49 Notable alumni of Whitman College

Jack Lee Burtch was an American lawyer, World War II veteran and politician, who served three terms in the Washington House of Representatives.

Jennifer McIntosh is a hydrogeologist and professor of hydrology and atmospheric sciences at the University of Arizona, where she is a University Distinguished Scholar. In 2019, she was named a Geological Society of America Fellow.

Gerard Theodore van Belle is an American astronomer. He is an expert in optical (visible and near-infrared) astronomical interferometry. He currently works at the Lowell Observatory as the Director of Science.

Colleen S. Willoughby is an American philanthropist and the founder and former president of the Washington Women's Foundation, and the director of Global Women Partners in Philanthropy.

Howard Gary Costigan was an American radio commentator, political functionary, and politician. Costigan is best remembered as the Executive Secretary of the Washington Commonwealth Federation during the second half of the 1930s while he was simultaneously a secret member of the Communist Party USA (CPUSA); he later provided testimony in support of legislative committees investigating communist activities.

Arthur Daniel O'Neal Jr. was an American businessman. He chaired both the Washington State Transportation Commission and the (U.S.) Interstate Commerce Commission. He was on the board of directors at The Greenbrier Companies (GBX) until 2016.

Brenton Weyi is an American essayist, thinker, playwright, poet, and humanist. He is an inaugural Playwright Fellow at Denver Center for the Performing Arts as well as a lead organizer for TEDxBoulder—one of the largest global TEDx events. He is known for cross-disciplinary creativity as well as for his upcoming musical, My Country, My Country

W. Michael Gillette is an American attorney and retired judge in the state of Oregon. He was a justice of the Oregon Supreme Court, where he served from 1986 until 2010. A graduate of Harvard Law School, he was previously a judge on the Oregon Court of Appeals from 1977 to 1986.

John Morrison is an American attorney and politician who served as the elected Montana State Auditor and Insurance and Securities Commissioner from 2001 to 2009. Morrison has been a leader in health insurance policy and litigation and has handled prominent legal cases. He is the senior partner at Morrison Sherwood Wilson Deola, a public interest law firm based in Helena,...

Otis Halbert Holmes was a U.S. Representative from Washington state, serving a total of eight consecutive terms, from 1943 to 1959. He did not stand for re-election in 1958, retiring to his ranch.

Alan Keith Campbell was an American academic and the first Director of the United States Office of Personnel Management.

Robert Bigham Brode was an American physicist, who during World War II led the group at the Manhattan Project's Los Alamos Laboratory that developed the fuses used in the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

Andrew Lewis Josephson is a member of the Alaska House of Representatives. He is a member of the Democratic Party.

Wanjiru Kamau-Rutenberg is an Executive in Residence at Schmidt Futures. Before that she was Director of African Women in Agricultural Research and Development. Wanjiru is also the Founder and past Executive Director of Akili Dada, a leadership incubator for African girls and young women and a former Assistant Professor of Politics at the University of San Francisco.

Linnie Marsh Wolfe was an American librarian. She won the 1946 Pulitzer Prize for Biography or Autobiography for her 1945 biography of John Muir titled Son of the Wilderness: The Life of John Muir (New York: A. A. Knopf, 1945).

Roy Edward Nather was an American astronomer, who at the time of his death, was professor emeritus in Astronomy at University of Texas at Austin. He pioneered the fields of asteroseismology of white dwarfs, and observational studies of interacting binary collapsed stars.

Edith Smaw Quimby was an American medical researcher and physicist, best known as one of the founders of nuclear medicine. Her work involved developing diagnostic and therapeutic applications of X-rays. One of her main concerns was protecting both those handling the radioactive material and making sure that those being treated were given the lowest dose necessary.

Dennis P. Eichhorn was an American writer, best known for his adult-oriented autobiographical comic book series Real Stuff. His stories, often involving sex, drugs, and alcohol, have been compared to those of Jack Kerouac, Ken Kesey, and Charles Bukowski.

David Robert Nygren is a particle physicist known for his invention of the time projection chamber. He is currently a Presidential Distinguished Professor of Physics at the University of Texas at Arlington. He has worked at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory since 1973. He has been called "the most distinguished developer of particle detection instruments in the country".

Stephen Beus is an American pianist.

Bernard John "Ben" Westlund II was an American politician in the U.S. state of Oregon. A Democrat, he was elected State Treasurer in 2008. Previously, Westlund served in both houses of the Oregon Legislative Assembly, as a Republican from 1996 to 2006, as an independent from 2006 to 2007, and then as a Democrat. Westlund dropped his Republican party affiliation...

Holly Brooks is an American cross-country skier from Seattle, Washington who competed for Whitman College in 2001–04 and has competed recreationally since 2009. She has four victories in lesser events up to 10 km, all earned in 2009. She was a late qualifier to the 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver, her second ever international skiing competition following the 2010 World...

Marcus Amerman is a Native American (Choctaw Nation) beadwork artist, glass artist, painter, fashion designer, and performance artist, living in Idaho. He is known for his highly realistic beadwork portraits.

Sharon Kay Nelson is an American politician from the state of Washington.

Deborah Kafoury is a politician in the U.S. state of Oregon.

Debra Lynn Dean is an American writer, best known for her 2006 novel, The Madonnas of Leningrad.

Jesse Kiehl is a Democratic member of the Alaska Legislature representing the State Senate's B district and a former member of the Assembly of the City and Borough of Juneau, Alaska.

Neil Kornze is an American government official who served as director of the Bureau of Land Management from March 2013 to January 2017 under President Barack Obama.

David Crockett Graham was a polymath American Baptist minister and missionary, educator, author, archaeologist, anthropologist, naturalist and field collector in the Province of Sichuan (formerly spelled Szechwan) during the Chinese Republican Era, from 1911 to 1948. He was a 32nd degree Mason, and a past master of the Szechwan Lodge No. 112. From 1921 to 1942, Graham collected and sent to...

Dorothy Marie "Dottie" Metcalf-Lindenburger is a retired American astronaut. She was a science teacher at Hudson's Bay High School in Vancouver, Washington when she was selected in 2004 as an educator mission specialist. She was the first Space Camp alumna to become an astronaut.

Mara Katherine Abbott is an American former women's bicycle racer. In 2010, Abbott became the first US cyclist ever to win the Giro d'Italia Femminile, one of the Grand Tours of women's bicycle racing. Abbott retired after the 2016 Olympic Games road race.

Walter Clifford Minnick is an American businessman, politician, and lobbyist who served as a U.S. Representative for Idaho's 1st congressional district, serving from 2009 until 2011. He is a member of the Democratic Party, and is the last Democrat to represent Idaho in Congress.

Otto Abels Harbach, born Otto Abels Hauerbach was an American lyricist and librettist of nearly 50 musical comedies and operettas. Harbach collaborated as lyricist or librettist with many of the leading Broadway composers of the early 20th century, including Jerome Kern, Louis Hirsch, Herbert Stothart, Vincent Youmans, George Gershwin, and Sigmund Romberg.

Anomie Belle Campbell, born Toby Potter Campbell is an American multi-instrumentalist, vocalist, songwriter, producer, and artivist from Seattle. Originally a classically trained violinist and songwriter, Belle began writing and recording music as a child. Belle has since developed an eclectic and avant-garde musical style that incorporates aspects of electronic, classical, art pop, experimental, trip hop, glitch, and soul.

James Louis Robart is a senior United States district judge of the United States District Court for the Western District of Washington.

John Gregory Markoff is a journalist best known for his work covering technology at The New York Times for 28 years until his retirement in 2016, and a book and series of articles about the 1990s pursuit and capture of hacker Kevin Mitnick.

Cullen James Hoback is an American film producer and director. He is also an occasional columnist and speaker. His documentary films include Monster Camp (2007), Terms and Conditions May Apply (2013), and What Lies Upstream (2018), as well as the HBO mini-series Q: Into the Storm (2021). His documentary style has been described as non-fiction horror with a comedic tone....

Walter Houser Brattain was an American solid-state physicist who shared the 1956 Nobel Prize in Physics with John Bardeen and William Shockley for their invention of the point-contact transistor. Brattain devoted much of his life to research on surface states.

Jena Marie Griswold is an American attorney and politician from the state of Colorado. A Democrat, she is the 39th Colorado Secretary of State, serving since January 8, 2019.

Derrike Wayne Cope is an American professional stock car racing driver and team owner. He is best known for his surprise win in the 1990 Daytona 500. He last competed in the NASCAR Cup Series, driving the No. 15 Chevrolet Camaro ZL1 for Rick Ware Racing in an alliance with his own StarCom Racing. Cope also was team manager of...

Morten Johannes Lauridsen III is an American composer and teacher. A National Medal of Arts recipient (2007), he was composer-in-residence of the Los Angeles Master Chorale from 1994 to 2001, and is professor emeritus of composition at the USC Thornton School of Music, where he taught for fifty-two years until his retirement in 2019.

John Patrick Page is an American actor, low bass singer, and playwright. Beginning his career in classical theatre and the works of Shakespeare, he originated the Broadway roles of the Grinch in Dr. Seuss' How the Grinch Stole Christmas! The Musical (2006–2007), Norman Osborn/Green Goblin in Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark (2011–2012), and Hades in Hadestown (2019–2022), the last of...

John W. Stanton is an American businessman. He is the majority owner of the Seattle Mariners of Major League Baseball (MLB) and has led several wireless communication companies.

Thomas Lloyd is an American college basketball coach who is the current head coach at the University of Arizona of the Big 12 Conference. His 61 wins in the first two seasons are the most for any head coach in NCAA Division I history.

William West Anderson, known professionally as Adam West, was an American actor. He portrayed Batman in the 1960s ABC series of the same name and its 1966 theatrical feature film, reprising the role in various media until 2017. Having made his film debut in the 1950s, West starred opposite Chuck Connors in Geronimo (1962) and The Three Stooges in The...

Dirk Benedict is an American actor and author. He is best known for playing the characters Lieutenant Starbuck in the original Battlestar Galactica film and television series and Templeton "Face" Peck in The A-Team television series. He is the author of Confessions of a Kamikaze Cowboy and And Then We Went Fishing.

William Orville Douglas was an American jurist who served as an associate justice of the Supreme Court of the United States from 1939 to 1975. Douglas was known for his strong progressive and civil libertarian views and is often cited as the most liberal justice in the U.S. Supreme Court’s history. Nominated by President Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1939, Douglas...

Jo Lynn "Jody" Allen is an American businesswoman, entrepreneur, and philanthropist. She is the younger sister of Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen, and served as the chief executive officer of his investment and project management company, Vulcan Inc., from its founding in 1986 until 2015. She is also the co-founder and president of the Paul G. Allen Family Foundation.