99 Notable alumni of Carleton College

Fern Pfafflin Rathe was an American organic chemist who helped discover cathomycin, an antibiotic used to treat strains of the bacteria Staphylococcus, while working at pharmaceutical company Merck & Co.

Mary S. Rogeness is an American politician who represented the 2nd Hampden district in the Massachusetts House of Representatives from 1991 to 2009 and was a member of the Longmeadow School Committee from 1982 to 1988. She was first elected by defeating Mary Gail Cokkineas.

Michael John "M.J." Dowling was a Minnesota Republican politician and Speaker of the Minnesota House of Representatives.

Tsune Watanabe was a Japanese educator. She was president of the Congregational Woman's Missionary Society of Japan and head of the Woman's Christian Temperance Union in Kobe.

Oliver Wendell Holmes was an American archivist and historian, who served as executive director of the National Historical Publications Commission from 1961 to 1971.

Kathy Lynn Hudson is an American microbiologist specializing in science policy. She was the deputy director for science, outreach, and policy at the National Institutes of Health from October 2010 to January 2017. Hudson assisted in the creation and launch of All of Us, the BRAIN initiative, and the National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences. She founded the Genetics and...

David Leo Francis "Dave" Duax was a Wisconsin politician who served in the cabinet of Wisconsin Governor Tommy Thompson as the State Administrator of the Division for Youth Services. He previously served as director of the State Office of Health Care. Duax was the chairman of the Eau Claire County Board of Supervisors, and served as vice president of the...

Donald B. Redfern is an American politician in the state of Iowa.

Cordenio Arnold Severance was an American lawyer from Minnesota. He co-founded the American Law Institute and served as president of the American Bar Association. His wife, known as Mrs. Cordenio A. Severance published the book Indian Legends of Minnesota and survived the sinking of the RMS Republic in 1909.

Kenneth D. Poss is an American biologist and currently James B. Duke Professor of Cell Biology and director of the Regeneration Next Initiative at the Duke University School of Medicine (Durham, North Carolina).

John A. Nephew is an American game designer, who has worked primarily on role-playing games.

René Alphonse Higonnet was a French engineer and inventor who co-developed the phototypesetting process with Louis Moyroud, which allows text and images to be printed on paper using a photoengraving process, a method that made the traditional publishing method of hot metal typesetting obsolete.

Kathy Lee Peiss is an American historian. She is the Roy F. and Jeannette P. Nichols Professor of American History at The University of Pennsylvania. She is a fellow of the Society of American Historians.

Henry H. Riggs was a Christian missionary stationed in Kharpert during the Armenian genocide. In his book Days of Tragedy in Armenia: Personal Experiences in Harpoot, 1915-1917, Riggs provides an important eyewitness account of the genocide and concluded that the deportation of Armenians was part of an extermination program organized by the Ottoman government. The book is considered to be...

John Lavine is a United States journalist and educator and currently the chief executive officer of StrategicMediaGroup.com. Previously, he was a media company publisher and editor, and then professor and Dean of Northwestern University's Medill School of Journalism, Media, Integrated Marketing Communications, as well as a professor of media management and strategy at the Kellogg School of Management.

Joy A. Crisp is a planetary geologist specializing in Mars geology. She is noted for her work on NASA missions to Mars, including the Mars Exploration Rovers and Mars Science Laboratory.

John J. Hicks was second director of National Photographic Interpretation Center. Hicks was appointed as the Director of NPIC in July 1973, after retirement of Arthur C. Lundahl, first director of NPIC. He served as the Director of NPIC from July 1973 to May 1978.

Christine Siddoway is an American Antarctic researcher, best known for her work on the geology and tectonics of the Ford Ranges in western Marie Byrd Land. Other discoveries relate to preserved records of continental-interior sedimentation during the Sturtian glaciation, Cryogenian Period, in Rodinia, and evidence of a reduced Pliocene extent of the West Antarctic ice sheet, based upon investigation of...

Peter B. Davidson is an American lawyer and government official who served as the General Counsel of the United States Department of Commerce from 2017 to 2019. From 2003 to 2017, he was the senior vice president for federal government relations at Verizon Communications. Before that he held positions as general counsel to the United States Trade Representative, vice president...

John Hanson is an American movie director and cinematographer.

Jeffrey Thomas Bergner is an American foreign policy expert. He is a visiting lecturer at the Batten School of Public Policy and Leadership at the University of Virginia. He is the author of The Origin of Formalism in Social Science, The New Superpowers, Against Modern Humanism, The Vanishing Congress, and Turning Point: Judaism, Christianity and Islam Confront Greek Philosophy. He...

Anne Sewell Young was an American astronomer. She was an astronomy professor at Mount Holyoke College for 37 years. Her influence on the astronomy program at Mount Holyoke was profound, and lasted far beyond her own time as one of the eight members of the American Association of Variable Star Observers (AAVSO).

Carl Robert Eklund was a leading American specialist in ornithology and geographic research in both the north and south polar regions. He was appointed as the first Scientific Station Leader of the Wilkes Station, Antarctica.

John Jeremy Stuhr is an American philosopher who teaches at Emory University. He has written extensively about a wide assortment of philosophical figures and movements as well as a broad array of cultural problems and issues. His work is known for its lively, engaged, and direct style. He draws critically on thinkers from often separated philosophical traditions (such as Pragmatism,...

Robert Huddleston Wiebe was an American historian and bestselling author. He specialized in American business history.

Aisha Sabatini Sloan is an American writer who was born and raised in Los Angeles. Her writing about race and current events is often coupled with analysis of art, film, and pop culture. She studied English literature at Carleton College and went on to earn an MA in Cultural Studies and Studio Art from the Gallatin School of Individualized Study...

Mary Emma Byrd was an American astronomer and educator. She is considered a pioneer astronomy teacher at college level. She was also an astronomer in her own right, determining cometary positions by photography.

Fue Lee is a Hmong-American politician serving in the Minnesota House of Representatives since 2016. A member of the Minnesota Democratic–Farmer–Labor Party (DFL), Lee represents district 59A, which includes parts of northern Minneapolis in Hennepin County.

Evelyn M. Anderson was an American physiologist and biochemist, most known for her co-discovery of adrenocorticotropic hormone (adreno-cortical thyroid hormone or ACTH) in 1934.

Ken Christianson is an American musician and artist living in Los Angeles, California, U.S, and co-founder of Père Music. He is the composer of the score to the short film Better Left Alone, resident composer for the Samantha Giron Dance Project, bass player for the Los Angeles funk-jam band The Three Trees, violinist for The Jimmy Lifton Group, and former...

Bonnie Nadzam is an American writer. She is a native of Cleveland Heights, Ohio.

Jane Elizabeth Hodgson was an American obstetrician and gynecologist. Hodgson received a bachelor's degree from Carleton College and her M.D. from the University of Minnesota. She trained at the Jersey City Medical Center and at the Mayo Clinic.

Osborne Bryan Cowles was an American basketball player and coach. He was the head men's basketball coach at Carleton College (1924–1930), River Falls State Teachers College (now University of Wisconsin–River Falls) (1932–1936), Dartmouth College (1936–1946), University of Michigan (1946–1948), and University of Minnesota (1948–1959). He was also the head baseball coach and assistant basketball and football coach at Iowa State...

Robert Keith Gray was a Republican activist and public relations executive who founded Gray and Company in 1981 after working with Hill & Knowlton. He was President Dwight D. Eisenhower's White House Cabinet Secretary.

Audrey Goldstein Fleissig is a senior United States district judge of the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Missouri. She also is a former United States attorney.

Cynthia Kierscht is an official at the United States Department of State serving as the United States ambassador to Djibouti since 2024. She previously served as the United States ambassador to Mauritania from 2021 to 2024.

Leonard Blaine "Stub" Allison was an American football, basketball, and baseball coach. He served as the head football coach at the University of Washington (1920), the University of South Dakota (1922–1926), at the University of California, Berkeley (1935–1944), compiling a career college football record of 80–66–5. At California, Allison amassed a 58–42–2 record. In 1937 and 1938, he guided the...

Kalamu ya Salaam is an American poet, author, filmmaker, and teacher from the 9th Ward of New Orleans. A well-known activist and social critic, Salaam has spoken out on a number of racial and human rights issues. For years, he did radio shows on WWOZ. Salaam is the co-founder of the NOMMO Literary Society, a weekly workshop for Black writers.

Joseph Alfred Arner Burnquist was an American attorney and Republican politician in Minnesota. He served in the Minnesota State Legislature from 1909 to 1911, was elected the 20th Lieutenant Governor of Minnesota in 1912, and then served as the 19th Governor of Minnesota from December 30, 1915, to January 5, 1921. He became governor after the death of Governor Winfield...

Brenda Kay Sannes is an American lawyer who serves as the chief United States district judge of the United States District Court for the Northern District of New York. She is a former assistant United States attorney who served from 1988 to 2014.

Robin Wonsley is an American activist and politician who has been a member of the Minneapolis City Council from the 2nd Ward since 2021. Since 2026, she has also held the title of Minority Leader.

Joseph Anthony Bach was one of Notre Dame's famed "Seven Mules" and later the head coach for the NFL's Pittsburgh Pirates (1935–36) and later the renamed Pittsburgh Steelers (1952–53).

Paul Tewes is a Democratic strategist specializing in national political organizing in the United States.

Jamie Long is an American politician serving in the Minnesota House of Representatives since 2019. A member of the Minnesota Democratic–Farmer–Labor Party (DFL), Long represents District 61B, which includes parts of southern Minneapolis in Hennepin County, Minnesota.

Pierce Butler was an American jurist who served as an associate justice of the Supreme Court of the United States from 1923 until his death in 1939. He is notable for being the first Supreme Court justice from Minnesota, and for being a Democrat appointed by a Republican president. He was a staunch conservative and was regarded as a part...

Pamela Collins Dean Dyer-Bennet, better known as Pamela Dean, is an American fantasy author whose best-known book is Tam Lin, based on the Child Ballad of the same name, in which the Scottish fairy story is set on a midwestern college campus loosely based on her alma mater, Carleton College in Minnesota.

William Burnett Benton was an American senator from Connecticut (1949–1953) and publisher of the Encyclopædia Britannica (1943–1973).

Robert William Kastenmeier was an American Democratic politician who represented central Wisconsin in the United States House of Representatives for 32 years, from 1959 until 1991. He was a key sponsor of the Copyright Act of 1976 and the Electronic Communications Privacy Act of 1986.

Jerry O. Relph was an American politician and member of the Minnesota Senate. A Republican, he represented District 14 in central Minnesota from 2017 until his death from COVID-19 complications in 2020. Six weeks before his death, he attended a superspreader event, along with several other Minnesota Republicans, where attendees did not comply with public health recommendations, such as wearing...

Susan G. Golding is an American politician who served as the 32nd mayor of San Diego from 1992 to 2000. A member of the Republican Party, she previously served as a member of the San Diego County Board of Supervisors from 1985 to 1992 and as a member of the San Diego City Council from 1981 to 1983.

T. J. Stiles is an American biographer who lives in Berkeley, California. His book The First Tycoon: The Epic Life of Cornelius Vanderbilt (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2009) won a National Book Award and the 2010 Pulitzer Prize for Biography or Autobiography. His book Custer's Trials: A Life on the Frontier of a New America received the 2016 Pulitzer...

Fred A. Risser is a retired American politician and attorney from the state of Wisconsin. A Democrat from Madison, Risser was a member of the Wisconsin Legislature from 1957 to 2021. At the time of his retirement, he was the longest-tenured American state legislator in history. He served for six years in the Wisconsin State Assembly and served for 58...

Richard Edwin Stearns is an American computer scientist who, with Juris Hartmanis, received the 1993 ACM Turing Award "in recognition of their seminal paper which established the foundations for the field of computational complexity theory". In 1994 he was inducted as a Fellow of the Association for Computing Machinery.

Jessica Abel is an American comic book writer and artist, known as the creator of such works as Life Sucks, Drawing Words & Writing Pictures, Soundtrack, La Perdida, Mirror, Window, Radio: An Illustrated Guide (with collaborator Ira Glass), and the omnibus series Artbabe.

Jane Hamilton is an American novelist.

Karl Earl Mundt was an American educator and a Republican member of the United States Congress, representing South Dakota in the United States House of Representatives (1939–1948) and in the United States Senate (1948–1973).

Karen Tei Yamashita is an American writer.

Warren Perley Knowles III was an American lawyer and politician who was the 37th governor of Wisconsin from 1965 to 1971. Prior to that, he was the 32nd and 34th lieutenant governor of Wisconsin, and represented St. Croix, Buffalo, Pepin, and Pierce Counties in the Wisconsin Senate for fourteen years.

Hal Higdon is an American writer and runner known for his training plans. He is the author of 34 books, including the best-selling Marathon: The Ultimate Training Guide. He has worked as a freelance writer since 1959, and has written a variety of subjects including a children's book that was made into an animated feature. He has contributed to Runner's...

Robert Carson Allen is Professor of Economic History at New York University Abu Dhabi.

John F. Harris is an American political journalist who is the co-founder and global editor-in-chief of Politico. With former partner Jim VandeHei, Harris founded Politico on January 23, 2007, and previously served as editor-in-chief until 2019. Harris is the author of a book on Bill Clinton called The Survivor, and the co-author of The Way to Win: Clinton, Bush, Rove...

Clara Jeffery is an American journalist. She has been editor-in-chief of Mother Jones since 2006. When the magazine merged in 2024 with The Center for Investigative Reporting, Jeffery was named editor-in-chief of the combined organization. She is a recipient of a PEN award for magazine editing.

Katherine Anandi Rowe is an American scholar of Renaissance literature and media history. She was named the twenty-eighth president of the College of William & Mary on February 20, 2018. She began her service on July 2, 2018 succeeding W. Taylor Reveley III, who had served as president since 2008 and is the first woman to be named president. After...

Thomas M. Nelson is an American public administrator and politician serving as the county executive of Outagamie County, Wisconsin, since 2011. A member of the Democratic Party, Nelson previously served in the Wisconsin State Assembly for six years, and was the Democratic majority leader for the 2009–2010 session. He was a candidate in the 2022 Democratic primary election for the...

Michael Hayden Armacost was an American diplomat, who was acting United States Secretary of State during the early days of the administration of President George H. W. Bush, before Secretary James Baker was confirmed by the Senate. Armacost also served as United States Ambassador to Japan and the president of the Brookings Institution from 1995 to 2002. He was later...

William Peter Fleckenstein was an American professional football player who was a guard in the National Football League (NFL) for seven seasons with the Chicago Bears, the Portsmouth Spartans, the Brooklyn Dodgers, and the Frankford Yellow Jackets.

Patricia Collins Wrede is an American author of fantasy literature. She is known for her Enchanted Forest Chronicles series for young adults, which was voted number 84 in NPR's 100 Best-Ever Teen Novels list.

Rush Dew Holt Jr. is an American scientist and politician who served as the U.S. representative for New Jersey's 12th congressional district from 1999 to 2015. He is a member of the Democratic Party and son of former West Virginia U.S. Senator Rush D. Holt Sr. He worked as a professor of public policy and physics, and during his tenure...

Peter Charles Schjeldahl was an American art critic, poet, and educator. He was noted for being the head art critic at The New Yorker, having earlier written for The Village Voice, ARTnews, and The New York Times.

Gail Omvedt was an American-born Indian sociologist and human rights activist. She was a prolific writer and published numerous books on the anti-caste movement, Dalit politics, and women's struggles in India. Omvedt was involved in Dalit and anti-caste movements, environmental, farmers' and women's movements, especially with rural women.

Barbara Lee Fredrickson is an American professor in the department of psychology at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where she is the Kenan Distinguished Professor of Psychology. She is also the Principal Investigator of the Positive Emotions and Psychophysiology Lab (PEPLab) at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Clifton Garrick Utley was an American television journalist. He established his career reporting about the Vietnam War and has the distinction of being the first full-time television correspondent covering the war on-site.

Parker J. Palmer is an American author, educator, and activist who focuses on issues in education, community, leadership, spirituality and social change. He has published ten books and numerous essays and poems, and is founder and Senior Partner Emeritus of the Center for Courage and Renewal. His work has been recognized with major foundation grants, several national awards, and fourteen...

Lila Abu-Lughod is an American anthropologist. She is the Joseph L. Buttenweiser Professor of Social Science at Columbia University. She specializes in ethnographic research in the Arab world, and her seven books cover topics including sentiment and poetry, nationalism and media, gender politics and the politics of memory.

James William Loewen was an American sociologist, historian, and author. He was best known for his 1995 book, Lies My Teacher Told Me: Everything Your American History Textbook Got Wrong. A 2005 book, Sundown Towns: A Hidden Dimension of American Racism, galvanized a national effort to develop a list of sundown towns.

Mary-Claire King is an American geneticist. She was the first to show that breast cancer can be inherited due to mutations in the gene she called BRCA1. She studies human genetics and is particularly interested in genetic heterogeneity and complex traits. She studies the interaction of genetics and environmental influences and their effects on human conditions such as breast and...

Elizabeth Katharine "Betsy" Johnson is an American aviator, entrepreneur, and politician who served in the Oregon House of Representatives from the 1st and 31st House districts from 2001 to 2005, and in the Oregon Senate from the 16th district from 2005 to 2021, as a member of the Democratic Party. Prior to her tenure in the state legislature she served...

Barrie Mitchell Osborne ONZM is an American film producer, production manager and director.

Andrij Parekh is an American cinematographer and television director.

Laura Pauline Veirs is an American singer-songwriter based in Portland, Oregon. She is known for her folk and alternative country records and live performances as well as her collaboration with Neko Case and k.d. lang on the case/lang/veirs project. Veirs has written a children's book and hosts a podcast about parenting and performing.

Kai Bird is an American author and columnist, best known for his works on the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, United States-Middle East political relations, and his biographies of political figures. He won a Pulitzer Prize for American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer.

Walter Alvarez is a professor in the Earth and Planetary Science department at the University of California, Berkeley. He and his father, Nobel Prize–winning physicist Luis Alvarez, developed the theory that dinosaurs were killed by an asteroid impact.

Dennis Lynn Meadows is an American scientist and Emeritus Professor of Systems Management, and former director of the Institute for Policy and Social Science Research at the University of New Hampshire. He is President of the Laboratory for Interactive Learning and widely known as a co-author of The Limits to Growth.

Jonathan T. Capehart is an American journalist and liberal television commentator. Capehart began hosting MSNBC programs in 2020, and has been with the MS NOW news talk show The Weekend since 2025. Previously an opinion writer for The Washington Post, Capehart has contributed weekly political commentary on the PBS News Hour since 2021.

Maxwell Sieben Baucus is an American politician who served as a United States senator from Montana from 1978 to 2014. A member of the Democratic Party, he was a U.S. senator for over 35 years, making him the longest-serving U.S. senator in Montana history. President Barack Obama later appointed Baucus to replace Gary Locke as the 11th U.S. Ambassador to...

Lincoln Child is an American author of techno-thriller and horror novels. Though he is most well known for his collaborations with Douglas Preston (including the Agent Pendergast series and the Gideon Crew series, among others), he has also written eight solo novels, including the Jeremy Logan series. Over twenty of the collaborative novels and most of his solo novels have...

John Elmer Carson, known as Jack Carson, was a Canadian-born American film actor. Carson often played the role of comedic friend in films of the 1940s and 1950s, including The Strawberry Blonde (1941) with James Cagney and Arsenic and Old Lace (1944) with Cary Grant. He appeared in such dramas as Mildred Pierce (1945), A Star Is Born (1954), and...

Christopher Frederick James Kratt is an American zoologist, biologist, educational nature show host and YouTuber. A grandson of musical-instrument manufacturer William Jacob "Bill" Kratt, he and his older brother Martin grew up in Warren Township, New Jersey, and together created children's television series Kratts' Creatures, Zoboomafoo, and Be the Creature (which aired on the National Geographic Channel and CBC), as...

Jimmy Chin is an American professional mountain athlete, photographer, skier, film director, and author.

Thorstein Bunde Veblen was an American economist and sociologist who, during his lifetime, emerged as a well-known critic of capitalism.

Jacob Joseph Lew is an American attorney and diplomat who served as the 28th United States ambassador to Israel from 2023 to 2025. He was the 76th United States secretary of the treasury from 2013 to 2017. A member of the Democratic Party, he also served as the 25th White House chief of staff from 2012 to 2013 and as...

Zach McGowan is an American film, television and voice actor. He is known for his roles in television series Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. as Anton Ivanov / The Superior, Shameless, Black Sails, and The 100. Other highlights include parts in the films Terminator Salvation, The Hunt for Eagle One, the sequel The Hunt for Eagle One: Crash Point and The Scorpion...

Peter Halsten Thorkelson, better known by his stage name Peter Tork, was an American musician and actor. He was best known as the bass guitarist and keyboardist of the Monkees and co-star of the NBC television series of the same name (1966–68).

Dale Ahlquist is an American author and advocate of the thought of G. K. Chesterton. Ahlquist is the president and a co-founder of the American Chesterton Society and the publisher of its magazine, Gilbert. He is also a co-founder of Chesterton Academy, a Catholic high school in Minneapolis.

Arnold W. Donald is an American businessman. He was the chief executive officer (CEO) of Carnival Corporation & plc from July 2013 to August 2022, when he became vice-chairman.

Douglas A. Vakoch is an American astrobiologist, search for extraterrestrial intelligence (SETI) researcher, psychologist, and president of METI International, a nonprofit research and educational organization devoted to transmitting intentional signals to extraterrestrial civilizations.

Eleanor Gates 'Ellie' Kinnaird is a North Carolina politician who served as a Democratic member of the North Carolina General Assembly representing the state's 23rd Senate district from January 1997 until her resignation in 2013. Her district included constituents in Orange and Chatham counties.

David Lee Wright is a mathematics professor, barbershop arranger, and Associate Director of the Ambassadors of Harmony (AOH). He is a noted a cappella historian and arranger, especially in the barbershop style where in 12 of 18 years from 1999 to 2016, his arrangements resulted in chorus gold medals at the Barbershop Harmony Society (BHS) International Contest. Wright travels the...