100 Notable alumni of King’s College London

Kyprianos "Kypros" Nicolaides FRCOG is a Greek Cypriot physician of British citizenship, Professor of Fetal Medicine at King's College Hospital, London. He is one of the pioneers of fetal medicine and his discoveries have revolutionised the field. He was elected to the US National Academy of Medicine in 2020 for 'improving the care of pregnant women worldwide with pioneering rigorous...

Raja Ramanna was an Indian nuclear physicist. He was the director of India's nuclear program in the late 1960s and early 1970s, which culminated in Smiling Buddha, India's first successful nuclear weapon test on 18 May 1974.

Ronan Bennett is an Irish novelist and screenwriter. He is best known for his work as showrunner, writer and executive producer of the drug and gang-related crime drama television series Top Boy. His other writing credits include the 1997 crime film Face, the 2009 Michael Mann crime biopic Public Enemies and the 2017 BBC historical drama miniseries Gunpowder. He has...

Sir David Wing-cheung Tang, KBE, was a Hong Kong businessman, philanthropist and socialite. He was best known for founding the Shanghai Tang fashion chain in 1994, which he sold in 1998 to Richemont.

Teresa Cheng Yeuk-wah GBM GBS SC JP is a Hong Kong Senior Counsel, arbitrator and politician. She served as Secretary for Justice of Hong Kong from 2018 to 2022. She was also the chairperson of the Financial Dispute Resolution Centre, the Hong Kong International Arbitration Centre (HKIAC) and vice-president of the International Council of Commercial Arbitration (ICCA). She is currently...

Florence Ifeoluwa Otedola listen, professionally known as DJ Cuppy or simply Cuppy, is a Nigerian disc jockey, musician and producer. She is the daughter of Nigerian businessman Femi Otedola. She grew up in Lagos and moved to London at the age of 13.

George Leonard Carey, Baron Carey of Clifton PC is a retired Anglican bishop who was the Archbishop of Canterbury from 1991 to 2002, having previously been the Bishop of Bath and Wells.

Dame Cicely Mary Strode Saunders was an English nurse, social worker, physician and writer. She is noted for her work in terminal care research and her role in the birth of the hospice movement, emphasising the importance of palliative care in modern medicine, and opposing the legalisation of voluntary euthanasia.

Roderick Keith Ogilvy "Rory" Bremner, FKC is a Scottish impressionist and comedian, noted for his work in political satire and impressions of British public figures. He is best known for co-starring with John Bird and John Fortune in the comedy sketch shows Rory Bremner...Who Else? and Bremner, Bird and Fortune, as well as being a team captain on the first...

Marguerite Antonia Radclyffe-Hall, also known by her pen name Radclyffe Hall, was an English poet and author best known for her novel The Well of Loneliness, a groundbreaking work in lesbian literature. In adulthood, she often called herself John, rather than Marguerite.

France-Albert René was a Seychellois lawyer and politician who served as the country’s second President of Seychelles from 1977 to 2004, following a coup d'état that ousted the country's founding president, James Mancham. He previously served as the nation’s second and final Prime Minister, from independence in 1976 until the abolition of the post in 1977. He was a leading...

Sir William Schwenck Gilbert was an English dramatist, librettist, poet and illustrator best known for his collaboration with composer Arthur Sullivan, which produced fourteen comic operas. The most famous of these include H.M.S. Pinafore, The Pirates of Penzance and one of the most frequently performed works in the history of musical theatre, The Mikado. The popularity of these works was...

Sir John Eliot Gardiner is an English conductor, particularly known for his performances of the works of Johann Sebastian Bach, especially the Bach Cantata Pilgrimage of 2000, performing Bach's church cantatas in liturgical order in churches all over Europe, and New York City, with the Monteverdi Choir, and recording them at the locations.

Tony Gardner is an English actor, comedian and doctor. He sits on the national governing body of the actors' trade union Equity.

Anne Jennifer Dudley is an English composer, keyboardist, conductor and pop musician. She was the first BBC Concert Orchestra's Composer in Association in 2001. She has worked in the classical and pop genres, as a film composer, and was one of the core members of the synth-pop band Art of Noise. In 1998, Dudley won an Oscar for Best Original...

Princess Antonia of Prussia, Duchess of Wellington is a British aristocrat and philanthropist. She serves as the President of The Guinness Partnership, an affordable housing community benefit society in the United Kingdom. A member of the House of Hohenzollern by birth, she is a great-granddaughter of Wilhelm II, German Emperor and a great-great-great-granddaughter of Queen Victoria of the United Kingdom....

Charles Kingsley was a broad church priest of the Church of England, a university professor, social reformer, historian, novelist and poet. He is particularly associated with Christian socialism, Anti-Catholicism, the working men's college, and forming labour cooperatives, which failed, but encouraged later working reforms.

Dame Katherine Jane Grainger is a Scottish athlete. She is a 2012 Summer Olympics gold medallist, four-time Olympic silver medallist and six-time World Champion for Great Britain. She served as Chancellor of Oxford Brookes University between 2015 and 2020 and is currently Chancellor of the University of Glasgow.

Tan Chuan-Jin PPA is a Singaporean former politician and brigadier-general. A former member of the governing People's Action Party (PAP), he served as Speaker of Parliament between 2017 and 2023, and the Member of Parliament (MP) for Marine Parade Group Representation Constituency (GRC) from 2011 to 2023.

Abdul Mateen ibni Hassanal Bolkiah is a member of the royal family of Brunei. He is the son of Sultan Hassanal Bolkiah by his former second wife, Mariam Abdul Aziz, and is fifth in the line of succession to the Bruneian throne.

David Anthony Llewellyn Owen, Baron Owen, CH, PC, FRCP is a British politician and physician who served as Foreign Secretary as a Labour Party MP under James Callaghan from 1977 to 1979, and later led the Social Democratic Party (SDP). He was a Member of Parliament for 26 years, from 1966 to 1992.

Eleanor Harrison is an English television presenter, best known for co-presenting Countryfile from 2009 to 2023.

Lucy Maria Powell is a British politician who is Deputy Leader of the Labour Party since October 2025, having previously been Leader of the House of Commons and Lord President of the Council from July 2024 to September 2025. She has been the Member of Parliament (MP) for Manchester Central since 2012. Powell has been described as belonging to the...

David Graeme Garden is a British comedian, actor, author, artist and television presenter. He is best known as a member of The Goodies and a regular panellist on I'm Sorry I Haven't a Clue.

Emily Berrington is an English actress who played Simone Al-Harazi in 24: Live Another Day (2014) and Niska in the Channel 4 and AMC TV series Humans (2015–2018).

Aiysha Hart is a British–Saudi actress, known for her breakout TV roles as Ariadne in the BBC drama series Atlantis and DS Sam Railston in Line of Duty, as well as her film work, including Colette. She also stars as Princess Hind in the upcoming epic film Desert Warrior.

Raymond Bernard Cattell was a British-American psychologist, known for his psychometric research into intrapersonal psychological structure. His work also explored the basic dimensions of personality and temperament, the range of cognitive abilities, the dynamic dimensions of motivation and emotion, the clinical dimensions of abnormal personality, patterns of group syntality and social behavior, applications of personality research to psychotherapy and learning...

Joey Wong Ho-yee, known professionally as JW, is a Hong Kong Cantopop singer and actress. Debuted in 2010, Wong was the youngest singer at the time to have won a "Golden Melody Song" at the Jade Solid Gold Best Ten Music Awards Presentation. She later found success with her 2015 hit "A Life of Contradictions". Wong ventured into acting after...

Jonathan Benjamin Gill, also known professionally as JB Gill, is a British singer, dancer, television presenter and farmer. He is best known as a member of the boy band JLS, who were runners-up to Alexandra Burke on the fifth series of The X Factor in 2008. With JLS, he went on to achieve five no. 1 singles, over 10 million...

Henry Havelock Ellis was an English physician, eugenicist, writer, progressive intellectual and social reformer who studied human sexuality. He co-wrote the first medical textbook in English on homosexuality in 1897, and also published works on a variety of sexual practices and inclinations, as well as on transgender psychology. He developed the notions of narcissism and autoeroticism, later adopted by psychoanalysis.

Sheila Atim MBE is a Ugandan-British actress, singer, composer, and playwright. She made her professional acting debut in 2014 at Shakespeare's Globe in The Lightning Child, a musical written by her acting teacher Ché Walker.

Paula Dean Broadwell is an American writer, academic and former military officer. Broadwell served in the US Army on both active and reserve duty for over 20 years (including time as a military school undergraduate). In 2012, she co-authored, with Vernon Loeb, All In: The Education of General David Petraeus, a biography of then-International Security Assistance Force commander David Petraeus....

Cecil Louis Troughton Smith, best known by his pen name C.S. Forester, was an English novelist known for writing tales of naval warfare, such as the 12-book Horatio Hornblower series depicting a Royal Navy officer during the Napoleonic Wars.

Vanessa Bell was an English painter and interior designer, a member of the Bloomsbury Group and the sister of Virginia Woolf (née Stephen).

Edmund Gwenn was an English actor. On film, he is best remembered for his role as Kris Kringle in the Christmas film Miracle on 34th Street (1947), for which he won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor and the corresponding Golden Globe Award. He received a second Golden Globe and another Academy Award nomination for the comedy film Mister...

Tulip Rizwana Siddiq FRSA is a British-Bangladeshi politician who has been the Member of Parliament (MP) for Hampstead and Highgate, previously Hampstead and Kilburn, since 2015. She served as Economic Secretary to the Treasury and City Minister from 9 July 2024 until her resignation on 14 January 2025, following allegations of misconduct, including her connections to the ousted Bangladeshi regime.

Peter Asher CBE is an English guitarist, singer, manager and record producer. He came to prominence in the 1960s as a member of the pop music vocal duo Peter and Gordon before going on to a successful career as a manager and record producer, helping to foster the recording careers of James Taylor and Linda Ronstadt among others.

Rowland Kelechukwu Okereke, also known mononymously as Kele, is an English singer, songwriter, and musician. He is best known as the lead singer and rhythm guitarist of the indie rock band Bloc Party. Additionally, he has released six studio albums as a solo artist.

Sir Michael Andrew Bridge Morpurgo is an English book author, poet, playwright, and librettist who is known best for children's novels such as War Horse (1982). His work is noted for its "magical storytelling", for recurring themes such as the triumph of an outsider or survival, for characters' relationships with nature, and for vivid settings such as the Cornish coast...

Michael Derek Elworthy Jarman was an English artist, film maker, stage designer, writer, gardener, and gay rights activist, regarded as one of the most influential figures associated with the new queer cinema. Trained originally as a painter, he moved into stage and production design in the late 1960s, including work on Ken Russell’s controversial historical 1971 film The Devils, before...

Costantino della Gherardesca Verecondi Scortecci, or simply Costantino della Gherardesca, is an Italian actor, journalist, radio presenter, television personality and presenter.

Alexander Simon "Sacha" Gervasi is a British director, screenwriter and former journalist.

Reita Faria Powell is an Indian physician, former model and the winner of Miss World 1966 pageant. She is the first Indian Miss World winner and the first to be qualified as a medical doctor.

Calouste Sarkis Gulbenkian was an Armenian businessman and philanthropist. He played a major role in making the petroleum reserves of the Middle East available to Western development and is credited with being the first person to exploit Iraqi oil. Following the "Red Line Agreement" (said by some accounts to have been drafted by himself), a fixed 5% of the shares...

Banita Sandhu is a Welsh actress. Known for her work in Indian cinema, she made her film debut with the 2018 Hindi-language film October, going on to star in the Tamil-language production Adithya Varma and the CW series Pandora (both 2019).

Khushwant Singh FKC was an Indian author, lawyer, diplomat, journalist and politician. His experience in the 1947 Partition of India inspired him to write Train to Pakistan in 1956 (made into film in 1998), which became his most well-known novel.

Ahmad Massoud is an Afghan politician and military leader who is the founder and leader of the National Resistance Front (NRF) since 2021. He is the eldest child and only son of military commander Ahmad Shah Massoud.

Christopher Isherwood was an English and American novelist, playwright, screenwriter, autobiographer, and diarist. His best-known works include Goodbye to Berlin (1939), a semi-autobiographical novel which was the basis for Cabaret (1966); A Single Man (1964), adapted into a film directed by Tom Ford in 2009; and Christopher and His Kind (1976), a memoir which "carried him into the heart of...

Geraldina Rachel Asher-Smith MBE is a British sprinter competing in the 60 metres, 100 m and 200 m. Internationally competing since 2011, she holds national records in all three sprint events, making her the fastest British woman on record.

Bree Nicole Turner is an American actress and dancer; she is best known for her roles in several major motion pictures in films like My Best Friend’s Wedding, Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me, American Pie 2, The Wedding Planner, Just My Luck and Firehouse Dog, as well as her series regular role as Rosalee Calvert on Grimm.

Napoléon, Prince Imperial, also known as Louis-Napoléon, was the only child of Napoleon III, Emperor of the French, and Empress Eugénie. After his father was dethroned in 1870, he moved to England with his family. On his father's death in January 1873, he was proclaimed by the Bonapartist faction as Napoléon IV.

Sir Simon Philip Baron-Cohen is a British clinical psychologist and professor of developmental psychopathology at the University of Cambridge. He is the director of the university's Autism Research Centre and a Fellow of Trinity College.

Adnan Sami Khan is an Indian singer, musician, composer, actor and pianist. He performs Indian and Western music in many languages, such as Hindi, Urdu, English, Telugu, Tamil, Kannada and Malayalam. He has been awarded with Padma Shri (India's fourth highest civilian award) for his remarkable contribution to music. His most notable instrument is the piano. He has been credited...

Sir Francis Galton FRS FRAI was an English polymath and the originator of eugenics during the Victorian era; his ideas later became the basis of behavioural genetics.

Lee Ru-ma, better known by the stage name Yiruma (stylized from Lee Ru-ma), is a South Korean pianist and composer.

Eileen Evelyn Greer Garson was a British and American actress and singer. Known for playing graceful, noble, and dignified women in period and war dramas, she quickly rose to popularity during the Golden Age of Hollywood. A top star at Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studios (MGM), Garson was among the most popular stars of the 1940s, becoming one of the highest-paid actresses in...

Louis Alexander Slotin was a Canadian physicist and chemist who took part in the Manhattan Project. Born and raised in the North End of Winnipeg, Manitoba, Slotin earned both his Bachelor of Science and Master of Science degrees from the University of Manitoba, before obtaining his doctorate in physical chemistry at King's College London in 1936. Afterwards, he joined the...

Alain de Botton FRSL is a Swiss-born British author and public speaker. His books discuss various contemporary subjects and themes, emphasizing philosophy's relevance to everyday life. He published Essays in Love (1993), which went on to sell two million copies. Other bestsellers include How Proust Can Change Your Life (1997), Status Anxiety (2004), and The Architecture of Happiness (2006).

Peter Ware Higgs was a British theoretical physicist, professor at the University of Edinburgh, and Nobel laureate in Physics for his work on the mass of subatomic particles.

Isabel Kukanova dos Santos is an Angolan businesswoman, the eldest child of Angola's former President José Eduardo dos Santos, who ruled the country from 1979 to 2017.

John Ruskin was an English polymath – a writer, lecturer, art historian, art critic, draughtsman and philanthropist of the Victorian era. He wrote on subjects as varied as art, architecture, political economy, education, museology, geology, botany, ornithology, literature, history, and myth.

Richard Keith Robert Coles FRSA FKC is an English writer, radio presenter and Church of England priest. After playing in the 1980s band Bronski Beat, he came to prominence as the multi-instrumentalist who partnered Jimmy Somerville in the band the Communards. They achieved three UK top-10 hits, including the No. 1 record and best-selling single of 1986, a cover version...

Petr Pavel is a Czech politician and retired army general, currently serving as the fourth president of the Czech Republic since March 2023. Prior to this, he served as Chair of the NATO Military Committee from 2015 to 2018, and served as the Chief of the General Staff of the Czech Armed Forces between 2012 and 2015.

Mark Gino Francois is a British politician who has been the Member of Parliament (MP) for Rayleigh and Wickford since 2001. A member of the Conservative Party, he has been Shadow Minister for Defence since 2024.

Admiral Sir Antony David Radakin, GBE, KCB is a retired senior Royal Navy officer who served as Chief of the Defence Staff, the professional head of the British Armed Forces, from November 2021 to September 2025. Radakin was previously the First Sea Lord, the professional head of the Naval Service from June 2019 to November 2021. He was Chief of...

Ali Moustafa Attia Mosharrafa was an Egyptian theoretical physicist. He was a Professor of Applied Mathematics at Cairo University and also served as the University's first dean. He contributed to the development of Quantum theory as well as the Theory of relativity.

Maurice Rupert Bishop was a Grenadian revolutionary, politician and the leader of the New JEWEL Movement (NJM), a party that sought to prioritise socio-economic development, education and true black liberation. The NJM came to power on 13 March 1979 and ushered in the Grenada revolution and installed the People's Revolutionary Government which removed Prime Minister Eric Gairy from office. Bishop...

Tom Rosenthal is an English singer-songwriter and composer. His music has been described as "short, expertly crafted pop songs".

Michael Collins was an Irish revolutionary, soldier and politician who was a leading figure in the early-20th century struggle for Irish independence. During the War of Independence he was Director of Intelligence of the Irish Republican Army (IRA). He served in the government of the self-declared Irish Republic as the Minister for Home Affairs and later as the Minister for...

Thomas Hardy was an English novelist and poet. A Victorian realist in the tradition of George Eliot, he was influenced both in his novels and in his poetry by Romanticism, including the poetry of William Wordsworth. He was highly critical of much in Victorian society, especially on the declining status of rural people in Britain such as those from his...

William Henry Pratt, known professionally as Boris Karloff, was an English actor. His portrayal of Frankenstein's monster in the horror film Frankenstein (1931), his 82nd film, established him as a horror icon, and he reprised the role for the sequels Bride of Frankenstein (1935) and Son of Frankenstein (1939). He also appeared as Imhotep in The Mummy (1932), and voiced...

Asma Fawaz al-Assad is a British-born Syrian economist who served as the first lady of Syria from 2000 to 2024 as the wife of Bashar al-Assad. She became first lady when she married al-Assad on 13 December 2000, shortly after he became president.

Donald Joseph Qualls is an American actor. He is best known for his television roles as Citizen Z on the Syfy horror series Z Nation (2014–2018) and Ed McCarthy on the Amazon Prime Video series The Man in the High Castle (2015–2018).

John Keats was an English poet of the second generation of Romantic poets, along with Lord Byron and Percy Bysshe Shelley. His poems had been in publication for less than four years when he died of tuberculosis at the age of 25. They were indifferently received in his lifetime, but his fame grew rapidly after his death. By the end...

Sir Arthur Charles Clarke CBE FRAS was an English science fiction writer, science writer, futurist, inventor, undersea explorer, and television series host.

Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje is an English actor. He is known for his roles as Simon Adebisi in Oz, Mr. Eko in Lost, Lock-Nah in The Mummy Returns, Nykwana Wombosi in The Bourne Identity, Heavy Duty in G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra, Kurse in Thor: The Dark World, Killer Croc in Suicide Squad, Malko in the fifth season of the HBO...

Sarojini Naidu was an Indian political activist and poet who served as the first Governor of United Provinces, after India's independence. She played an important role in the Indian independence movement against the British Raj. She was the first Indian woman to be president of the Indian National Congress and appointed governor of a state.

Lisa Nicole Brennan-Jobs is an American writer. She is the daughter of Apple Inc. co-founder Steve Jobs and Chrisann Brennan.

Gary Winston Lineker is an English sports broadcaster and former professional footballer who played as a striker. Regarded as one of the best players of his generation and one of England's greatest players, Lineker is the only player to have been the top goalscorer in England with three clubs: Leicester City, Everton and Tottenham Hotspur. He also played for Barcelona...

John Richard Deacon is an English retired musician who was the bass guitarist for the rock band Queen. He wrote several songs for the group, including Top 10 hits "You're My Best Friend", "Another One Bites the Dust" and "I Want to Break Free"; and co-wrote "Under Pressure", "Friends Will Be Friends" and "One Vision".

Adeline Virginia Woolf was an English writer and one of the most influential 20th-century modernist authors. She helped to pioneer the use of stream of consciousness narration as a literary device.

John Douglas Wilson Carswell is a British former politician who served as a Member of Parliament from 2005 to 2017, co-founded Vote Leave, and since 2021 also serves as president and CEO of the Mississippi Center for Public Policy.

Hanif Kureishi CBE is a British playwright, screenwriter and novelist.

David James Bellamy OBE was an English academic, botanist, television presenter, author and prominent environmental campaigner in the UK and globally. His distinctive, energetic style of presenting became well known to UK television audiences in the 1970s and 1980s. Later in life, he made some sceptical statements about climate science and was cancelled.

Prince Chinedu Munir Nwoko, popularly known as Ned Nwoko, is a Nigerian lawyer, philanthropist, and politician who serves as the senator representing Delta North senatorial district in the Nigerian Senate. He was a member of the House of Representatives between 1999 and 2003 representing Aniocha/Oshimili Federal Constituency, Delta State. In January 2020, he undertook a symbolic expedition to Antarctica to...

Quentin Crisp was an English raconteur, whose work in the public eye included a memoir of her life and various media appearances. Before becoming well known, she was an artist's model, hence the title of Crisp's most famous work, The Naked Civil Servant. She afterwards became a gay icon due to her flamboyant personality, fashion sense, and wit. Her iconic...

Dame Sarah Elisabeth Mullally is an Anglican bishop and former nurse who has served as the 106th archbishop of Canterbury since 28 January 2026. As archbishop, she is the leader of the Church of England and ceremonial head of the Anglican Communion. By virtue of her office she is also a lord spiritual, one of the 26 Church of England...

Martin Henry Bashir is a British former journalist. He was a presenter on British and American television and for the BBC's Panorama programme, for which he gained an interview with Diana, Princess of Wales under false pretences in 1995. Although the interview was much heralded at the time, it was later determined that he used forgery and deception to secure...

Sir Brandon Kenneth Lewis is a British politician who served as Secretary of State for Justice and Lord Chancellor from September to October 2022. He previously served as Chairman of the Conservative Party from 2018 to 2019 and Secretary of State for Northern Ireland from 2020 to 2022. A member of the Conservative Party, he was Member of Parliament (MP)...

Daniel Owen Woolgar Jarvis is a British politician and former Army officer who has served as Minister of State for Security since 2024, and as Minister of State in the Cabinet Office since 2025. He has been the Member of Parliament (MP) for Barnsley North, formerly Barnsley Central, since 2011. A member of the Labour and Co-operative Party, he was...

Nick Bostrom is a philosopher known for his work on existential risk, the anthropic principle, human enhancement ethics, whole brain emulation, superintelligence risks, and the reversal test. He was the founding director of the later defunct Future of Humanity Institute at the University of Oxford and has become Principal Researcher at the Macrostrategy Research Initiative.

Hannelore Kraft is a German politician. She served as the Minister-President of North Rhine-Westphalia from 2010 until 2017. Kraft was the first woman to serve as head of government of this state and was the third woman to become head of a state government in Germany. Between 1 November 2010 and 31 October 2011, she was the President of the...

Karl Pearson FRS FRSE was an English biostatistician and mathematician. He has been credited with establishing the discipline of mathematical statistics. He founded the world's first university statistics department at University College London in 1911, and contributed significantly to the field of biometrics and meteorology. Pearson was also a proponent of Social Darwinism and eugenics, and his thought is an...

William Somerset Maugham CH was an English writer, known for his plays, novels and short stories.

Karim Asad Ahmad Khan KC is a British lawyer who has served as Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court since 2021. He specialises in international criminal law and international human rights law.

Baron David René James de Rothschild is a French banker and a member of the French branch of the Rothschild family. Since 2018, he is supervisory board chairman of Rothschild & Co and chairman of Rothschild Continuation Holdings, a Swiss holding company.

Franziska Weisz is an Austrian actress. She starred in the film Hotel, which was screened in the Un Certain Regard section at the 2004 Cannes Film Festival.

Hanna, Marchioness of Guadiaro is an American-born Mexican television personality who runs the non-profit Jaff Foundation for Education. She is married to Francisco de Borja Queipo de Llano y Campomanes, 6th Marquess of Guadiaro and eldest son of the 12th Count of Toreno and Grandee of Spain.

Hassan al-Turabi was a Sudanese politician and scholar. He was the alleged architect of the 1989 Sudanese military coup that overthrew Sadiq al-Mahdi and installed Omar al-Bashir as president. He has been called "one of the most influential figures in modern Sudanese politics" and a "longtime hard-line ideological leader". He was instrumental in institutionalizing Sharia (Islamic law) in the northern...