62 Notable alumni of College of Wooster

Sam H. Bell was a United States district judge of the United States District Court for the Northern District of Ohio.

Frank S. Fox was an American academic and college president, a noted public speaker, and an educator. He was a popular lecturer who was in great demand. He founded the Capitol College of Columbus which was located in Columbus, Ohio, and later renamed Dominion University when it relocated to Westerville.

Helen Watterson Moody was an American journalist and essayist.

Frederick G. Coan was a Christian missionary who was a witness to the Armenian genocide. Coan served as a missionary in Persia for over 50 years. He was an author of many books including Yesterdays in Persia and Kurdistan and has provided detailed eye-witness accounts of massacres of Armenians during the Armenian genocide. Coan believed that the number of dead...

James Foster Wilkin was a lawyer in the U.S. State of Ohio who was an Ohio Supreme Court Judge from 1912 to his death.

George S. Myers was a Democratic lawyer from Cleveland, Ohio, in the United States, who served in all three branches of the Ohio state government. He served two terms in the Ohio House of Representatives, two terms as Ohio Secretary of State, and finished his life as a judge on the Ohio Supreme Court.

Robert DuBois Workman was the U.S. Navy chief of chaplains during most of World War II from 1937 to 1945 and oversaw an increase of chaplains from less than 90 to more than 2800. He was of the Presbyterian faith. Workman was the first Chief of Chaplains to be promoted to rear admiral while still on active duty.

John Howey was a Florida architect known as part of the group of architects at work since 1965 that followed the Sarasota School of Architects led by Paul Rudolph. John Howey Associates is his Tampa Bay architectural firm formed in 1973. Some of his projects include Tampa City Hall Plaza, Village Presbyterian Church, and the Williers Residence in Tampa. John...

Arthur McQuiston Miller was an American educator, zoologist, geologist, and college football coach. He was the first football coach at Kentucky State College—now known as University of Kentucky—in 1892. Miller was also a professor of geology and zoology and the first dean of arts and sciences at school.

Carl Victor Weygandt was a jurist in the U.S. State of Ohio. He was Chief Justice of the Ohio Supreme Court for thirty years.

Charles Blaine McClintock was an American lawyer and politician who served two terms as a Republican U.S. Representative from Ohio from 1929 to 1933.

James Carl Stevens, a chemist, was the first Distinguished Fellow, at the Dow Chemical Company, retiring in January 2015. His area of expertise is organometallic chemistry and his primary field of research is in the area of polyolefin catalysis, particularly in the area of polyethylene, polypropylene, ethylene/styrene copolymers, and the combinatorial discovery of organometallic single-site catalysts. Stevens major contributions have...

Frederick William Hinitt was an American Presbyterian pastor and academic administrator who was president of Parsons College, Central University of Kentucky (now Centre College), and Washington & Jefferson College for various periods between 1900 and 1918. He was educated at Westminster College, McCormick Theological Seminary, and the University of Wooster (now the College of Wooster), and he began his career...

John Leslie Carwile is an American diplomat who served as the United States ambassador to Latvia from 2019 to 2023.

Samuel S. Yoder was an American Civil War veteran and politician who served two terms as a U.S. representative from Ohio from 1887 to 1891.

Elizabeth Alexander is an American composer. Her works include orchestral, chamber, piano and vocal works. She is best known for her over 80 choral pieces, which have been performed internationally by thousands of choirs. Alexander is also known for her liturgical works, and themes centering on social justice.

John Lawrence Goheen was an American missionary, educator and administrator, agriculturist, social worker, and writer who spent most of his career working in India. He made a major contribution to literacy through the Bombay Literacy Campaign of 1939. He established Adult Education Associations in various parts in India with a slogan "Every home a literate home". He promoted religious organizations...

John McSweeney was an American lawyer and politician who served as a U.S. representative from Ohio in the 20th century.

Samuel Hall Young, more commonly known as S. Hall Young, was an American clergyman.

Courtney Young is an American librarian and scholar, who served as the president of the American Library Association for the 2014–2015 year. On June 30, 2015, her term as ALA President ended, and she passed the title on to Sari Feldman.

Melvin Russell Riebe was an American professional basketball player.

Shannon Boyd-Bailey McCune was an American geographer who was the civil administrator of the Ryukyu Islands from 1962 to 1964, the first civilian to hold that office. He was president of the University of Vermont from 1964 to 1966.

William Reginald Minton is an American retired basketball coach. He served as the men's basketball head coach at Dartmouth College in 1984 and at the United States Air Force Academy from 1985 to 2000. From 2000 to 2020, he was deputy executive director of the National Association of Basketball Coaches.

Ella Alexander Boole was an American temperance movement leader and social reformer. She served as president of the World's Woman's Christian Temperance Union (WCTU) from 1931 to 1947, after serving as president of the National WCTU in the U.S.

Edwin Frederick Kagin was an attorney at law in Union, Kentucky, and a founder of Camp Quest, the first secular summer camp in the United States for the children of secularists, atheists, agnostics, brights, skeptics, naturalists and freethinkers. He served as the National Legal Director of American Atheists from 2006 until his death in 2014.

James Thomas Begg was an American educator and politician who served five terms as a U.S. Representative from Ohio from 1919 to 1929.

Robert Harbold McDowell was an American historian and intelligence officer who worked for the Office of Strategic Services (OSS) during World War II. McDowell, an expert on the Near East, was a professor of Balkan history at the University of Michigan. During World War II he was an OSS desk officer in Cairo and between August and November 1944 a...

David Ross Boyd was an American educator and the first president of the University of Oklahoma.

Roscoe Conkling McCulloch was a Republican politician from Ohio who served in the United States House of Representatives and U.S. Senate.

Joan Carter is an American businessperson and philanthropist. She is the President of UM Holdings Ltd. which she co-founded with John Aglialoro. Since 1973, UM Holdings has owned and operated a variety of business, primarily in the health and fitness industries. UM Holdings was the owner of Cybex International and EHE International, both of which were sold in 2016.

Frank George Carpenter was a journalist, traveler, travel writer, photographer, and lecturer. Carpenter was a writer of geography textbooks and lecturer on geography, and wrote a series of books called Carpenter's World Travels. His writings helped popularize cultural anthropology and geography.

Solomon Oliver Jr. is a senior United States district judge of the United States District Court for the Northern District of Ohio.

James Hervey Hyslop, Ph.D., LL.D, was an American psychical researcher, psychologist, and professor of ethics and logic at Columbia University. He was one of the first American psychologists to connect psychology with psychic phenomena. In 1906 he helped reorganize the American Society for Psychical Research (ASPR) in New York City and served as the secretary-treasurer for the organization until his...

William Moore McCulloch was an American lawyer and politician who served as a Republican U.S. Representative for Ohio's 4th congressional district from 1947 to 1973.

Theodore S. Celeste is an American businessman and former politician. He is a member of the Democratic Party. After serving in the Peace Corps, Celeste, the brother of former Ohio governor and U.S. ambassador Dick Celeste, ran for the U.S. Senate in 2000 and lost to the Republican incumbent Mike DeWine. In 2006, Celeste was elected State Representative of Ohio's...

Kuo Ping-Wen or Guo Bingwen, courtesy name Hongsheng (鴻聲), was an influential Chinese educator.

John Wilbur Chapman was a Presbyterian evangelist in the late 19th century who traveled with gospel singer Charles Alexander. His parents were Alexander H. and Lorinda (McWhinney) Chapman.

Edith Jackie Ronne was an American explorer of Antarctica and the first woman in the world to be a working member of an Antarctic expedition (1947–48). The Ronne Ice Shelf was named by her husband after her.

Richard Maxwell Eaton is an American historian, currently working as a professor of history at the University of Arizona. He is known for having written the notable books on the history of India before 1800. He is also credited for his work on the social roles of Sufis, slavery, and cultural history of pre-modern India. His research is focused on...

Lawrence Alan Shyatt is an American basketball coach. He last served as an assistant coach of the Dallas Mavericks of the National Basketball Association (NBA).

David Means is an American short story writer and novelist based in Nyack, New York. His stories have appeared in many publications, including Esquire, The New Yorker, and Harper's. They are frequently set in the Midwest or the Rust Belt, or along the Hudson River in New York.

George Ashmore Fitch was an American Presbyterian missionary that lived and worked in China, southern Korea, and Taiwan. Fitch notably smuggled out of Nanjing some of the only known reels of film that documented the Nanjing Massacre.

Helen Murray Free was an American chemist and educator. She is most known for her work on in vitro self-testing systems for diabetes and other diseases.

Donald Lewis Kohn is an American economist who served as the 18th vice chair of the Federal Reserve from 2006 to 2010. Prior to his term as vice chair, Kohn served as a member of the Federal Reserve Board of Governors, taking office in 2002. Having retired after 40 years at the Fed, he currently serves on the Financial Policy...

Ronald Toshiyuki Takaki was an American academic, historian, ethnographer and author. Born in pre-statehood Hawaii, Takaki studied at the College of Wooster and completed his doctorate in American history at the University of California, Berkeley.

Karl Taylor Compton was an American physicist and president of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) from 1930 to 1948. Compton built much of MIT's modern research enterprise and engagement with the federal government. His policies for technology transfer, commercial spin-offs, and federal contracting have become central to United States science and technology policy.

Caitlin Cary is an alternative country musician and visual artist from Seville, Ohio.

Robert X. Cringely is the pen name of both technology journalist Mark Stephens and a string of writers for a column in InfoWorld, the one-time weekly computer trade newspaper published by IDG.

Eugene A. DePasquale is an American lawyer and Democratic politician who served as the Pennsylvania Auditor General from 2013 to 2021. From 2007 to 2013, he served in the Pennsylvania House of Representatives, representing the York County-based 95th district. He was the Democratic nominee for Pennsylvania's 10th congressional district in the 2020 election. Since leaving office, DePasquale served as an...

John W. Travis is an American author and medical practitioner. He is a proponent of the alternative medicine concept of "wellness", originally proposed in 1961 by Halbert L. Dunn, and has written books on the subject. In the 1970s, Travis founded the first "wellness center" in California. He originated the Illness–Wellness Continuum.

Divya Gopikumar, professionally known as Abhirami is an Indian film and voice actress. She has acted predominantly in Tamil and Malayalam films and few credits in Telugu and Kannada films. Abhirami went on to establish herself as an leading actress in the 2000s across the Malayalam and Tamil language industries.

Martha Cowles Chase, also known as Martha C. Epstein, was an American geneticist who in 1952, with Alfred Hershey, experimentally helped to confirm that DNA rather than protein is the genetic material of life.

Mark Francis Giuliano was an American law enforcement official. He served as the 16th Deputy Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) from December 1, 2013, until his retirement from the FBI on February 1, 2016. He earlier oversaw the bureau's Ten Most Wanted programs.

Stephen Reeder Donaldson is an American fantasy, science fiction and mystery novelist, most famous for The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant, his ten-novel fantasy series. His work is characterized by psychological complexity, conceptual abstractness, moral bleakness, and the use of an arcane vocabulary, and has attracted critical praise for its "imagination, vivid characterizations, and fast pace". Donaldson earned his bachelor's degree...

Elizebeth Smith Friedman was an American cryptanalyst and author who deciphered enemy codes in both World Wars and helped to solve international smuggling cases during Prohibition. Over the course of her career, she worked for the United States Treasury, Coast Guard, Navy and Army, and the International Monetary Fund. She has been called "America's first female cryptanalyst".

Joseph Banks Rhine, usually known as J. B. Rhine, was an American botanist who founded parapsychology as a branch of psychology, founding the parapsychology lab at Duke University, the Journal of Parapsychology, the Foundation for Research on the Nature of Man, and the Parapsychological Association. Rhine wrote the books Extrasensory Perception and Parapsychology: Frontier Science of the Mind.

Francis Seiberling was an American lawyer and politician who served two terms as a U.S. Representative from Ohio from 1929 to 1933. He was a cousin of John F. Seiberling.

Arthur Holly Compton was an American physicist who shared the 1927 Nobel Prize in Physics with C. T. R. Wilson for his discovery of the Compton effect, which demonstrated the particle nature of electromagnetic radiation. It was a sensational discovery at the time; the wave nature of light had been well-demonstrated, but the idea that light had both wave and...

John Jacob Lentz was an American lawyer and politician who served as a U.S. representative from Ohio for two terms from 1897 to 1901.

William Thomas Fitzgerald was an American educator, physician, and politician who served two terms as a U.S. Representative from Ohio from 1925 to 1929.

Duncan Zowie Haywood Jones is a British film director, film producer and screenwriter. He directed the films Moon (2009), Source Code (2011), Warcraft (2016), and Mute (2018). For Moon, he won the BAFTA Award for Outstanding Debut by a British Writer, Director or Producer. He is the son of English singer-songwriter David Bowie and Cypriot-born American model, actress, and journalist...