston.

Franklin Bachelder Simmons was a prominent American sculptor of the nineteenth century. Three of his statues are in the National Statuary Hall Collection, three of his busts are in the United States Senate Vice Presidential Bust Collection, and his statue of Ulysses S. Grant is in the United States Capitol Rotunda.

Jeffrey N. Roy is a State Representative in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, Massachusetts General Court. Roy represents the 10th Norfolk District, which includes the Town of Franklin, Massachusetts in its entirety, and Precincts 2, 3, and 4 of the Town of Medway, Massachusetts. Roy was elected on the 6th of November, 2012.

Constance Ernestine Berry Newman is an American attorney and diplomat who served as the United States assistant secretary of state for African affairs from July 2004 to April 2005.

Nora V. Demleitner is a German-American jurist and academic administrator. She was the president of St. John's College - Annapolis from 2022–2025. Prior to this, she served as the dean of Washington and Lee University School of Law from 2012-2015 and dean of Hofstra University School of Law from 2007-2012.

Alicia Margarita Soderberg was an American astrophysicist whose research focused on supernovae. She was an assistant professor of astronomy at Harvard University and a postdoctoral fellow at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics.

Frank Morey Coffin was an American politician and judge from Maine who served as a United States circuit judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the First Circuit.

Andrew Michael Baron is the founder of Rocketboom, video aggregator Magma, the non-profit Humanwire, and the co-founder of Know Your Meme. Baron has taught undergraduate and graduate classes at Parsons School of Design and was teaching IDTech at M.I.T. when he came up with the idea for Rocketboom.

Frank Haven Hall was an American inventor and essayist who is credited with inventing the Hall braille writer and the stereographer machine. He also invented the first successful mechanical point writer and developed major functions of modern day typography with kerning and tracking.

Evette Ríos is an American bilingual lifestyle expert, writer, television host, designer and native New Yorker of Puerto Rican heritage.

Darrell W. Crate is an American investor, private equity manager, and philanthropist. He is the CEO of Easterly Government Properties, Inc., a New York Stock Exchange-listed company that he co-founded in 2015. He is also the founder and managing principal of Easterly Asset Management, a multi-affiliate platform of high-performing boutique investment managers.

John William Dunjee was an American missionary, educator, Baptist minister, publisher, agent of Storer College and founder of Baptist churches across the United States.

Mark Erelli is an American singer/songwriter, multi-instrumentalist, and touring folk musician from Reading, Massachusetts who earned a master's degree in evolutionary biology from the University of Massachusetts Amherst before pursuing a career in music. Erelli has released nine solo albums and three collaborative albums. His self-titled debut album was released in 1999, the same year that he won the Kerrville...

William Whipple Warren was a historian, interpreter, and legislator in the Minnesota Territory. The son of Lyman Marcus Warren, an American fur trader and Mary Cadotte, the mixed ancestry daughter of fur trader Michel Cadotte, he was of Ojibwe and French descent. William lived in two cultures, because his father was white, he was not considered Ojibwe, but an Ojibwe...

Sylvia Field Porter was an American economist, journalist and author. At the height of her career, her readership was greater than 40 million people.

Marguerite Zorach was an American Fauvist painter, textile artist, and graphic designer, and was an early exponent of modernism in America. She won the 1920 Logan Medal of the Arts.

Eugene Hale was an American politician who was a Republican United States Senator from Maine.

Max Kampelman was an American diplomat.

James Russell Wiggins was an American executive editor of The Washington Post and United States Ambassador to the United Nations.

Dorothy Clarke Wilson was an American writer, perhaps best known for her novel Prince of Egypt (1949), which was a primary source for the Cecil B. DeMille film, The Ten Commandments (1956).

George Simms Hammond was an American scientist and theoretical chemist who developed "Hammond's postulate", and fathered organic photochemistry,–the general theory of the geometric structure of the transition state in an organic chemical reaction. Hammond's research is also known for its influence on the philosophy of science. His research garnered him the Norris Award in 1968, the Priestley Medal in 1976,...

Lorenzo Harris is a dancer, choreographer, artistic director and professor of hip-hop dance. Harris formed the first and longest running hip-hop dance touring company, Rennie Harris Puremovement in 1992. In 2007, he conceived another touring company, RHAW or Rennie Harris Awe-Inspiring Works.

William Pierce Frye was an American politician from Maine. A member of the Republican Party, Frye spent most of his political career as a legislator, serving in the Maine House of Representatives and then U.S. House of Representatives, before being elected to the U.S. Senate, where he served for 30 years before dying in office. Frye was a member of...

Frank Weston Sandford was a charismatic Christian religious leader in the United States who attained notoriety as the founder and leader of an apocalyptic sect known as "The Kingdom".

Aaron Simon Daggett was a career United States Army officer. He was the last surviving brevet Union general of the American Civil War, and the last surviving general of any grade from the war, when he died exactly one month before his 101st birthday in 1938. Daggett was nominated for appointment to the grade of brevet brigadier general, to rank...

William Cameron Forbes was an American investment banker and diplomat. He served as governor-general of the Philippines from 1909 to 1913 and ambassador of the United States to Japan from 1930 to 1932.

Warren Hasty Carroll was the founder and first president of Christendom College in Front Royal, Virginia. He authored multiple works of Roman Catholic church history.

David Stephenson Rohde is an American author and investigative journalist. He is the former online news director for The New Yorker and now the senior executive editor on national security for NBC News. While a reporter for The Christian Science Monitor, he won the Pulitzer Prize for International Reporting in 1996 for his coverage of the Srebrenica genocide. From 2002...

Corey Harris is an American blues and reggae musician, currently living in Charlottesville, Virginia. In the 1990s, along with Keb' Mo' and Alvin Youngblood Hart, he was a prominent acoustic guitar blues player.

George Putnam was an American television news reporter and talk show host based in Los Angeles. He was known for his catchy phrase "and that’s the up-to-the-minute news, up to the minute, that’s all the news" at the end of his broadcast. He concluded the 5:00 PM news with a teaser, inviting viewers back to get the full story at...

Amory Bloch Lovins is an American writer, physicist, and former chairman/chief scientist of the Rocky Mountain Institute. He has written on energy policy and related areas for four decades, and served on the US National Petroleum Council, an oil industry lobbying group, from 2011 to 2018.

Lewis Lee Millett Sr. was a United States Army officer who was awarded the Medal of Honor during the Korean War for leading the last major American bayonet charge.

Arthur Christ Agnos is an American politician. He served as the 39th mayor of San Francisco, California from 1988 to 1992 and as the Regional Head of the United States Department of Housing and Urban Development from 1993 to 2001.

Jeffrey Lynn was an American stage-screen actor and film producer who worked primarily through the Golden Age of Hollywood establishing himself as one of the premier talents of his time. Throughout his acting career, both on stage and in film, he was typecast as "the attractive, reliable love interest of the heroine," or "the tall, stalwart hero."

Donald Andrew Hall Jr. was an American poet, writer, editor, and literary critic. He was the author of more than 50 books across multiple genres including children's literature, biography, memoirs, essays, plays, sports journalism, and fifteen volumes of verse. He was a graduate of Phillips Exeter Academy, Harvard University, and Christ Church, Oxford. Early in his career, he became the...

William Henry Vanderbilt III was an American politician who served as Governor of Rhode Island from 1939 to 1941, and a member of the wealthy and socially prominent Vanderbilt family.

David Chokachi is an American film and television actor. He is known for his roles in the TV series Witchblade, Baywatch, and Beyond the Break.

Robert William Goodlatte is an American politician, attorney, and lobbyist who served as the U.S. representative for Virginia's 6th congressional district from 1993 to 2019. A Republican, he was also the Chair of the House Judiciary Committee, which has jurisdiction over legislation affecting the federal courts, administrative agencies, and federal law enforcement entities. Based in the Shenandoah Valley, Goodlatte's district...

Jared Forrest Golden is an American politician and Marine Corps veteran serving as the U.S. representative for Maine's 2nd congressional district since 2019. A Democrat, he represents a district encompassing the northern four-fifths of the state, including the cities of Lewiston, Bangor, and Auburn, along with the state capital of Augusta. It is the largest district east of the Mississippi...

John Victor Shea III is an American actor, director, producer and screenwriter. His career began on Broadway where he starred in Yentl, subsequently winning his first major award, the 1975 Theatre World Award. Shortly after his Off-Broadway career began, Lee Strasberg invited Shea to join the Actors Studio where he spent several years studying method acting.

Olympia Jean Snowe is an American businesswoman and politician who was a United States Senator, representing Maine for three terms from 1995 to 2013. A lifelong member of the Republican Party, Snowe played an influential role in influencing the outcome of close votes in the U.S. Senate and in ending U.S. Senate filibusters. In 2006, Time magazine named her one...

Bryant Charles Gumbel is a retired American television journalist and sportscaster. He was best known for his 15 years as co-host of NBC's Today. His older brother was sportscaster Greg Gumbel. From 1995 to 2023, he hosted HBO's acclaimed investigative series Real Sports with Bryant Gumbel, which has been rated as "flat out TV's best sports program" by the Los...

Jan Garrigue Masaryk was a Czech diplomat and politician who served as the Foreign Minister of Czechoslovakia from 1940 to 1948. American journalist John Gunther described Masaryk as "a brave, honest, turbulent, and impulsive man".

Elizabeth Strout is an American novelist and author. She is widely known for her works in literary fiction and her descriptive characterization. She was born and raised in Portland, Maine, and her experiences in her youth served as inspiration for her novels—the fictional "Shirley Falls, Maine" is the setting of four of her ten novels.

Anna Cooke Kendrick is an American actress, singer and film director. Known for playing upbeat and endearing characters in comedies and musicals, her accolades include nominations for an Academy Award, a Primetime Emmy Award and a Tony Award.

Richard Buckminster Fuller Jr. was an American architect, systems theorist, writer, designer, inventor, philosopher, and futurist. He styled his name as R. Buckminster Fuller in his writings, publishing more than 30 books and coining or popularizing such terms as "Spaceship Earth", "Dymaxion" (e.g., Dymaxion house, Dymaxion car, Dymaxion map), "ephemeralization", "synergetics", and "tensegrity".

Kenneth Merwin Curtis is an American attorney, politician, and diplomat from Maine. He was the Secretary of State of Maine from 1965 to 1966, the 68th Governor of Maine from 1967 to 1975, and the United States Ambassador to Canada from 1979 to 1981. Curtis is a member of the Democratic Party and was later Of counsel at the Curtis...

Scott Wilson is a Canadian professional ice hockey player who is currently playing with HC Sibir Novosibirsk in the Kontinental Hockey League (KHL). He has played with the Pittsburgh Penguins, with whom he earned two Stanley Cup championships, Detroit Red Wings and Buffalo Sabres in the National Hockey League (NHL).

Richard K. "Rick" Sullivan, Jr. is an American politician who served as chief of staff to Governor Deval Patrick from 2014 to 2015. Before assuming the office, Sullivan was the former secretary of energy and environmental affairs of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts and former mayor of Westfield, Massachusetts.

Vaughn Seavey Blanchard was an American track and field athlete who competed in the 110 m hurdles and in the exhibition baseball tournament at the 1912 Summer Olympics. He attended Bates College in Lewiston Maine and later became a well known physical education proponent in Michigan.

Harold Delbert "Red" Drew was an American football, basketball, and track and field coach for over 40 years. He was the head coach of the Alabama Crimson Tide football team from 1947 to 1954, compiling a 54–28–7 record and leading the team to appearances in the Sugar, Orange and Cotton Bowls. He also served as an assistant football coach at...

David Michael Hasselhoff, nicknamed "The Hoff", is an American actor, singer, and television personality. He has set a Guinness World Record as the most watched man on TV. Hasselhoff first gained recognition on the soap opera The Young and the Restless (1975–1982), playing the role of Dr. Snapper Foster. His career continued with his leading role as Michael Knight on...

Leo Joseph Ryan Jr. was an American politician and teacher. A member of the Democratic Party, he represented California's 11th congressional district in the U.S. House of Representatives from 1973 until his assassination in the Jonestown massacre in 1978. Before that, he served in the California State Assembly, representing the state's 27th district.

Ella Knowles Haskell was an American lawyer, suffragist, and politician. Born in New Hampshire, she moved to Montana to improve her health following a bout of tuberculosis and there became the first woman to be licensed as a lawyer, the first female notary public, the first woman to run for Montana State Attorney General, and the 26th woman to be...

Edmund Sixtus Muskie was an American statesman and politician who served as the 58th United States Secretary of State under President Jimmy Carter from 1980 to 1981. A member of the Democratic Party, he previously served as a U.S. Senator from Maine from 1959 to 1980, the 64th governor of Maine from 1955 to 1959, and a member of the...

James A. Murphy III is an American politician, a former district attorney, and a jurist. He is currently an Acting Justice of the Supreme Court of the State of New York and the county court judge for Saratoga County, New York.

Enoch Foster was a justice of the Supreme Judicial Court of Maine.

William Herbert Gray III was an American politician and member of the Democratic Party who represented Pennsylvania's 2nd congressional district from 1979 to 1991. He also served as chairman of the House Committee on the Budget from 1985 to 1989 and House Majority Whip from 1989 to 1991. He resigned from Congress in September of that year to become president...

Andrew Gruel is an American chef, television personality, and politician based in Orange County, California. He appeared as a judge on Food Network's Food Truck Face Off and as a host of FYI's Say It to My Face!, and is the founder of Slapfish, a seafood restaurant franchise that he launched in 2012 and sold to Mac Haik Enterprises in...

James Ezekiel Porter was one of General Custer's eleven officers killed at the Battle of Little Bighorn, also known as Custer's Last Stand, and Porter was among the first verified casualties of the historic battle alerting the world to the demise of Custer's group. According to several historians, Porter led troops in a defensive action at the Little Bighorn. Porter...

Joyce Alene Vance is an American lawyer who served as the United States attorney for the Northern District of Alabama from 2009 to 2017. She was one of the first five U.S. attorneys, and the first female U.S. attorney, nominated by President Barack Obama.

Robert Francis Kennedy, also known by his initials RFK, was an American politician and lawyer. A member of the Democratic Party, Kennedy served as the 64th United States attorney general from 1961 to 1964, and as a U.S. senator from New York from 1965 until his assassination in 1968. Like his brothers John F. Kennedy and Ted Kennedy, he is...

Benjamin Lee Cline is an American politician and lawyer serving as the U.S. representative for Virginia's 6th congressional district since 2019. A member of the Republican Party, he represented the 24th district in the Virginia House of Delegates from 2002 to 2018.

Benjamin Elijah Mays was an American Baptist minister and civil rights leader who is credited with laying the intellectual foundations of the American civil rights movement. Mays taught and mentored many influential activists, including Martin Luther King Jr, Julian Bond, Maynard Jackson, and Donn Clendenon, among others. His rhetoric and intellectual pursuits focused on Black self-determination. Mays' commitment to social...

Minoru Yamasaki was an American architect, best known for designing the original World Trade Center in New York City and several other large-scale projects. He and fellow architect Edward Durell Stone are generally considered to be the two master practitioners of "New Formalism".

Michael Jamal Brooks was an American talk show host, writer, left-wing political commentator, and comedian. While co-hosting The Majority Report with Sam Seder, he launched The Michael Brooks Show in August 2017 and provided commentary for media outlets, making regular appearances on shows such as The Young Turks. Brooks contributed to various publications, including HuffPost, The Washington Post, Al Jazeera,...

Maria Bamford is an American actress and stand-up comedian. Her work often uses self-deprecating and dark topics, including her dysfunctional family, depression, anxiety, suicide, and mental illness.

Seamus Justin Heaney MRIA was an Irish poet, playwright and translator. He received the 1995 Nobel Prize in Literature. Among his best-known works is Death of a Naturalist (1966), his first major published volume. American poet Robert Lowell described him as "the most important Irish poet since Yeats", and many others, including the academic John Sutherland, have said that he...