100 Notable alumni of Brandeis University

Updated: June 14, 2026 EliteDegrees

Brandeis University is ranked #395 in the world and #130 in United States by aggregated alumni prominence. Below is the list of 100 notable alumni from Brandeis University sorted by their wiki pages popularity. The directory includes famous graduates and former students along with research and academic staff. Many individuals affiliated with Brandeis University won Nobel Prizes for Peace, in Physics, Chemistry, Physiology or Medicine, and Economics.

Stephen J. Solarz

1. Stephen J. Solarz

1940-2010 (aged 70)
politician
Stephen Joshua Solarz was an American educator and politician who served as a United States representative from New York until his political career ended in the wake of the House banking scandal in 1992.
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Giriraja Swami

2. Giriraja Swami

1947-. (aged 79)
writer
Giriraj Swami is an American hindu author and an initiating guru, with very highly respected position in International Society for Krishna Consciousness (ISKCON).
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Ruth Deech, Baroness Deech

3. Ruth Deech, Baroness Deech

1943-. (aged 83)
author non-fiction writer university teacher politician
Ruth Lynn Deech, Baroness Deech, DBE is a British academic, bioethicist and politician, most noted for chairing the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority (HFEA), from 1994 to 2002, and as the former Principal of St Anne's College, Oxford. Deech sits as a Crossbench peer in the House of Lords (2005–) and chaired the Bar Standards Board (2009–2014).
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Laura Janner-Klausner

4. Laura Janner-Klausner

1963-. (aged 63)
rabbi
Laura Naomi Janner-Klausner is a British rabbi and an inclusion and development coach who served as the inaugural Senior Rabbi to Reform Judaism from 2011 until 2020. Janner-Klausner grew up in London before studying theology at the University of Cambridge and moving to Israel in 1985, living in Jerusalem for 15 years. She returned to Britain in 1999 and was...
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Alma Katsu

5. Alma Katsu

1959-. (aged 67)
writer political historian novelist journalist
Alma Katsu is an American writer of adult fiction. Her books have been translated into over a dozen languages, and have been published in the United Kingdom, Brazil, Spain, and Italy.
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Zach Sherwin

6. Zach Sherwin

1978-. (aged 48)
actor screenwriter rapper
Zach Sherwin is an American comedian, rapper, writer, and actor best known for writing for and performing in the Epic Rap Battles of History YouTube series, as well as writing for Crazy Ex-Girlfriend on The CW. He specializes in comedic rap. He previously performed with The Late Night Players under the stage name "MC Mr. Napkins".
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Freada Kapor Klein

7. Freada Kapor Klein

1952-. (aged 74)
philanthropist venture capitalist
Freada Kapor Klein is an American venture capitalist, social policy researcher and philanthropist. As a partner at Kapor Capital and the Kapor Center for Social Impact, she is known for efforts to diversify the technology workforce through activism and investments. Her 2007 book Giving Notice: Why the Best and the Brightest Leave the Workplace and How You Can Help Them...
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Laura Whitehorn

8. Laura Whitehorn

1945-. (aged 81)
political activist
Laura Jane Whitehorn is an American activist who participated in the 1983 United States Senate bombing and was imprisoned for 14 years in federal prison. In the 1960s, she organized and participated in civil rights and anti-war movements.
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Rachel Goldberg-Polin

9. Rachel Goldberg-Polin

1969-. (aged 57)
Rachel Goldberg-Polin is an American-Israeli activist. During the hostage crisis which began with the October 7 attacks in 2023, Goldberg and her husband became two of the highest profile relatives of Israeli hostages advocating for their release on the world stage, meeting with U.S. President Joe Biden and Pope Francis, among other world leaders.
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Deborah Berebichez

10. Deborah Berebichez

physicist
Deborah Berebichez is a Mexican physicist, data scientist, TV host, educator and entrepreneur who dedicates her career to promoting education in science, technology, engineering and math fields. She was the first Mexican woman to graduate with a Ph.D. in physics from Stanford University. She has developed models for cellular wave transmission which are in the process of being patented. Sometimes...
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Margo Jefferson

11. Margo Jefferson

1947-. (aged 79)
journalist writer
Margo Lillian Jefferson is an American writer and academic. Also a journalist, writing since 1993 for The New York Times, she was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Criticism in 1995. Other publications for which she has written include Vogue, New York Magazine, The Nation, and Guernica.
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Michael Kaiser

12. Michael Kaiser

1953-. (aged 73)
impresario
Michael M. Kaiser is an American arts administrator who served as president of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts (2001–2014) in Washington, D.C. Kaiser currently lives in Great Falls, Virginia.
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Letty Cottin Pogrebin

13. Letty Cottin Pogrebin

1939-. (aged 87)
journalist writer
Letty Cottin Pogrebin is an American author, journalist, lecturer, and social activist. She is a founding editor of Ms. magazine, the author of twelve books, and was an editorial consultant for the TV special Free to Be... You and Me (as well as for the album and book associated with it) for which she earned an Emmy.
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Mark Leyner

14. Mark Leyner

1956-. (aged 70)
writer novelist
Mark Leyner is an American postmodernist author.
George Loewenstein

15. George Loewenstein

1955-. (aged 71)
researcher economist
George Loewenstein is an American educator and economist. He is the Herbert A. Simon Professor of Economics and Psychology in the Social and Decision Sciences Department at Carnegie Mellon University and director of the Center for Behavioral Decision Research. He is a leader in the fields of behavioral economics (which he is also credited with co-founding), neuroeconomics, Judgment and Decision...
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Myq Kaplan

16. Myq Kaplan

1978-. (aged 48)
television actor
Myq Kaplan is an American stand-up comedian. Born Michael Kaplan in Livingston, New Jersey, he works out of Boston and New York City.
Malidoma Patrice Somé

17. Malidoma Patrice Somé

1956-2021 (aged 65)
ethnologist writer
Malidoma Patrice Somé was a writer and workshop leader, primarily in the field of spirituality. Born in a Dagara community in Dano, Burkina Faso, West Africa, he was raised by Jesuit priests from the age of four, pursued higher education in the West, and spent most of his adult life in the United States and Europe.
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Tom Rapp

18. Tom Rapp

1947-2018 (aged 71)
songwriter guitarist singer-songwriter
Thomas Dale Rapp was an American singer and songwriter who led Pearls Before Swine, an influential psychedelic folk rock group of the late 1960s and early 1970s. Described as having "a slight lisp, gentle voice and apocalyptic vision", he also released four albums under his own name. He later practiced as a lawyer after graduating from University of Pennsylvania Law...
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Charles H. Bennett

19. Charles H. Bennett

1943-. (aged 83)
computer scientist theoretical physicist physicist cryptographer
Charles Henry Bennett is an American physicist, information theorist and IBM Fellow at IBM Research. Bennett's recent work at IBM has concentrated on a re-examination of the physical basis of information, applying quantum physics to the problems surrounding information exchange. He has played a major role in elucidating the interconnections between physics and information, particularly in the realm of quantum...
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Michael Ratner

20. Michael Ratner

1943-2016 (aged 73)
jurist lawyer writer
Michael Ratner was an American attorney. For much of his career, he was president of the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR), a non-profit human rights litigation organization based in New York City, and president of the European Center for Constitutional and Human Rights (ECCHR) based in Berlin.
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Adam Cheyer

21. Adam Cheyer

computer scientist artificial intelligence researcher engineer
Adam Cheyer is a co-founder of Siri Inc. and formerly a director of engineering in the iPhone group at Apple.
Nelson Figueroa

22. Nelson Figueroa

1974-. (aged 52)
baseball player
Nelson Figueroa is an American former professional baseball pitcher. He played in Major League Baseball (MLB) for the Arizona Diamondbacks, Philadelphia Phillies, Milwaukee Brewers, Pittsburgh Pirates, New York Mets, and Houston Astros. Figueroa also played for the Uni-President 7-Eleven Lions of the Chinese Professional Baseball League (CPBL) in Taiwan. He featured a fastball topping out at 91 mph, slider, curveball,...
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Evelyn Fox Keller

23. Evelyn Fox Keller

1936-2023 (aged 87)
feminist physicist philosopher university teacher biographer
Evelyn Fox Keller was an American physicist, author, and feminist. She was Professor Emerita of History and Philosophy of Science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Keller's early work concentrated at the intersection of physics and biology. Her subsequent research focused on the history and philosophy of modern biology and on gender and science.
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Alan Taylor

24. Alan Taylor

1955-. (aged 71)
historian university teacher
Alan Shaw Taylor is an American historian and scholar who, most recently, was the Thomas Jefferson Memorial Foundation Professor of History at the University of Virginia. A specialist in the early history of the United States, Taylor has written extensively about the colonial history of the United States, the American Revolution, and the early American Republic. Taylor has received two...
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Arthur Caplan

25. Arthur Caplan

1950-. (aged 76)
bioethicist
Arthur L. Caplan is an American ethicist and a professor of bioethics at New York University Grossman School of Medicine.
V. Balakrishnan

26. V. Balakrishnan

1943-. (aged 83)
physicist
V. Balakrishnan is an Indian theoretical physicist, who has worked in a number of fields and areas, including particle physics, many-body theory, the mechanical behavior of solids, dynamical systems, stochastic processes, and quantum dynamics. He is an accomplished researcher who has made important contributions to the theory of anelasticity, continuous-time random walks, and recurrences in dynamical systems.
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Ólafur Jóhann Ólafsson

27. Ólafur Jóhann Ólafsson

1962-. (aged 64)
writer
Ólafur Jóhann Ólafsson, also known as Olaf Olafsson, is an Icelandic businessman and writer. He is best known for his tenure at Sony and his leadership in the creation of the PlayStation video game console.
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Geir Haarde

28. Geir Haarde

1951-. (aged 75)
diplomat economist politician
Geir Hilmar Haarde is an Icelandic politician who served as prime minister of Iceland from 15 June 2006 to 1 February 2009, and as president of the Nordic Council in 1995. Geir was chairman of the Icelandic Independence Party from 2005 to 2009. From 2015 to 2019 he served as the ambassador of Iceland to the United States and several...
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Samrat Chakrabarti

29. Samrat Chakrabarti

1975-. (aged 51)
actor television actor
Samrat Chakrabarti is a British-American film actor and musician of Indian descent.
Josh Gondelman

30. Josh Gondelman

1985-. (aged 41)
magazine writer comedy writer stand-up comedian actor
Joshua Lyons Gondelman is an American author, comedy writer, producer, and stand-up comedian. He was a supervising producer and writer for Desus & Mero on Showtime. He was previously a writer on Last Week Tonight with John Oliver. He is also known for co-creating the parody Twitter account @SeinfeldToday.
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Robert Zimmer

31. Robert Zimmer

1947-2023 (aged 76)
university president mathematician
Robert Jeffrey Zimmer was an American mathematician and academic administrator. He served as the 13th president of the University of Chicago from July 2006 to August 2021 and as the honorary 3rd chancellor of the university from September 2021 to July 2022.
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Alvin Lucier

32. Alvin Lucier

1931-2021 (aged 90)
composer university teacher performance artist music journalist sound artist
Alvin Augustus Lucier Jr. was an American experimental composer and sound artist. A long-time music professor at Wesleyan University in Middletown, Connecticut, Lucier was a member of the influential Sonic Arts Union, which also included Robert Ashley, David Behrman, and Gordon Mumma. Much of Lucier's work explores psychoacoustic phenomena and the physical properties of sound.
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Anand Patwardhan

33. Anand Patwardhan

1950-. (aged 76)
film director
Anand Patwardhan is an Indian documentary filmmaker known for his socio-political, human rights-oriented films. Some of his films explore the rise of religious fundamentalism, sectarianism and casteism in India, while others investigate nuclear nationalism and unsustainable development. Notable films include Bombay: Our City (1985), In Memory of Friends (1990), In the Name of God (1992), Father, Son, and Holy War,...
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Walt Mossberg

34. Walt Mossberg

1947-. (aged 79)
journalist writer
Walter S. Mossberg is an American retired technology journalist and moderator.
David Silverman

35. David Silverman

1966-. (aged 60)
blogger television director
David Silverman is an American secular advocate.
Marshall Herskovitz

36. Marshall Herskovitz

1952-. (aged 74)
screenwriter film director film producer television producer
Marshall Schreiber Herskovitz is an American film director, writer, and producer, and currently the President Emeritus of the Producers Guild of America. Among his productions are Traffic, The Last Samurai, Blood Diamond, and I Am Sam. Herskovitz has directed two feature films, Jack the Bear and Dangerous Beauty. Herskovitz was a creator and executive producer of the television shows thirtysomething,...
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Stephen J. Cloobeck

37. Stephen J. Cloobeck

1961-. (aged 65)
businessperson
Stephen J. Cloobeck is an American businessman and the founder, former chairman, and chief executive officer of the timeshare company Diamond Resorts. He was a candidate for governor of California in the 2026 election.
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Harald Helfgott

38. Harald Helfgott

1977-. (aged 49)
mathematician university teacher
Harald Andrés Helfgott is a Peruvian mathematician working in number theory. Helfgott is a researcher (directeur de recherche) at the CNRS at the Institut Mathématique de Jussieu, Paris. He is best known for submitting a proof, now widely accepted but not yet fully published, of Goldbach's weak conjecture.
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Elliot Aronson

39. Elliot Aronson

1932-. (aged 94)
writer sociologist psychologist university teacher
Elliot Aronson is an American psychologist who has carried out experiments on the theory of cognitive dissonance, and invented the Jigsaw Classroom, a cooperative teaching technique that facilitates learning while reducing interethnic hostility and prejudice. In his 1972 social psychology textbook, The Social Animal, he stated Aronson's First Law: "People who do crazy things are not necessarily crazy", thus asserting...
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Janice Burgess

40. Janice Burgess

1952-2024 (aged 72)
executive producer television producer
Janice Burgess was an American television executive, screenwriter and producer for Nickelodeon. She created the Nick Jr. series The Backyardigans and worked as a writer and story editor for Nickelodeon's revival of Winx Club. Both shows were produced at the Nickelodeon Animation Studio. Burgess joined Nickelodeon in 1995 as executive-in-charge of production.
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Michael Rosbash

41. Michael Rosbash

1944-. (aged 82)
geneticist university teacher
Michael Morris Rosbash is an American geneticist and chronobiologist. Rosbash is a professor and researcher at Brandeis University and investigator at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. Rosbash's research group cloned the Drosophila period gene in 1984 and proposed the Transcription Translation Negative Feedback Loop for circadian clocks in 1990. In 1998, they discovered the cycle gene, clock gene, and cryptochrome...
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Guy Raz

42. Guy Raz

1975-. (aged 51)
university teacher journalist manager reporter radio personality
Guy Raz is an American journalist and podcaster. After degrees at Brandeis and Cambridge, and early positions writing for newspapers (including the Washington Post), Raz began work with NPR. There, he went on to serve as their bureau chief in Berlin (2000-2002) and London (2002-2004), and as their Pentagon correspondent (2006-2008), with an intervening stint as a CNN correspondent in...
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Debra Granik

43. Debra Granik

1963-. (aged 63)
writer film director cinematographer screenwriter
Debra Granik is an American filmmaker. She is most known for 2004's Down to the Bone, which starred Vera Farmiga, 2010's Winter's Bone, which starred Jennifer Lawrence in her breakout performance and for which Granik was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay, and 2018's Leave No Trace, a film based on the book My Abandonment by Peter...
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Patricia Hill Collins

44. Patricia Hill Collins

1948-. (aged 78)
researcher philosopher sociologist university teacher
Patricia Hill Collins is an American academic specializing in race, class, and gender. She is a distinguished university professor of sociology emerita at the University of Maryland, College Park. She is also the former head of the Department of African-American Studies at the University of Cincinnati. Collins was elected president of the American Sociological Association (ASA), and served in 2009...
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Karen Uhlenbeck

45. Karen Uhlenbeck

1942-. (aged 84)
mathematician university teacher
Karen Keskulla Uhlenbeck ForMemRS is an American mathematician and one of the founders of modern geometric analysis. She is a professor emerita of mathematics at the University of Texas at Austin, where she held the Sid W. Richardson Foundation Regents Chair. She is currently a distinguished visiting professor at the Institute for Advanced Study and a visiting senior research scholar...
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Joan Wallach Scott

46. Joan Wallach Scott

1941-. (aged 85)
historian labor historian university teacher writer
Joan Wallach Scott is an American historian of France with contributions in gender history. She is a professor emerita in the School of Social Science in the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey. Scott is known for her work in feminist history and gender theory, engaging post-structural theory on these topics. Geographically, her work focuses primarily on France,...
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Elizabeth Bruenig

47. Elizabeth Bruenig

1990-. (aged 36)
philologist columnist podcaster writer journalist
Elizabeth Bruenig is an American journalist working as an opinion writer for The Atlantic since 2021. She previously worked as a staff writer for The New Republic (2015), an opinion writer and editor for The Washington Post (2016–2020), and as an opinion writer for The New York Times (2020–2021). Bruenig has written about ethics, politics, theology, morality, economics, gender, family,...
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Michael Walzer

48. Michael Walzer

1935-. (aged 91)
political scientist writer sociologist university teacher philosopher
Michael Laban Walzer is an American political theorist and public intellectual. A professor emeritus at the Institute for Advanced Study (IAS) in Princeton, New Jersey, he is editor emeritus of the left-wing magazine Dissent, which he has been affiliated with since his years as an undergraduate at Brandeis University, an advisory editor of the Jewish journal Fathom, and sits on...
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Fatema Mernissi

49. Fatema Mernissi

1940-2015 (aged 75)
women's rights activist non-fiction writer university teacher sociologist essayist
Fatema Mernissi was a Moroccan feminist writer and sociologist.
Michael E. Horowitz

50. Michael E. Horowitz

1962-. (aged 64)
Michael Evan Horowitz is an American attorney and government official. He is the Inspector General for the Federal Reserve Board and Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. He previously served as Inspector General of the United States Department of Justice from 2012 to 2025.
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Kathy Acker

51. Kathy Acker

1947-1997 (aged 50)
performance artist university teacher writer comics writer prose writer
Kathy Acker was an American experimental novelist, poet, playwright, essayist, critic, performance artist, and postmodernist writer, known for her idiosyncratic and transgressive writing that dealt with complex themes such as childhood trauma, sexuality, language, identity, and rebellion. Her writing incorporates pastiche and the cut-up technique, involving cutting-up and scrambling passages and sentences; she also defined her writing as existing in...
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Gloria La Riva

52. Gloria La Riva

1954-. (aged 72)
politician
Gloria Estela La Riva is an American perennial political candidate and communist activist with the Party for Socialism and Liberation (PSL) and the Peace and Freedom Party. She was the PSL's nominee and the Peace and Freedom's nominee in the 2020 presidential election, her tenth consecutive run as either a presidential or vice presidential candidate. She was previously a member...
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Drew Weissman

53. Drew Weissman

1959-. (aged 67)
university teacher biologist researcher inventor biochemist
Drew Weissman is an American physician and immunologist known for his contributions to RNA biology. Weissman is the inaugural Roberts Family Professor in Vaccine Research, director of the Penn Institute for RNA Innovation, and professor of medicine at the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania (Penn).
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Josh Mostel

54. Josh Mostel

1946-. (aged 80)
television actor stage actor actor film actor
Joshua Mostel is an American actor with numerous film and Broadway credits. The son of Zero Mostel, he is best known for his supporting roles in films such as Jesus Christ Superstar (1973), Harry and Tonto (1974), Sophie's Choice (1982), City Slickers (1991), Billy Madison (1995), and Big Daddy (1999).
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Leslie Lamport

55. Leslie Lamport

1941-. (aged 85)
writer computer scientist mathematician engineer programmer
Leslie Barry Lamport is an American computer scientist and mathematician. Lamport is best known for his seminal work in distributed systems, and as the initial developer of the document preparation system LaTeX and the author of its first manual.
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Sidney Blumenthal

56. Sidney Blumenthal

1948-. (aged 78)
journalist
Sidney Stone Blumenthal is an American journalist, political operative, and Abraham Lincoln scholar. A former aide to Bill Clinton, he is a long-time confidant of Hillary Clinton, and was formerly employed by the Clinton Foundation. As a journalist, Blumenthal wrote about American politics and foreign policy. He is also the author of a multivolume biography of Lincoln, The Political Life...
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Allan Lichtman

57. Allan Lichtman

1947-. (aged 79)
historian political scientist university teacher
Allan Jay Lichtman is an American historian and political analyst who has taught at American University in Washington, D.C. since 1973. He is known for creating the Keys to the White House with Soviet seismologist Vladimir Keilis-Borok in 1981.
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Veronica Taylor

58. Veronica Taylor

1969-. (aged 57)
voice actor actor
Kathleen Charlotte McInerney, known professionally as Veronica Taylor, is an American voice actress known for her dubbing work in English-language adaptations of Japanese anime, in particular for voicing Ash Ketchum and his mother Delia in the Pokémon anime for its first eight seasons. Other voices she has done include Amelia Wil Tesla Seyruun from Slayers, Sailor Pluto from Sailor Moon...
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Stuart Damon

59. Stuart Damon

1937-2021 (aged 84)
film actor actor television actor
Stuart Damon was an American actor. He was best known for his 30-year portrayal of Dr. Alan Quartermaine on the American soap opera General Hospital, for which he won an Emmy Award in 1999. Outside the United States, he was known for the role of Craig Stirling in The Champions.
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Barry Newman

60. Barry Newman

1930-2023 (aged 93)
film actor television actor stage actor
Barry Foster Newman was an American actor of stage, screen, and television known for his portrayal of Kowalski in Vanishing Point, and for his title role in the 1970s television series Petrocelli. He was nominated for Golden Globe and Emmy awards.
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Christina Hoff Sommers

61. Christina Hoff Sommers

1950-. (aged 76)
writer philosopher
Christina Marie Hoff Sommers is an American author and philosopher. Specializing in ethics, she is a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute. Sommers is known for her critique of contemporary feminism. Her work includes the books Who Stole Feminism? (1994) and The War Against Boys (2000). She also hosts a video blog called The Factual Feminist.
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Arunoday Singh

62. Arunoday Singh

1983-. (aged 43)
actor
Arunoday Singh is an Indian actor. He made his debut with Sikandar. He has appeared in films like Aisha (2010), Yeh Saali Zindagi (2011), Jism 2 (2012), Main Tera Hero (2014), Mr X (2015), Mohenjo Daro (2016) and Blackmail (2018). He also appeared in the web series Apaharan (2018–2022).
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Paul L. Smith

63. Paul L. Smith

1936-2012 (aged 76)
actor television actor character actor director film actor
Paul Lawrence Smith was an American actor. Burly, bearded and imposing, he appeared in feature films and occasionally on television since the 1960s, generally playing "heavies" and bad guys. His most notable roles include Hamidou, the vicious prison guard in Midnight Express (1978), Bluto in Robert Altman's Popeye (1980), Gideon in the ABC miniseries Masada (1981), Glossu "Beast" Rabban in...
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Michael Sandel

64. Michael Sandel

1953-. (aged 73)
writer political philosopher pedagogue university teacher
Michael Joseph Sandel is an American political philosopher and the Anne T. and Robert M. Bass Professor of Government at Harvard University, where his course Justice was the university's first course to be made freely available online and on television. It has been viewed by tens of millions of people around the world, including in China, where Sandel was named...
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Ian McElhinney

65. Ian McElhinney

1948-. (aged 78)
television actor stage actor actor film actor
Ian McElhinney is a Northern Irish actor and director. He has appeared in many television series in a career spanning more than forty years; notable appearances include Taggart, Hornblower, Cold Feet, and The Tudors. In recent times, his best known roles are as Barristan Selmy in Game of Thrones, Morgan Monroe in The Fall, and Granda Joe in Derry Girls.
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Mitch Albom

66. Mitch Albom

1958-. (aged 68)
continuity journalist radio personality television announcer columnist
Mitchell David Albom is an American author, sports journalist, talk show host and philanthropist. As of 2021, his books are reported to have sold 40 million copies worldwide. Having achieved national recognition as a sports journalist early on in his writing career, Albom turned to writing inspirational stories and themes—a preeminent early one being Tuesdays with Morrie.
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Christie Hefner

67. Christie Hefner

1952-. (aged 74)
activist businessperson socialite
Christie Ann Hefner is an American businesswoman. She was chairman and CEO of Playboy Enterprises from 1988 to 2009, and is the daughter of Playboy magazine founder Hugh Hefner.
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Robin Weigert

68. Robin Weigert

1969-. (aged 57)
television actor film director actor film actor
Robin Weigert is an American television and film actress. She is best known for portraying Calamity Jane on the television series Deadwood, for which she received a nomination for the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Drama Series in 2004, Ally Lowen in Sons of Anarchy (2010–2013), Dr. Amanda Reisman in Big Little Lies (2017–2019), and Abby...
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Louise Lasser

69. Louise Lasser

1939-. (aged 87)
screenwriter stage actor television actor actor film actor
Louise Lasser is an American actress, television writer, and performing arts teacher and director. She is known for her portrayal of the title character on the soap opera satire Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman, for which she was Primetime Emmy Award nominated.
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Aafia Siddiqui

70. Aafia Siddiqui

1972-. (aged 54)
neuroscientist
Aafia Siddiqui is a Pakistani neuroscientist and educator who gained international attention following her conviction in the United States and is currently serving an 86-year sentence for attempted murder and other felonies at the Federal Medical Center, Carswell, in Fort Worth, Texas.
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Gates McFadden

71. Gates McFadden

1949-. (aged 77)
choreographer television actor camera operator television director film actor
Cheryl Gates McFadden is an American actress and choreographer. She is usually credited as Cheryl McFadden when working as a choreographer and Gates McFadden when working as an actress. She played Dr. Beverly Crusher in the television series Star Trek: The Next Generation, its four subsequent films, the sequel series Star Trek: Picard, and Star Trek: Prodigy.
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Abbie Hoffman

72. Abbie Hoffman

1936-1989 (aged 53)
social activist writer human rights defender peace activist political activist
Abbot Howard Hoffman was an American political and social activist who co-founded the Youth International Party ("Yippies") and was a member of the Chicago Seven. He was also a leading proponent of the Flower Power movement.
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Tyne Daly

73. Tyne Daly

1946-. (aged 80)
film actor television actor stage actor
Ellen Tyne Daly is an American actress whose six-decade career included many leading roles in movies and theater. She has won six Emmy Awards for her television work and a Tony Award, and is a 2011 American Theatre Hall of Fame inductee.
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Simon Sinek

74. Simon Sinek

1973-. (aged 53)
writer motivational speaker
Simon Oliver Sinek is an American author and inspirational speaker on business leadership. His books include Start with Why (2009) and The Infinite Game (2019).
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Debra Messing

75. Debra Messing

1968-. (aged 58)
stage actor actor television producer voice actor film producer
Debra Lynn Messing is an American actress. After graduating from New York University's Tisch School of the Arts, Messing starred in the television series Ned and Stacey on Fox (1995–1997) and Prey on ABC (1998). She achieved her breakthrough role as Grace Adler, an interior designer, on the NBC sitcom Will & Grace (1998–2006, 2017–2020), for which she received seven...
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Paul Anastas

76. Paul Anastas

1962-. (aged 64)
university teacher chemist scientist
Paul T. Anastas is an American scientist, inventor, author, entrepreneur, professor, and public servant. He is the Director of Yale University's Center for Green Chemistry and Green Engineering, Previously he served as the Science Advisor to the United States Environmental Protection Agency as well as the Agency's Assistant Administrator for Research and Development, appointed by President Barack Obama.
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Alexander Gould

77. Alexander Gould

1994-. (aged 32)
film producer film actor film director television actor actor
Alexander Jerome Gould is an American actor. He is known for voicing the title character of the Pixar animated film Finding Nemo and for his portrayal of Shane Botwin on the Showtime drama series Weeds, the latter of which earned him two Screen Actors Guild Award nominations.
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Jeffrey Lurie

78. Jeffrey Lurie

1951-. (aged 75)
film producer
Jeffrey Robert Lurie is an American businessman, documentary film producer, and, since 1994, owner of the Philadelphia Eagles of the National Football League (NFL). The Eagles have won two Super Bowls under his tenure as owner.
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Gustavo Gelpí

79. Gustavo Gelpí

1965-. (aged 61)
judge
Gustavo Antonio Gelpí Jr. is an American lawyer who serves as a United States circuit judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the First Circuit. He is a former chief United States district judge of the United States District Court for the District of Puerto Rico.
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Jennifer Lafleur

80. Jennifer Lafleur

1979-. (aged 47)
film actor actor film director
Jennifer Lafleur is an American actress. She is known for appearing in the independent films The Do-Deca-Pentathlon, The Pretty One (2013), The Midnight Swim (2014), MAD (2016) and 6 Years (2015). On television, Lafleur has appeared on the HBO series Big Little Lies, Room 104 and Animals., the Showtime series Billions, American Crime on ABC, Married on FX, Chicago Fire...
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Thomas Friedman

81. Thomas Friedman

1953-. (aged 73)
screenwriter columnist writer journalist television producer
Thomas Loren Friedman is an American political commentator and author. He is a three-time Pulitzer Prize winner who is a weekly columnist for The New York Times. He has written extensively on foreign affairs, global trade, the Middle East, globalization, and environmental issues.
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Daniel B. Shapiro

82. Daniel B. Shapiro

1969-. (aged 57)
diplomat congressional staff lobbyist
Daniel Benjamin Shapiro is an American diplomat who served as United States Ambassador to Israel from 2011 to 2017. He was nominated by President Barack Obama on March 29, 2011, and confirmed by the Senate on May 29. He was sworn in as ambassador by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton on July 8, 2011. Previously, he was the senior director...
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Yuri Felshtinsky

83. Yuri Felshtinsky

1956-. (aged 70)
historian
Yuri Georgievich Felshtinsky is a Russian American historian. Felshtinsky has authored a number of books on Russian history, including The Bolsheviks and the Left SRs (Paris, 1985), Towards a History of Our Isolation (London, 1988; Moscow, 1991), The Failure of the World Revolution (London, 1991; Moscow, 1992), Blowing up Russia (with Alexander Litvinenko), and The Age of Assassins (with Vladimir...
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Halim El-Dabh

84. Halim El-Dabh

1921-2017 (aged 96)
composer pianist ethnomusicologist university teacher
Halim Abdul Messieh El-Dabh was an Egyptian-American composer, musician, ethnomusicologist, and educator, who had a career spanning six decades. He is particularly known as an early pioneer of electronic music. In 1944 he composed one of the earliest known works of tape music, or musique concrète. From the late 1950s to early 1960s he produced influential work at the Columbia-Princeton...
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Roderick MacKinnon

85. Roderick MacKinnon

1956-. (aged 70)
chemist biophysicist crystallographer internist university teacher
Roderick MacKinnon is an American biophysicist, neuroscientist, and businessman. He is a professor of molecular neurobiology and biophysics at Rockefeller University who won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry together with Peter Agre in 2003 for his work on the structure and operation of ion channels.
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Tony Goldwyn

86. Tony Goldwyn

1960-. (aged 66)
voice actor stage actor actor television actor film actor
Anthony Howard Goldwyn is an American actor and director. He made his debut appearing as Darren in the slasher film Friday the 13th Part VI: Jason Lives (1986) and had his breakthrough starring as Carl Bruner in the fantasy thriller film Ghost (1990), which earned him a nomination for the Saturn Award for Best Supporting Actor. He went on to...
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Arthur Green

87. Arthur Green

1941-. (aged 85)
rabbi
Arthur Green is an American scholar of Jewish mysticism and Neo-Hasidic theologian. He was a founding dean of the non-denominational rabbinical program at Hebrew College in Boston. He describes himself as an American Jew who was educated entirely by the generation of immigrant Jewish intellectuals cast up on American shores by World War II.
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Katherine Ann Power

88. Katherine Ann Power

1949-. (aged 77)
bank robber
Katherine Ann Power, also known under the aliases Mae Kelly and Alice Louise Metzinger, is an American ex-convict and long-time fugitive, who, along with her fellow student and accomplice Susan Edith Saxe, was placed on the FBI's Most Wanted Fugitives list in 1970. The two participated in robberies at a Massachusetts National Guard armory and a bank in Brighton, Massachusetts,...
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Karen Lynn Gorney

89. Karen Lynn Gorney

1945-. (aged 81)
dancer film actor stage actor television actor actor
Karen Lynn Gorney is an American actress who had roles in television shows and films including the soap opera All My Children and the movie Saturday Night Fever.
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Elaine Showalter

90. Elaine Showalter

1941-. (aged 85)
literary critic university teacher writer journalist sociologist
Elaine Showalter is an American literary critic, feminist, and writer on cultural and social issues. She influenced feminist literary criticism in the United States academia, developing the concept and practice of gynocritics, a term describing the study of "women as writers".
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Loretta Devine

91. Loretta Devine

1949-. (aged 77)
stage actor television actor voice actor actor film actor
Loretta Devine is an American actress. She is known for numerous roles across stage and screen. Her most high profile roles include Lorrell Robinson in the original Broadway production of Dreamgirls (1981), Gloria Matthews in the film Waiting to Exhale (1995), and her recurring role as Adele Webber on the medical drama Grey's Anatomy, for which she won a Primetime...
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Edward Witten

92. Edward Witten

1951-. (aged 75)
university teacher physicist theoretical physicist string theorist mathematician
Edward Witten is an American theoretical physicist known for his contributions to string theory, topological quantum field theory, and various areas of mathematics. He is a professor emeritus in the school of natural sciences at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton. Witten is a researcher in string theory, quantum gravity, supersymmetric quantum field theories, and other areas of mathematical...
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Wakako Hironaka

93. Wakako Hironaka

1934-. (aged 92)
writer politician
Wakako Hironaka is a Japanese writer and politician. She served four terms in the House of Councillors, the upper house of the national Diet, from 1986 until 2010. Her husband is Heisuke Hironaka, a mathematician.
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Arjun Appadurai

94. Arjun Appadurai

1949-. (aged 77)
anthropologist academic theorist sociologist
Arjun Appadurai FRAI is an Indian-American anthropologist who has been recognized as a major theorist in globalization studies. He is an elected fellow of the Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland. In his anthropological work, he discusses the importance of the modernity of nation-states and globalization. He is the former professor of anthropology and South Asian Languages and...
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Shen Tong

95. Shen Tong

1968-. (aged 58)
activist businessperson entrepreneur television producer
Shen Tong is an American impact investor, activist, and writer. He founded business & Impact accelerators TheFutureCo in 2023, FoodFutureCo in 2015, and Food-X in 2014, recognized by Fast Company as one of "The World's Top 10 Most Innovative Companies of 2015 in Food". He was a Chinese dissident who was exiled as one of the student leaders in the...
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Ha Jin

96. Ha Jin

1956-. (aged 70)
novelist university teacher short story writer writer poet
Jin Xuefei is a Chinese American poet and novelist who uses the pen name Ha Jin (哈金). The name Ha comes from his favorite city, Harbin. His poetry is associated with the Misty Poetry movement.
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George Saitoti

97. George Saitoti

1945-2012 (aged 67)
minister university teacher politician mathematician economist
George Musengi Saitoti, E.G.H. was a Kenyan politician, businessman and American- and British-trained economist, mathematician and development policy thinker.
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Dimitrij Rupel

98. Dimitrij Rupel

1946-. (aged 80)
literary historian university teacher writer diplomat sociologist
Dimitrij Rupel is a Slovenian politician.
Angela Davis

99. Angela Davis

1944-. (aged 82)
university teacher women's rights activist human rights defender political prisoner writer
Angela Yvonne Davis is an American Marxist and feminist political activist, philosopher, academic, author and social theorist. She is Distinguished Professor Emerita of Feminist Studies and History of Consciousness at the University of California, Santa Cruz. Davis was a longtime member of the Communist Party USA (CPUSA) and a founding member of the Committees of Correspondence for Democracy and Socialism...
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Zanele Dlamini Mbeki

100. Zanele Dlamini Mbeki

1938-. (aged 88)
social worker politician
Zanele Mbeki OMSS is a feminist South African social worker who founded the Women's Development Bank. She is also a former first lady of South Africa.
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