100 Notable alumni of University of Oslo

Einar Førde was a Norwegian journalist and politician of the Labour Party. He served as Minister of Education and Church Affairs from 1979 to 1981, and director-general of the Norwegian Broadcasting Corporation (NRK) from 1989 to 2001. He was also vice-chairman of the Norwegian Labour Party 1981–1989.

Toril Marie Øie is a Norwegian jurist who serves as the 20th Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of Norway since 2016. Prior to her tenure as Chief Justice she was a justice on the Supreme Court from 2004 to 2016.

Per Fugelli was a Norwegian physician and professor of General Practice at the University of Bergen from 1984 to 1992, and social medicine at the University of Oslo from 1992 until his death in 2017.

Anne Sandvik Lindmo is a Norwegian TV host who is most known for her talk show Store studio and Lindmo, aired by the Norwegian Broadcasting Corporation (NRK). Less notable, Lindmo also hosts her own podcast with co-workers Rune Norum and Halvor Haugen.

Eskil Pedersen is a Norwegian politician and former leader of the Workers' Youth League (AUF) from 2010 to 2014, the youth organisation associated with Norway's leading Labour Party.

Kristin Halvorsen is a Norwegian politician of the Socialist Left Party. She served as Minister of Finance from 2005 to 2009 and as Minister of Education from 2009 to 2013. She also served as the party's leader from 1997 to 2012 and a member of parliament representing Oslo, from 1989 to 2013.

Marianne Borgen is a Norwegian politician for the Socialist Left Party, who served as Mayor of Oslo from 2015 to 2023.

Ragnar Tørnquist is a Norwegian video game designer and writer. He has been working for Funcom in Oslo since 1994, and founded his own studio Red Thread Games in November 2012.

Alistair Cockburn is an American computer scientist, known as one of the initiators of the agile movement in software development. He cosigned (with 16 others) the Manifesto for Agile Software Development.

Jan Christian Vestre is a Norwegian jurist, businessperson in the furniture industry, and politician for the Labour Party. He has served as Minister of Health and Care Services since 2024, and Minister of Trade and Industry between 2021 and 2024. Furthermore, he has been a deputy leader of the party since 2023.

Anette Trettebergstuen is a Norwegian politician representing the Labour Party, who served as Minister of Culture and Equality in Støre's Cabinet from 2021 to 2023. She was a member of the Norwegian Parliament from Hedmark between 2005 and 2025. She was the only openly lesbian politician in the Norwegian Parliament. In 2020 she was one of the signatories of the...

Karin Cecilie "Kaci" Kullmann Five was a Norwegian politician for the Conservative Party. She served as a member of parliament from 1981 to 1997, as Minister of Trade and Shipping in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs from 1989 to 1990 and as leader of the Conservative Party from 1991 to 1994. After she left politics in 1997, she held roles...

Karen-Marie Ellefsen is a Norwegian journalist and television host. She was appointed at NRK from 1979 to 2020, and was the first Norwegian female sports reporter. Ellefsen attended Ringerike gymnasium, Skjeberg Folk High School and the University of Oslo before attending the Norwegian School of Journalism in Oslo.

Odd Arne Westad FBA is a Norwegian historian specializing in the Cold War and contemporary East Asian history. He is the Elihu Professor of History and Global Affairs at Yale University, where he teaches in the Yale History Department and in the Jackson School of Global Affairs. Previously, Westad held the S.T. Lee Chair of US-Asia Relations at Harvard University,...

Trygve Magnus Haavelmo, born in Skedsmo, Norway, was an economist whose research interests centered on econometrics. He received the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences in 1989.

Peter Christian Hersleb Kjerschow Michelsen, better known as Christian Michelsen, was a Norwegian shipping magnate and statesman. He was the first prime minister of independent Norway from 1905 to 1907. Michelsen is most known for his central role in the dissolution of the union between Norway and Sweden in 1905, and was one of Norway's most influential politicians of his...

John Christian Elden is a Norwegian politician for the Conservative Party, reputation management consultant and lawyer. In 2024 Norwegian media reported that he had been hired as a representative of self-styled shaman Durek Verrett to engage in reputation management on Verrett's behalf.

Edvard Hoem is a Norwegian novelist, dramatist, lyricist, psalmist and government scholar. He made his literary debut in 1969, with the poetry collection Som grønne musikantar. He was awarded the Norwegian Critics Prize for Literature in 1974 for the novel Kjærleikens ferjereiser. He was awarded the Melsom Prize in 2006, and the Peter Dass Prize in 2007 for the novel...

Emilie Enger Mehl is a Norwegian politician for the Centre Party. She served as minister of justice from 2021 to 2025 and member of parliament for Hedmark from 2017 to 2025.

Christian Lous Lange was a Norwegian historian, teacher, and political scientist. He was one of the world's foremost exponents of the theory and practice of internationalism.

Bjørn Kjos is a Norwegian aviator, lawyer, and business magnate. He is best known as the founder and CEO of Norwegian Air Shuttle, briefly Scandinavia's largest airline, and Europe's third largest low-cost airline.

Johan Sebastian Cammermeyer Welhaven was a Norwegian writer, poet, critic, and art theorist. He has been considered "one of the greatest figures in Norwegian literature."

Trond-Viggo Torgersen is a Norwegian physician, broadcaster, television host, actor, comedian, singer, songwriter, artist and former children's ombudsman.

Atle Selberg was a Norwegian mathematician known for his work in analytic number theory and the theory of automorphic forms, and in particular for bringing them into relation with spectral theory. He was awarded the Fields Medal in 1950 and an honorary Abel Prize in 2002.

Torbjørn Røe Isaksen is a Norwegian politician, MP for the Conservative Party who served as Minister of Labour and Social Inclusion from 2020 to 2021. He previously served as Minister of Trade and Industry from 2018 to 2020 and Minister of Education and Research from October 2013 to January 2018; except from September to November 2017 when he was on...

Victor Moritz Goldschmidt ForMemRS was a Norwegian-Jewish mineralogist considered (together with Vladimir Vernadsky) to be the founder of modern geochemistry and crystal chemistry, developer of the Goldschmidt Classification of elements.

Mohamed Hassan Ali Khaire is a former prime minister of Somalia. He was appointed on 23 February 2017 by Somalia President Mohamed Abdullahi Mohamed "Farmaajo" and resigned on Saturday July 25, 2020 after MPs passed a disputed vote of no confidence.

Marian Cleeves Diamond was an American neuroscientist. She and her team were the first to publish evidence that the brain can change with experience and improve with enrichment, what is now called neuroplasticity. She was a professor of anatomy at the University of California, Berkeley.

Hans Olav Lahlum is a Norwegian historian, crime author, chess player and organizer, and politician. He has written biographies on Oscar Torp and Haakon Lie, and a history book about all the Presidents of the United States.

Anniken Scharning Huitfeldt is a Norwegian politician and historian. She has served as the Norwegian Ambassador to the United States since 2024. A member of Labour Party, she has previously held several ministerial roles under Jens Stoltenberg between 2008 and 2013 and then served as foreign minister under Jonas Gahr Støre between 2021 and 2023.

Kristen Nygaard was a Norwegian computer scientist, programming language pioneer, and politician. Internationally, Nygaard is acknowledged as the co-inventor of object-oriented programming and the programming language Simula with Ole-Johan Dahl in the 1960s. Nygaard and Dahl received the 2001 A. M. Turing Award for their contribution to computer science.

Mouna Esmaeilzadeh is an Iranian medical doctor, neuroscientist, entrepreneur and TV personality. She has a Ph.D. in neuroscience from Stockholm Brain Institute at Karolinska Institutet in Stockholm. Her expertise and know-how has been covered on Swedish national television where she's invited to talk about science, technology, neuroscience and investments/entrepreneurship. The previous secretary of the Nobel Committee Alf Lindberg, said that...

Erik Solheim is a Norwegian diplomat and former politician. He served in the Norwegian government from 2005 to 2012 as Minister of International Development and Minister of the Environment, and as Under-Secretary-General of the United Nations and Executive Director of the United Nations Environment Programme from 2016 to 2018. Solheim is a member of the Green Party. Erik Solheim has...

Jon Michelet was a Norwegian novelist. He had experience in various lines of work, including sailor and dock worker and references to these experiences can be found in his writing. His writing spans several genres such as crime novels, newspaper columns, sports journalism and children's books.

Jan Peder Syse was a Norwegian lawyer and politician from the Conservative Party. He was the prime minister of Norway from 1989 to 1990. He also served as the minister of Industry from 1983 to 1985. Syse was the president of the Lagting 1993–1997. Syse was the president of the Nordic Council in 1988 and 1993. He served in the...

Eugenio Barba is an Italian author and theatre director based in Denmark. He is the founder of the Odin Theatre and the International School of Theatre Anthropology, both located in Holstebro, Denmark.

Espen Barth Eide is a Norwegian politician and political scientist. He is currently serving as the Minister of Foreign Affairs in Jonas Gahr Støre's government, having previously done so under Jens Stoltenberg. He was a member of the Norwegian Parliament for Oslo from 2017 to 2025, representing the Labour Party. He was elected to this seat in the 2017 election,...

Geir Thomas Hylland Eriksen was a Norwegian anthropologist known for his scholarly and popular writing on globalization, culture, identity, ethnicity, and nationalism. He was Professor of Social Anthropology in the Department of Social Anthropology at the University of Oslo. He has previously served as the President of the European Association of Social Anthropologists (2015–2016), as well as the Editor of...

Fredrik Hjalmar Johansen was a Norwegian polar explorer. He participated on the first and third Fram expeditions. He shipped out with the Fridtjof Nansen expedition in 1893–1896, and accompanied Nansen to notch a new Farthest North record near the North Pole. Johansen also participated in the expedition of Roald Amundsen to the South Pole in 1910–1912.

Mona Juul is a Norwegian former diplomat and former politician for the Labour Party in Norway who is under investigation for aggravated corruption. The Epstein files revealed that she and her husband the Norwegian politician Terje Rød-Larsen had a close association with Jeffrey Epstein. In 2026 she was placed on administrative leave. Her security clearance was also revoked. Juul resigned...

Harald Meldal Eia is a Norwegian comedian, and sociologist. In recent years, Eia has also made TV-documentaries and written books.

Jon Stephenson von Tetzchner is an Icelandic-Norwegian programmer and businessman. He is the co-founder and CEO of Vivaldi Technologies. Before starting the Vivaldi Web browser, he launched a community site called Vivaldi.net. Tetzchner is also a co-founder and former CEO of Opera Software.

Abid Qayyum Raja is a Norwegian lawyer and Liberal Party politician who served as Minister of Culture from 2020 to 2021. He was elected to the Storting as representative for Akershus in 2013 where he served as second deputy chair of the Standing Committee on Transport and Communications and also is a member of the Standing Committee on Scrutiny and...

Ingrid Schulerud is a Norwegian diplomat.

Camilla Stoltenberg is a Norwegian physician and researcher. Since 13 August 2012, she has been Director-General of the Norwegian Institute of Public Health. She is the sister of former Prime Minister of Norway and General Secretary of NATO, Jens Stoltenberg.

Trine Skei Grande is a Norwegian politician who served as the leader of the Liberal Party of Norway from 2010 to 2020. She also served as Minister of Education from January to March 2020, and as Minister of Culture and Gender Equality from 2018 to 2020. She was also a member of parliament for Oslo from 2001 to 2021.

Astrid Uhrenholdt Jacobsen is a Norwegian former cross-country skier and a member of the International Olympic Committee (IOC). She skied with the IL Heming club in Oslo, near Holmenkollen. Her greatest achievement is winning the gold medal in sprint at the 2007 World Championships. On 22 April 2020, she announced her retirement from cross-country skiing in favour of medical studies.

Mads Fredrik Gilbert is a Norwegian physician, humanitarian, activist, and politician for the Red Party. He is a specialist in anesthesiology and head of the emergency medicine department at the University Hospital of North Norway and Professor of emergency medicine at the University of Tromsø.

Odvar Nordli was a Norwegian politician from the Labour Party. He was the prime minister of Norway from 1976 to 1981. Before serving as prime minister, Nordli served as the minister of local government from 1971 to 1972.

Lars Saabye Christensen is a Norwegian-Danish author.

Maja Lunde is a Norwegian writer.

Åsne Seierstad is a Norwegian freelance journalist and writer, best known for her accounts of everyday life in war zones – most notably Kabul after 2001, Baghdad in 2002 and the ruined Grozny in 2006.

Christian Krohg was a Norwegian naturalist painter, illustrator, author and journalist. Krohg was inspired by the realism art movement and often chose motifs from everyday life. He was the director and served as the first professor at the Norwegian Academy of Arts from 1909 to 1925.

Åse Maria Kleveland is a Norwegian singer, guitarist, politician and activist. She represented Norway in the Eurovision Song Contest 1966 with the entry "Intet er nytt under solen".

Gerhard Henrik Armauer Hansen was a Norwegian physician, remembered for his identification of the bacterium Mycobacterium leprae in 1873 as the etiologic agent of leprosy. His distinguished work was recognized at the International Leprosy Congress held at Bergen in 1909.

Finn Skårderud is a Norwegian former psychiatrist who was struck off the medical register by the Norwegian Board of Health Supervision due to a widespread pattern of professional misconduct in 2023. As such he is no longer a medical doctor or psychiatrist. In 2024 he pled guilty to fraud.

Bjørnar Moxnes is a Norwegian politician and activist representing the left-wing political party, the Red Party in the Storting. Moxnes opposes the European Union, characterizing Norway's participation in the EEA as undemocratic. Moxnes describes himself as a socialist. He served as the leader of the Red Party from 2012 to 2023, when he resigned in the wake of stealing a...

Trygve Magnus Slagsvold Vedum is a Norwegian politician and farmer who served as Minister of Finance between 2021 and 2025. A member of the Centre Party, which he has led since 2014, he has been a Member of Parliament (MP) for Hedmark since 2005. Vedum also served as Minister of Agriculture and Food from 2012 to 2013.

Alexander Lange Kielland was a Norwegian realistic writer of the 19th century. He is one of the so-called "The Four Greats" of Norwegian literature, along with Henrik Ibsen, Bjørnstjerne Bjørnson and Jonas Lie.

Anne-Cath. Vestly was a Norwegian author of children's literature. She is known for a wide range of books published from 1953 to 2004. Vestly was best known for her series about a grandmother (Mormor) who looked after and shared numerous adventures with a flock of eight children.

Marius Sophus Lie was a Norwegian mathematician. He largely created the theory of continuous symmetry and applied it to the study of geometry and differential equations. He also made substantial contributions to the development of algebra.

Henrik Arnold Thaulow Wergeland was a Norwegian writer, most celebrated for his poetry but also a prolific playwright, polemicist, historian, and linguist. He is often described as a leading pioneer in the development of a distinctly Norwegian literary heritage and of modern Norwegian culture.

Johan Nordahl Brun Grieg was a Norwegian poet, novelist, dramatist, journalist and political activist. He was a popular author and a controversial public figure. He served in World War II as a war correspondent and was killed while covering a bombing mission to Berlin.

Jan Egeland is a Norwegian diplomat, political scientist, humanitarian leader, and former Labour Party politician who has been Secretary General of the Norwegian Refugee Council since 2013. He served as State Secretary in the Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs from 1990 to 1997 and as United Nations Undersecretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator from 2003 to 2006.

Ragnar Anton Kittil Frisch was an influential Norwegian economist and econometrician known for being one of the major contributors to establishing economics as a quantitative and statistically informed science in the early 20th century. He coined the term econometrics in 1926 for utilising statistical methods to describe economic systems, as well as the terms microeconomics and macroeconomics in 1933, for...

Kari Bremnes is a Norwegian singer and songwriter.

Kåre Isaachsen Willoch was a Norwegian politician who served as the prime minister of Norway from 1981 to 1986 and as leader of the Conservative Party from 1970 to 1974. He previously served as the minister of trade and shipping from August to September 1963 and 1965 to 1970, and as the president of the Nordic Council in 1973.

Marit Elisabeth Larsen is a Norwegian singer and songwriter. She began playing violin aged five and played it until the age of eight. She gained international fame during her teenage years as a member of the pop duo M2M with childhood friend Marion Raven. She then pursued her own music career, releasing her debut solo album Under the Surface in...

Jan Garbarek is a Norwegian jazz saxophonist, who is also active in classical music and world music.

Arne Dekke Eide Næss was a Norwegian philosopher who coined the term "deep ecology", an important intellectual and inspirational figure within the environmental movement of the late twentieth century, and a prolific writer on many other philosophical issues. Næss cited Rachel Carson's 1962 book Silent Spring as being a key influence in his vision of deep ecology. Næss combined his...

Geir Lippestad is a Norwegian lawyer, politician and social activist. He is known for his involvement in several high-profile legal cases, and for starting the political party Sentrum in 2020.

Thorbjørn Jagland is a Norwegian politician from the Labour Party. He served as the secretary general of the Council of Europe from 2009 to 2019. He served as the prime minister of Norway from 1996 to 1997, as the minister of Foreign Affairs from 2000 to 2001 and as the president of the Storting from 2005 to 2009. Jagland studied...

Gunhild Anker Stordalen is a Norwegian physician and environmental advocate. She is the founder and executive chair of EAT Foundation, the co-founder and chair of the philanthropic Stordalen Foundation, the founder of GreeNudge and serves on the board of several commercial and nonprofit organizations. She has been engaged in public debate on issues like climate change and public health and...

Kjetil-Vidar Haraldstad is a Norwegian drummer in the black metal bands Satyricon and 1349. He was born in Øyer Municipality in Oppland county.

Bård Guldvik "Faust" Eithun is a Norwegian musician, best known as the drummer of black metal band Emperor. A prominent member of the early Norwegian black metal scene, Eithun was sentenced to 14 years in prison for murder and church arson in 1994. He was released in 2003 and has since continued performing as a drummer for Emperor, Djevel, Blood...

Jostein Gaarder is a Norwegian intellectual and author of several novels, short stories, and children's books. Gaarder often writes from the perspective of children, exploring their sense of wonder about the world. He often utilizes metafiction in his works and constructs stories within stories. His best known work is the novel Sophie's World: A Novel About the History of Philosophy...

Trygve Halvdan Lie was a Norwegian politician, labour leader, government official and author. He served as Norwegian foreign minister during the critical years of the Norwegian government in exile in London from 1940 to 1945. He was the first secretary-general of the United Nations.

Bjørnstjerne Martinius Bjørnson was a Norwegian writer who received the 1903 Nobel Prize in Literature "as a tribute to his noble, magnificent and versatile poetry, which has always been distinguished by both the freshness of its inspiration and the rare purity of its spirit". The first Norwegian Nobel laureate, he was a prolific polemicist and extremely influential in Norwegian public...

Gunnar Fridtjof Thurmann Sønsteby DSO was a member of the Norwegian resistance movement during the German occupation of Norway in World War II. Known by the nickname "Kjakan" ("The Chin") and as "Agent No. 24", he was the most highly decorated citizen in Norway, including being the only person to have been awarded the War Cross with three swords, Norway's...

Anders Danielsen Lie is a Norwegian actor, musician and physician.

Johan Vincent Galtung was a Norwegian sociologist and the principal founder of the discipline of peace and conflict studies. He was the main founder of the Peace Research Institute Oslo (PRIO) in 1959 and was its first director until 1970. He also established the Journal of Peace Research in 1964.

Gro Harlem Brundtland is a Norwegian politician in the Labour Party, who served three terms as the prime minister of Norway (1981, 1986–1989, and 1990–1996), as the leader of her party from 1981 to 1992, and as the director-general of the World Health Organization from 1998 to 2003. She is also known for having chaired the Brundtland Commission which presented...

Niels Henrik Abel was a Norwegian mathematician who made pioneering contributions in a variety of fields. His most famous single result is the first complete proof demonstrating the impossibility of solving the general quintic equation in radicals. This question was one of the outstanding open problems of his day, and had been unresolved for over 250 years. He was also...

Haakon, Crown Prince of Norway is the heir apparent to the Norwegian throne. He is the only son of King Harald V and Queen Sonja.

Thor Heyerdahl KStJ was a Norwegian adventurer and ethnographer with a background in biology with specialization in zoology, botany and geography.

Fridtjof Wedel-Jarlsberg Nansen was a Norwegian polymath and Nobel Peace Prize laureate. He gained prominence at various points in his life as an explorer, a scientist, a diplomat, a humanitarian, and the co-founder of the Fatherland League.

Sonja is Queen of Norway as the wife of King Harald V. She is Norway's first queen consort since Queen Maud, the wife of King Haakon VII who died in 1938.

Harrison Hagan "Jack" Schmitt is an American geologist, former NASA astronaut, university professor, and former U.S. senator from New Mexico. He is the most recent living person—and only person without a background in military aviation—to have walked on the Moon.

Willy Brandt was a German politician and statesman who was leader of the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD) from 1964 to 1987 and concurrently served as the chancellor of West Germany from 1969 to 1974. He was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1971 for his efforts to strengthen cooperation in Western Europe through the EEC and to achieve...

Harald V is King of Norway, reigning since 1991.

Jens Stoltenberg is a Norwegian politician who has served as the minister of finance since 2025, a position he previously held from 1996 to 1997. A member of the Labour Party, he also served as the prime minister of Norway from 2000 to 2001 and 2005 to 2013, and secretary general of NATO from 2014 to 2024.

Tord Gustavsen is a Norwegian jazz pianist and composer. He tours extensively worldwide, and he has been a bandleader for a trio, ensemble and quartet at various times, all bearing his name.

May-Britt Moser FRS is a Norwegian psychologist and neuroscientist, who is a Professor of Psychology and Neuroscience at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU). She and her former husband, Edvard Moser, shared half of the 2014 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, awarded for work concerning the grid cells in the entorhinal cortex, as well as several additional...

Edvard Ingjald Moser is a Norwegian psychologist and neuroscientist, who as of May 2024 is a professor at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU) in Trondheim.

Asle Toje is the Deputy Leader of the Norwegian Nobel Committee (2018-2029). He is a foreign policy scholar and was Research Director at the Norwegian Nobel Institute from 2009 until he joined the Nobel Peace Prize Committee. Toje is a regular contributor to the Norwegian foreign policy debate, including as a regular columnist in the Dagens Næringsliv, Minerva. In the...

Hadia Tajik is a Pakistani-Norwegian jurist, journalist and politician from the Labour Party. She served as Minister of Labour and Social Inclusion from 2021 to 2022, where after several tax evasions and misuse of appointed apartments, she resigned from the post. She previously served as Minister of Culture from 2012 to 2013. She was 29 years of age at the...

Mette-Marit, Crown Princess of Norway is a member by marriage of the Norwegian royal family. She has been married to Crown Prince Haakon, the heir apparent to the Norwegian throne, since 2001. Mette-Marit and Haakon have two children, Princess Ingrid Alexandra and Prince Sverre Magnus.

Tjalling Charles Koopmans was a Dutch-American mathematician and economist. He was the joint winner with Leonid Kantorovich of the 1975 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences for his work on the theory of the optimum allocation of resources. Koopmans showed that on the basis of certain efficiency criteria, it is possible to make important deductions concerning optimum price systems.

Abraham "Bram" Peper was a Dutch politician of the Labour Party (PvdA).