100 Notable alumni of Union College

John Pettit was an American lawyer, jurist, and politician. A United States representative and senator from Indiana, he also served in the court systems of Indiana and Kansas. Born in Sackets Harbor, New York, he completed preparatory studies and admitted to the bar in 1831. He moved to Lafayette, Indiana, where he commenced practice in 1838; he was a member...

Augustus Schell was a New York politician and lawyer. He was Chairman of the Democratic National Committee from 1872 to 1876.

Alfred Lebbeus Loomis was an American physician who served as president of the Association of American Physicians.

Warner Miller was an American businessman and politician from Herkimer, New York. A Republican, he was most notable for his service as a U.S. representative (1879-1881) and United States Senator (1881-1887).

Thomas Church Brownell was founder of Trinity College in Hartford, Connecticut, and Presiding Bishop of the Episcopal Church from 1852 to 1865.

Charles Christopher Parry was a British-American botanist and mountaineer.

Albert Smith White was a 19th Century American lawyer, politician, and jurist who served as a United States senator from Indiana, a United States representative from Indiana and a United States district judge of the United States District Court for the District of Indiana.

George Washington Gale was an American Presbyterian minister who founded the Oneida Institute of Science and Industry. He later purchased land in Illinois that became Galesburg, Illinois, named in his honor, and was instrumental in founding Knox College.

Frank Stephen Baldwin was an American who invented a pinwheel calculator in 1875. He started the design of a new machine in 1905 and was able to finalize its design with the help of Jay R. Monroe who eventually bought the exclusive rights to the machine and started the Monroe Calculating Machine Company to manufacture it.

Alfred Sommer (born October 2, 1942) is an American ophthalmologist and epidemiologist at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. His research on vitamin A in the 1970s and 1980s revealed that dosing even mildly vitamin A deficient children with an inexpensive, large dose vitamin A capsule twice a year reduces child mortality by as much as 34 percent....

John Williamson Nevin was an American theologian and educator. He was born in the Cumberland Valley, near Shippensburg, Franklin County, Pennsylvania. He was the father of noted sculptor and poet Blanche Nevin.

William James Stillman was an American journalist, diplomat, author, historian, and photographer. Educated as an artist, Stillman subsequently converted to the profession of journalism, working primarily as a war correspondent in Crete and the Balkans, where he served as his own photographer. For a time, he also served as United States consul in Rome, and afterward in Crete during the...

Charles Emory Smith was an American journalist and political leader.

John Milton Gregory was an American educator and the first president (regent was his official title) of the University of Illinois, then known as Illinois Industrial University.

Richard Milford Blatchford was an attorney and political figure in New York City. A longtime political and legal associate of college classmate William H. Seward, Blatchford is most notable for his service in the New York State Assembly and as U.S. Minister to the State of the Church. He was also the father of Samuel Blatchford, who served as an...

Alfred Conkling was a United States representative from New York, a United States district judge of the United States District Court for the Northern District of New York and United States Minister to Mexico.

Nathaniel P. Tallmadge was an American lawyer, politician, and Wisconsin pioneer. He served two terms as United States senator from New York (1833–1839; 1840–1844) and was the 3rd governor of the Wisconsin Territory (1844–1845). Originally active in politics as a Jacksonian Democrat, he fell out with the party during the presidency of Martin Van Buren and eventually became a Whig.

Charles Jones Jenkins was an American politician from Georgia. A Democrat, Jenkins served as Attorney General of Georgia from 1831 to 1834. He then went on to serve as Governor of Georgia from December 14, 1865 to January 13, 1868. He was removed from office and replaced by Thomas H. Ruger as military governor after Jenkins refused to allow state...

George Wilbur Peck was an American writer and politician from Wisconsin. He served as the 17th governor of Wisconsin and the 29th mayor of Milwaukee.

Preston King was an American attorney and politician who represented New York in the United States Senate from 1857 to 1863. King also represented the North Country in the U.S. House of Representatives for three terms and represented his native St. Lawrence County in the New York State Assembly for four terms. King entered politics as an ally of Martin...

Squire Whipple was an American civil engineer. Educated at Union College, he graduated in one year and went on to become known as the father of iron bridge building in America.

James Asheton Bayard Jr. was an American lawyer and politician from Delaware. He was a member of the Democratic Party and served as U.S. Senator from Delaware.

Francis Wayland was an American Baptist minister, educator and economist. He was president of Brown University and pastor of the First Baptist Church in America in Providence, Rhode Island. In Washington, D.C., Wayland Seminary was established in 1867, primarily to educate former slaves, and was named in his honor.

Edmund Hamilton Sears was an American Unitarian parish minister and author who wrote a number of theological works influencing 19th-century liberal Protestants. Today, Sears is primarily known as the man who penned the words to "It Came Upon the Midnight Clear" in 1849. It has been sung to two tunes, one by Richard Storrs Willis and another adapted by Arthur...

Charles Horton Peck was an American mycologist of the 19th and early 20th centuries. He was the New York State Botanist from 1867 to 1915, a period in which he described over 2,700 species of North American fungi.

Joseph Eugene Ransdell was an attorney and politician from Louisiana. Beginning in 1899, he was elected for seven consecutive terms as United States representative from Louisiana's 5th congressional district. He subsequently served for three terms in the United States Senate from Louisiana before being defeated in the 1930 Democratic primary for the seat by Governor Huey Long.

John Randolph Kuhl Jr. is an American Republican politician. He is a former member of the New York State Assembly, the New York State Senate, and the United States House of Representatives. Kuhl represented New York's 29th congressional district for two terms before being defeated for reelection by Eric Massa in 2008.

Daniel Scott Lamont was the United States Secretary of War during Grover Cleveland's second term.

Steven Joseph Zaloga is an American author and defense consultant. He received a bachelor's degree cum laude at Union College and a master's degree at Columbia University, both in history.

John Schiller Wold was an American business executive, philanthropist, World War II veteran, and Republican politician from Wyoming. He served a single term in the United States House of Representatives from 1969 to 1971. He was the first professional geologist to have served in Congress.

Joseph Maull Carey was an American lawyer, rancher, judge, and politician, who was active in Wyoming local, state, and federal politics.

Alexander Hamilton Rice was an American politician and businessman from Massachusetts. He served as Mayor of Boston from 1856 to 1857, a U.S. Congressman during the American Civil War, and as the 30th Governor of Massachusetts from 1876 to 1879. He was part owner and president of Rice-Kendall, one of the nation's largest paper products distributors.

Robert Jefferson Breckinridge was a politician and Presbyterian minister. He was a member of the Breckinridge family of Kentucky, the son of Senator John Breckinridge.

Franklin Henry Giddings was an American sociologist, economist, and journalist.

Henry Allen Cooper was an American lawyer and progressive Republican politician from Racine County, Wisconsin. He served 36 years as a member of the U.S. House of Representatives, representing Wisconsin's 1st congressional district from 1893 until his death in 1931. He earlier served in the Wisconsin Senate and was district attorney of Racine County.

Ira Harris was an American jurist and senator from New York. He was also a friend of Abraham Lincoln.

John Canfield Spencer was an American lawyer, politician, judge and United States Cabinet secretary in the administration of President John Tyler.

Rufus W. Peckham was an American lawyer and jurist who served as an Associate Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court from 1896 to 1909, and is the most recent Democratic nominee approved by a Republican-majority Senate. He was known for his strong use of substantive due process to invalidate regulations of business and property. Peckham's namesake father was also a...

Victor Herbert Fazio Jr. was an American politician who served as a member of the United States House of Representatives for California from 1979 to 1999.

John Bigelow Sr. was an American lawyer, diplomat, and historian who edited the complete works of Benjamin Franklin and the first autobiography of Franklin taken from Franklin's previously lost original manuscript. He played a central role in the founding of the New York Public Library in 1895 and served as the first president of the New York Law School Board...

Troy Grosenick is an American ice hockey professional goaltender who is currently an unrestricted free agent who was most recently under contract with the Minnesota Wild of the National Hockey League.

John W. Taylor was an early 19th-century U.S. politician from New York. He served twice as speaker of the House of Representatives.

Michael Vecchione is an American professional ice hockey center for Barys Astana of the Kontinental Hockey League (KHL).

Nikhil Srivastava is an associate professor of Mathematics at University of California, Berkeley. In July 2014, he was named a recipient of the Pólya Prize with Adam Marcus and Daniel Spielman.

Hannibal Williston Goodwin, patented a method for making transparent, flexible roll film out of nitrocellulose film base, which was used in Thomas Edison's Kinetoscope, an early machine for viewing motion pictures.

Fitz Hugh Ludlow, sometimes seen as Fitzhugh Ludlow, was an American author, journalist, and explorer; best known for his autobiographical book The Hasheesh Eater (1857).

John Thompson Hoffman was the 23rd governor of New York (1869–72). He was also recorder of New York City (1861–65) and the 79th mayor of New York City (1866–68). Connections to the Tweed Ring ruined his political career, in spite of the absence of evidence to show personal involvement in corrupt activities. He is to date the last New York...

Ward Hunt was an American jurist and politician. He was Chief Judge of the New York Court of Appeals from 1868 to 1869, and an associate justice of the U.S. Supreme Court from 1872 to 1882.

John Howard Payne was an American actor, poet, playwright, and writer who had nearly two decades of a theatrical career and success in London. He is today most remembered as the creator of "Home! Sweet Home!", a song he wrote in 1822 that became widely popular in the United States and the English-speaking world. Its popularity was revived during the...

Daniel Carr is a Canadian professional ice hockey forward for the Milwaukee Admirals of the American Hockey League (AHL). Originally undrafted by teams in the National Hockey League (NHL), Carr has previously played for the Montreal Canadiens, Vegas Golden Knights, Nashville Predators, and Washington Capitals.

Joel Martin Flaum was a United States circuit judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit and a United States District Judge of the United States District Court for the Northern District of Illinois.

Sheldon Jackson was a Presbyterian minister, missionary, and political leader. During this career he travelled about one million miles (1.6 million km) and established more than one hundred missions and churches, mostly in the Western United States. He performed extensive missionary work in Colorado and the Alaska Territory, including his efforts to suppress Native American languages.

Martin Evan Jay is an American intellectual historian whose research interests connect history with Frankfurt School critical theory, social theory, cultural criticism, visual culture, and historiography.

Joanna Stern is an American technology journalist, best known for her videos and columns at The Wall Street Journal and technology news websites Engadget and The Verge. She became a personal technology columnist at The Wall Street Journal in 2014, as part of the team that replaced Walt Mossberg.

Joshua Jooris is a Canadian professional ice hockey centre currently playing for Genève-Servette HC of the National League (NL). An undrafted player, Jooris signed with the Calgary Flames organization in 2013 after playing three seasons of college hockey for the Union College Dutchmen. He holds a Swiss player-license as he made his junior debut in Switzerland.

William Elliot Griffis was an American orientalist, Congregational minister, lecturer, and prolific author.

Mark Jeremy Bennett is a United States circuit judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit.

David Merrill Markson was an American novelist. He was the author of several postmodern novels, including Springer's Progress, Wittgenstein's Mistress, and Reader's Block. His final book, The Last Novel, published in 2007, was called "a real tour de force" by The New York Times.

Richard Kevin Templeton is an American electrical engineer and business executive. He is currently the chairman and former chief executive officer of Texas Instruments.

Cliff Henricksen is a musician, inventor and audio technologist. He is self-taught as a musician with a graduate degree in mechanical engineering at Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Throughout his career Cliff has found innovative ways to apply engineering basics to electro acoustics and to audio technology as it applies to music and in particular to live music performance. He has...

Henry James Sr. was an American theologian and the father of the philosopher William James, the novelist Henry James, and the diarist Alice James.

Spencer Foo, also known as Fu Jiang (Chinese: 福将), is a Chinese Canadian professional ice hockey forward for the Shanghai Dragons of the Kontinental Hockey League (KHL). Foo turned professional in 2017 by signing an entry-level contract with the Calgary Flames of the National Hockey League (NHL) as an undrafted college free agent.

Daniel Adams Butterfield was a New York businessman, a Union general in the U.S. Civil War, and Assistant Treasurer of the United States.

Robert Porter Patterson Sr. was an American judge who served as Under Secretary of War under President Franklin D. Roosevelt and U.S. Secretary of War under President Harry S. Truman. He was a US circuit judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit after he had been a district judge of the United States District Court...

Richard Gordon Gould was an American physicist who is sometimes credited with the invention of the laser and the optical amplifier. (Credit for the invention of the laser is disputed, since Charles Townes and Arthur Schawlow were the first to publish the theory and Theodore Maiman was the first to build a working laser). Gould is best known for his...

William Lee Tracy was an American stage, film, and television actor. He is known foremost for his portrayals between the late 1920s and 1940s of fast-talking, wisecracking news reporters, press agents, lawyers, and salesmen. From 1949 to 1954, he was also featured in the weekly radio and television versions of the series Martin Kane: Private Eye, as well as starring...

George Crockett Strong was a Union brigadier general in the American Civil War.

Frederick William Seward was an American politician and member of the Republican Party who served twice as the Assistant Secretary of State. He served as Assistant Secretary from 1861 to 1869 when his father, William H. Seward, was the Secretary of State under both Abraham Lincoln and Andrew Johnson, and then from 1877 to 1879 in the administration of Rutherford...

Christopher Sheridan is an American television writer, producer, and occasional voice actor. He was the showrunner of the SyFy/USA Network series Resident Alien.

Baruch Samuel Blumberg, known as Barry Blumberg, was an American physician, geneticist, and co-recipient of the 1976 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine (with Daniel Carleton Gajdusek), for his work on the hepatitis B virus while an investigator at the NIH and at the Fox Chase Cancer Center. He was president of the American Philosophical Society from 2005 until his...

Devin Norse Wenig is an American business executive. From July 2015 to September 2019, Wenig was president and CEO of eBay. From April 2008 to August 2011, Wenig was CEO of Thomson Reuters Markets, the financial and media businesses of Thomson Reuters Corporation.

Robert Augustus Toombs was an American politician from Georgia, who was an important figure in the formation of the Confederacy. From a privileged background as a wealthy planter and slaveholder, Toombs embarked on a political career marked by effective oratory, although he also acquired a reputation for hard living, disheveled appearance, and irascibility. He was identified with Alexander H. Stephens's...

George Ralph DiCenzo was an American actor and one-time associate producer of Dark Shadows. He was in show business for over 30 years, in film, TV, stage, and commercials. DiCenzo played Marty's grandfather Sam Baines in the film Back to the Future. He also had a minor role in William Peter Blatty's The Exorcist III.

Andrew D. Miller is an American businessman and technology/sports entrepreneur. He was formerly the vice president for mobile advertising at Apple Inc. As of 2015, Miller is a co-owner of the Sacramento Kings of the National Basketball Association (NBA), chairman and co-owner of NRG Esports, co-owner of the Modesto Nuts, a Single-A affiliate in Minor League Baseball of the Seattle...

Dylan Jason Ratigan is an American businessman, author, film producer, former host of MSNBC's The Dylan Ratigan Show and political commentator for The Young Turks. He was a candidate for the U.S. House of Representatives in New York's 21st Congressional District.

Neil Abercrombie is an American politician who served as the seventh governor of Hawaii from 2010 to 2014. He is a member of the Democratic Party.

Leonard Walter Jerome was an American financier in Brooklyn, New York, and the maternal grandfather of Winston Churchill.

Alan Frederick Horn is an American entertainment industry executive. He was the president and COO of Warner Bros. from 1999 to 2012. He served as the chairman of Walt Disney Studios from 2012 to 2020. During his tenure at Disney, Horn also served as the chief creative officer from 2019 to 2021. He agreed to depart from Disney, effective December...

Edward Bellamy was an American author, journalist, and political activist most famous for his utopian novel Looking Backward. Bellamy's vision of a harmonious future world inspired the formation of numerous "Nationalist Clubs" dedicated to the propagation of state ownership of the main pillars of the economy, achieved through nationalization.

Rawson Marshall Thurber is an American filmmaker and actor. He is best known for writing and directing the 2004 comedy film Dodgeball: A True Underdog Story.

James Roosevelt I, known as "Squire James", was an American businessman, politician, horse breeder, and the father of Franklin D. Roosevelt, the 32nd President of the United States.

Henry Reed Rathbone was an American military officer and lawyer who was present at the assassination of President Abraham Lincoln; Rathbone and his fiancée Clara Harris were sitting with Lincoln and Lincoln's wife Mary Todd Lincoln when the president was shot by John Wilkes Booth at Ford's Theatre on April 14, 1865.

Henry Wager Halleck was a senior United States Army officer, scholar, and lawyer. A noted expert in military studies, he was known by a nickname that became derogatory: "Old Brains". He was an important participant in the admission of California as a state and became a successful lawyer and land developer. Halleck served as the General-in-Chief of the Armies of...

George Westinghouse Jr. was a prolific American inventor, engineer, and entrepreneurial industrialist based in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. He is best known for his creation of the railway air brake and for being a pioneer in the development and use of alternating current (AC) electrical power distribution. During his career, he received 360 patents for his inventions and established 61 companies, many...

William Henry Seward was an American politician who served as United States Secretary of State from 1861 to 1869 and earlier served as governor of New York and as a United States senator. A determined opponent of the spread of slavery in the years leading up to the American Civil War, he was prominent in the Republican Party in its...

Lewis Henry Morgan was an American anthropologist and social theorist, who worked as a railroad lawyer. He is best known for his work on kinship and social structure, his theories of social evolution, and his ethnography of the Iroquois. Interested in what holds societies together, he proposed the concept that the earliest human domestic institution was the matrilineal clan, not...

Chester Alan Arthur was the 21st president of the United States, serving from 1881 to 1885. He was a Republican from New York who previously served as the 20th vice president under President James A. Garfield. Assuming the presidency after Garfield's assassination, Arthur's administration saw the largest expansion of the U.S. Navy, the end of the so-called "spoils system", and...

Benjamin Joseph Schwartz is an American actor and comedian. He is best known for his recurring role as Jean-Ralphio Saperstein on the NBC sitcom Parks and Recreation, his starring role as Clyde Oberholt on the Showtime series House of Lies, and his voice roles as Randy Cunningham in Randy Cunningham: 9th Grade Ninja, Dewey Duck in DuckTales, Leonardo in Rise...

Jeffrey P. DeMunn is an American actor. He is known for his collaborations with director Frank Darabont, having appeared in The Shawshank Redemption (1994), The Green Mile (1999), The Majestic (2001), and The Mist (2007).

James Earl Carter Jr. was an American politician and humanitarian who served as the 39th president of the United States from 1977 to 1981. A member of the Democratic Party, Carter served from 1971 to 1975 as the 76th governor of Georgia and from 1963 to 1967 in the Georgia State Senate. He is the only U.S. president from Georgia,...

Sidney Breese, a lawyer, soldier, author and jurist born in New York, became an early Illinois pioneer and represented the state in the United States Senate as well as served as Chief Justice of the Illinois Supreme Court and Speaker of the Illinois House of Representatives, and has been called "father of the Illinois Central Railroad".

Austin Blair was a 19th-century American lawyer and politician who served as the 13th governor of Michigan during the American Civil War and in Michigan's House of Representatives and Senate as well as the U.S. Senate. He was known as a strong opponent of slavery and secession. He also led efforts to provide women and black citizens the right to...

Allen Wright was Principal Chief of the Choctaw Republic from late 1866 to 1870. He had been ordained as a Presbyterian minister in 1852 after graduating from Union Theological Seminary in New York City. He was very active in the Choctaw government, holding several elected positions. He has been credited with the name Oklahoma (Choctaw word meaning "Home of the...

James Nicholas Tedisco is an American politician. He became the New York State Senator for New York's 44th State Senate district in 2023.

Arnold Mindell was an American author, therapist, and teacher in the fields of transpersonal psychology, body psychotherapy, social change, and spirituality. He is known for extending Jungian dream analysis to body symptoms, promoting ideas of 'deep democracy,' and interpreting concepts from physics and mathematics in psychological terms. Mindell is the founder of process oriented psychology, or process work, a development...

Mitchell Epstein is an American photographer and author. His books include Vietnam: A Book of Changes (1997); Family Business (2003), which won the 2004 Kraszna-Krausz Photography Book Award; Recreation: American Photographs 1973–1988 (2005); Mitch Epstein: Work (2006); American Power (2009); Berlin (2011); New York Arbor (2013); Rocks and Clouds (2018); Sunshine Hotel (2019); In India (2021); and Property Rights (2021).

Henry Rowe Schoolcraft was an American geographer, geologist, and ethnologist, noted for his early studies of Native American cultures, as well as for his 1832 expedition to the source of the Mississippi River. He is also noted for his major six-volume study of Native Americans commissioned by Congress and published in the 1850s.

John Frederick Hartranft was an American politician and military officer who read the death warrant to the individuals who were executed on July 7, 1865, for conspiring to assassinate American President Abraham Lincoln. Previously having achieved the rank of major general of the Union Army during the American Civil War, he had also been awarded the U.S. Medal of Honor...

Sir George Newlands Reid was a Scottish politician and journalist who served as Presiding Officer of the Scottish Parliament from 2003 to 2007. A member of the Scottish National Party (SNP), he was a Member of the Scottish Parliament (MSP) for the Mid Scotland and Fife region from 1999 to 2003 and then for the Ochil constituency from 2003 to...