100 Notable alumni of Williams College

Florence Bascom was a pioneer American woman geologist and educator. Bascom became an anomaly in the 19th century when she earned two bachelor's degrees and a masters degree. Earning a Bachelor of Arts in 1882, and a Bachelor of Science in 1884 both at the University of Wisconsin. Shortly after, in 1887, Bascom earned her master's degree in geology at...

Francis Bowes Sayre Jr. was Dean of the Washington National Cathedral in Washington, D.C., for 27 years. He was the eldest grandchild of Woodrow Wilson, the 28th president of the United States.

Bruce George Sundlun was an American businessman, politician and member of the Democratic Party who served as 71st governor of Rhode Island between 1991 and 1995.

Jon S. Tigar is an American lawyer serving as a United States district judge of the United States District Court for the Northern District of California. He was previously a California state court judge on the Alameda County Superior Court from 2002 to 2013.

Alice Patterson Albright is an American government official who served as the CEO of the Millennium Challenge Corporation from 2022 to 2025.

Andrew W. Goodell is an American politician who was elected to the New York State Assembly in 2010. He is a Republican. Previously, Goodell was the County Executive of Chautauqua County, New York. Goodell represents the 150th Assembly District, which is numerically the last, and geographically the westernmost, of the 150 districts in the Assembly and, as of the 2012...

Sarah Megan Thomas is an American actress, writer, director, and producer who has established herself as a filmmaker by creating original and prestigious fare, featuring complex roles for women. Thomas created the concept, co-wrote the story, produced, and starred in the critically well-received Sony Pictures Classics film Equity, which premiered at Sundance and was a New York Times Critic's Pick...

L. E. Modesitt Jr. is an American science fiction and fantasy author who has written over 80 novels. He is best known for the fantasy series The Saga of Recluce. By 2015, the 18 novels in the Recluce series had sold nearly three million copies. By 2025, there were 25 Recluce novels.

John Howard Lawson was an American playwright, screenwriter, arts critic, and cultural historian. After enjoying a relatively successful career writing plays that were staged on and off Broadway in the 1920s and '30s, Lawson relocated to Hollywood and began working in the motion picture industry. In 1933, he helped to organize the Screen Writers Guild and became its first president....

Alan Edwin Baxter was an American film and television actor.

Jeffrey Stuart Sutton is an American lawyer and jurist serving as the chief judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit. Sutton was appointed to the Sixth Circuit in 2003 by President George W. Bush and has served as its chief judge since 2021.

Charles William Brackett was an American screenwriter and film producer. He collaborated with Billy Wilder on sixteen films.

Eugene Field Sr. was an American writer, best known for his children's poetry and humorous essays. He was known as the "poet of childhood".

Ava Clayton Spencer is an American attorney. She was the eighth president of Bates College. She had previously served as the vice president for institutional policy at Harvard University from 2005 to 2012.

Abram Garfield was an architect who practiced in Cleveland, Ohio. He was the sixth child and fourth son of President James A. Garfield and Lucretia Rudolph Garfield, and the youngest to survive infancy. He designed prominent residences and other buildings. A number of his works are listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

Louis Frederick Fieser was an American organic chemist, professor, and in 1968, professor emeritus at Harvard University. His award-winning research included work on blood-clotting agents including the first synthesis of vitamin K, synthesis and screening of quinones as antimalarial drugs, work with steroids leading to the synthesis of cortisone, and study of the nature of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons. He also...

Stephen Johnson Field was an American jurist. He was an Associate Justice of the United States Supreme Court from May 20, 1863, to December 1, 1897, the second longest tenure of any justice. Prior to this appointment, he was the fifth Chief Justice of California.

Arne Helge Carlson is an American politician who served from 1991 to 1999 as the 37th governor of Minnesota. Carlson is considered a liberal Republican. Before his governorship, he served as the Minnesota State Auditor from 1979 to 1991.

Curtis Tracy McMullen is an American mathematician who is the Cabot Professor of Mathematics at Harvard University. He was awarded the Fields Medal in 1998 for his work in complex dynamics, hyperbolic geometry and Teichmüller theory.

Walker Stapleton is an American politician who served two terms as Colorado's state treasurer from 2011 to 2019. Stapleton was the Republican nominee for Governor of Colorado in the 2018 election, which he lost to Democrat Jared Polis.

Harry Augustus "Hal" Garfield was an American lawyer, academic, and public official. He was president of Williams College and supervised the United States Fuel Administration during World War I. He was a son of President James A. Garfield.

Bernard Bailyn was an American historian, author, and academic specializing in U.S. Colonial and Revolutionary-era History. He was a professor at Harvard University from 1953. Bailyn won the Pulitzer Prize for History twice (in 1968 and 1987). In 1998 the National Endowment for the Humanities selected him for the Jefferson Lecture. He was a recipient of the 2010 National Humanities...

Francis Bowes Sayre Sr. was a professor at Harvard Law School, High Commissioner of the Philippines, and a son-in-law of President Woodrow Wilson.

Ethan Zuckerman is an American media scholar, blogger, and Internet activist. He was the director of the MIT Center for Civic Media, and Associate Professor of the Practice in Media Arts and Sciences at MIT until May 2020, and the author of the 2013 book Rewire: Digital Cosmopolitans in the Age of Connection, which won the Zócalo Book Prize. In...

Charles Burke Elbrick was an American diplomat and career foreign service officer. During his career, he served three ambassadorships: in Portugal, Yugoslavia and Brazil, in addition to numerous minor postings.

Ranald Slidell Mackenzie, also called Bad Hand, was a career United States Army officer and general in the Union Army during the American Civil War. He was described by General Ulysses S. Grant as its most promising young officer. He also served with great distinction in the following Indian Wars.

Stacy Madeleine Schiff is an American writer. Her biography of Véra Nabokov won the 2000 Pulitzer Prize in biography. Schiff has also written biographies of French aviator and author of The Little Prince, Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, colonial American-era polymath and prime mover of America's founding, Benjamin Franklin, Franklin's fellow Founding Father Samuel Adams, ancient Egyptian queen Cleopatra, and the important...

Pavlos Geroulanos is a Greek politician of the Panhellenic Socialist Movement. He served as the Minister for Culture and Tourism of Greece from 2009 until 2012.

Charles White Whittlesey was a United States Army Medal of Honor recipient who led the Lost Battalion in the Meuse–Argonne offensive during World War I. He committed suicide by drowning when he jumped from a ship en route to Havana on November 26, 1921, at age 37.

Charles Richard Webb was an American novelist. His most famous work is the 1963 novel The Graduate, which was made into a 1967 film of the same name.

William Alan Finn was an American composer and lyricist. He was best known for his musicals, which include Falsettos, for which he won the 1992 Tony Awards for Best Original Score and Best Book of a Musical, A New Brain (1998), and The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee (2005).

Telford Taylor was an American lawyer and professor. Taylor was known for his role as lead counsel in the prosecution of war criminals after World War II, his opposition to McCarthyism in the 1950s, and his outspoken criticism of American actions during the Vietnam War.

Max Forrester Eastman was an American writer on literature, philosophy, and society, a poet, and a prominent political activist. Moving to New York City for graduate school, Eastman became involved with radical circles in Greenwich Village. He supported socialism and became a leading patron of the Harlem Renaissance and an activist for a number of liberal and radical causes. For...

James Rudolph Garfield was an American lawyer and politician. Garfield was a son of President James A. Garfield and First Lady Lucretia Garfield. He served as Secretary of the Interior during President Theodore Roosevelt's administration.

Oren M. Cass is an American public policy commentator and political advisor. He works at American Compass, a conservative think tank which he founded in 2020.

Bethany Lee McLean is an American journalist and contributing editor for Vanity Fair magazine. She is known for her writing on the Enron scandal and the 2008 financial crisis. Previous assignments include editor-at-large, columnist for Fortune, and a contributor to Slate.

Robert Fry Engle III is an American economist and statistician. He won the 2003 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences, sharing the award with Clive Granger, "for methods of analyzing economic time series with time-varying volatility (ARCH)".

Richard E. Besser is an American doctor and executive who has served as president and CEO of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation since April 2017. Besser served as the acting director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry (ATSDR) from January to June 2009. He was ABC News' former...

Francis Thomas "Fay" Vincent Jr. was an American entertainment lawyer, securities regulator, and sports executive who served as the eighth commissioner of baseball from September 13, 1989, to September 7, 1992.

Claudia Rankine is a Jamaican-American poet, essayist, playwright, and the editor of several anthologies. She is the author of five volumes of poetry, two plays and various essays.

Andrew Saul Levin is an American attorney and politician who served as the U.S. representative from Michigan's 9th congressional district from 2019 to 2023. A member of the Democratic Party, Levin was elected to the House in 2018, succeeding his retiring father, Sander Levin. He is the nephew of Carl Levin, formerly Michigan's U.S. senator from 1979 to 2015.

Graham Powley Jarvis was a Canadian character actor in American films and television from the 1960s to the early 2000s.

Chris Collingwood is an American singer, songwriter, and artist. He is best known as the lead vocalist and founding member of the power pop band Fountains of Wayne.

Ian Joseph Brzezinski is an American foreign policy and military affairs expert.

Herbert Henry Lehman was an American financier and Democratic politician who served as the 45th and first Jewish governor of New York from 1933 to 1942 and represented New York in the United States Senate from 1949 until 1957.

Mark Emery Udall is an American politician who served as a United States senator from Colorado from 2009 to 2015. A member of the Democratic Party, he previously served in the United States House of Representatives, representing Colorado's 2nd congressional district. Before being elected to Congress, he represented parts of Boulder, Colorado, in the Colorado House of Representatives.

David Paul Clawson is an American retired college football coach and former player. He most recently served as the head football coach at Wake Forest University, where he was named the 2021 ACC Coach of the Year. Clawson previously served as the head football coach at Fordham University from 1999 to 2003, at the University of Richmond from 2004 to...

Charles Ellsworth Goodell Jr. was an American politician who represented New York in the United States House of Representatives from 1959 to 1968 and the United States Senate from 1968 to 1971. In both cases, he took office following the deaths of his predecessors, first in a special election and second as a temporary appointee succeeding Robert F. Kennedy.

Edward Espenett Case is an American lawyer and politician. A member of the Democratic Party, he has served as the U.S. representative for Hawaii's 1st congressional district since 2019, which covers the urban core of Honolulu. He represented the 2nd district, which covers the rest of the state, from 2002 to 2007.

Martha Mary Coakley is an American lobbyist, lawyer, and former politician who served as Attorney General of Massachusetts from 2007 to 2015. Prior to serving as Attorney General, she was District Attorney of Middlesex County from 1999 to 2007.

Christine Elizabeth Wormuth is an American defense official and career civil servant who served as the United States secretary of the Army from 2021 to 2025. A member of the Democratic Party, she is the first female United States secretary of the Army.

Brian Alexander Wecht, also known by his character name Ninja Brian, is an American musician, Internet personality, podcaster, and theoretical physicist. He is best known as a member of comedy musical duo Ninja Sex Party and video game-based comedy music trio Starbomb. He has also appeared on the Let's Play webseries Game Grumps, all three alongside Dan Avidan.

Tui Tamara Sutherland is an American children's book author who has written more than 60 books under her own name and under several pen names. In 2009, she won $46,200 over three games on Jeopardy! She is best known for writing the Wings of Fire series of epic dragon fantasy novels. Sutherland's books have sold over 67 million copies.

William Cullen Bryant was an American romantic poet, journalist, and long-time editor of the New York Evening Post. Born in Massachusetts, he started his career as a lawyer but showed an interest in poetry early in his life.

Sanford Ballard Dole was a Hawaii-born lawyer and jurist. He lived through the periods when Hawaii was a kingdom, provisional government, republic, and territory. Dole advocated the westernization of Hawaiian government and culture. After the overthrow of the monarchy, he served as the President of the Republic of Hawaii, until his government secured Hawaii's annexation by the United States. He...

Stephen McConnell Case is an American businessman, investor, and philanthropist best known as the former chief executive officer and chairman of America Online (AOL). Case joined AOL's predecessor company, Quantum Computer Services, as a marketing vice-president in 1985, became CEO of the company (renamed AOL) in 1991, and, at the height of the dot-com bubble in 2000, orchestrated with Gerald...

Donald Sternoff Beyer Jr. is an American politician, businessman, and diplomat serving as the U.S. representative for Virginia's 8th congressional district since 2015. A member of the Democratic Party, his district is located in Northern Virginia and includes Alexandria, Falls Church, Arlington, and parts of eastern Fairfax County.

Michael Richard Beschloss is an American historian specializing in the United States presidency. He is the author of nine books on the presidency.

James Campbell Scott was an American political scientist and anthropologist specializing in comparative politics. He was a comparative scholar of agrarian and non-state societies.

Monique Gabriela Curnen is an American actress.

John Barrett "Jay" McInerney Jr. is an American novelist, screenwriter, editor, and columnist. His novels include Bright Lights, Big City, Ransom, Story of My Life, Brightness Falls, and The Last of the Savages. He edited The Penguin Book of New American Voices, wrote the screenplay for the 1988 film adaptation of Bright Lights, Big City, and co-wrote the screenplay for...

Walker Evans was an American photographer and photojournalist best known for his work for the Resettlement Administration and the Farm Security Administration (FSA) documenting the effects of the Great Depression. Evans published his first photos at the age of 27. Much of Evans' New Deal work uses the large format, 8 × 10-inch (200×250 mm) view camera. He said that...

John Thomas Sayles is an American independent film director, screenwriter, editor, actor, and novelist. He is known for writing and directing the films The Brother from Another Planet (1984), Matewan (1987), Eight Men Out (1988), Passion Fish (1992), The Secret of Roan Inish (1994), Lone Star (1996), Men with Guns (1997), Sunshine State (2002), and Silver City (2004).

William John Bennett is an American conservative politician and political commentator who served as the third United States secretary of education from 1985 to 1988 under President Ronald Reagan. He also held the post of director of the Office of National Drug Control Policy under George H. W. Bush.

Frederick Wiseman was an American filmmaker, documentarian, theater director, editor and actor. His work primarily explored American institutions. His most notable documentaries include Titicut Follies (1967), Hospital (1970), Welfare (1975), and In Jackson Heights (2015). His films were noted for their ability to possess dramatic structure despite appearing to eschew narrative devices, along with tackling social and economic issues in...

Richard McGarrah Helms was an American government official, intelligence officer and diplomat who served as Director of Central Intelligence (DCI) from 1966 to 1973 and as United States Ambassador to Iran from 1973 to 1976.

Harold Zieg Steinbrenner is an American businessman best known as the chairman and managing general partner of Yankee Global Enterprises (YGE), which owns the New York Yankees of Major League Baseball (MLB). In addition to owning the Yankees, YGE also has a 20% minority stake in the American soccer club New York City Football Club of Major League Soccer (MLS),...

Crispin Freeman is an American voice actor, voice director and a screenwriter who is best known for voicing characters in English-language dubs of Japanese, includes anime and video games. Some of his prominent anime roles include Zelgadis Graywords in Slayers, Kyon in The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya, Togusa in the Ghost in the Shell franchise, Alucard in Hellsing, Kirei Kotomine...

Sebastian Arcelus is an American actor, best known for his roles as Lucas Goodwin on the Netflix thriller series House of Cards (2013–2016) and Jay Whitman on the CBS political drama series Madam Secretary (2014–2019). Arcelus began his acting career in the early 2000s and spent the first decade of his career on Broadway, having played Roger in Rent, Fiyero...

Kristen Anderson-Lopez is an American songwriter. She is known for co-writing the songs for the 2013 animated musical film Frozen and its 2019 sequel Frozen 2 with her husband Robert Lopez. The couple won the Academy Award for Best Original Song for "Let It Go" from Frozen and "Remember Me" from Coco (2017) at the 86th and 90th awards respectively....

John Michael Frankenheimer was an American film and television director, known both for his social dramas and his action/suspense pictures. Among his best-known theatrical film credits are Birdman of Alcatraz, The Manchurian Candidate (both 1962), Seven Days in May, The Train (both 1964), Seconds, Grand Prix (both 1966), The Fixer (1968), The Iceman Cometh (1973), French Connection II (1975), Black...

William Windom was an American actor. He was known as a character actor of the stage and screen. He is well known for his recurring role as Dr. Seth Hazlitt alongside Angela Lansbury in the CBS mystery series Murder, She Wrote and his intense guest role as Commodore Matt Decker in Star Trek.

Maxwell Trowbridge Gail Jr. is an American actor who has starred on stage, and in television and film roles. He is best known for his role as Detective Stan "Wojo" Wojciehowicz on the sitcom Barney Miller (1975–1982), which earned him two consecutive Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Comedy Series nominations. Gail also won the 2019 and...

Lina Maliha Khan is a British and American legal scholar who was the chair of the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) from 2021 to 2025. She is also an associate professor at Columbia Law School.

Erin Isabelle Burnett is an American news anchor, currently the anchor of Erin Burnett OutFront on CNN. She previously worked for CNBC as co-anchor of Squawk on the Street and the host of Street Signs. Burnett has also appeared on NBC's Meet the Press, Today, MSNBC's Morning Joe, and NBC Nightly News as well as making occasional appearances on The...

Adam Lyons Schlesinger was an American musician, songwriter, composer, and record producer. He was a founding member of the bands Fountains of Wayne, Ivy, and Tinted Windows, and was also a member of the band Fever High. He also wrote songs for television and film, for which he won three Emmy Awards, a Grammy Award, and the ASCAP Pop Music...

Mika Emilie Leonia Brzezinski Scarborough is an American talk show host who co-hosts MS NOW's weekday morning broadcast show Morning Joe alongside her husband Joe Scarborough. She was formerly a CBS News correspondent, and was their principal "Ground Zero" reporter during the morning of the September 11 attacks. In 2007, she joined MSNBC as an occasional anchor, and was subsequently...

Jonathan Ira Lovett is an American podcaster, comedian, journalist, and former speechwriter. Lovett is a co-founder of Crooked Media, along with Jon Favreau and Tommy Vietor. All three formerly worked together as White House staffers during the Obama administration. Lovett is a regular host of the Crooked Media podcasts Pod Save America and Lovett or Leave It. As a speechwriter,...

Stephen Joshua Sondheim was an American composer and lyricist. Regarded as one of the most important figures in 20th-century musical theater, he is credited with reinventing the American musical. He received numerous accolades, including eight Tony Awards, an Academy Award, eight Grammy Awards, five Olivier Awards, and the Pulitzer Prize. He was inducted into the American Theater Hall of Fame...

David Russell Strathairn is an American actor. Known for his leading roles on stage and screen, he has often portrayed historical figures including Edward R. Murrow, J. Robert Oppenheimer, William H. Seward, and John Dos Passos. He has received accolades including an Independent Spirit Award, a Primetime Emmy Award, and a Volpi Cup, and has been nominated for an Academy...

Kristin Cashore is an American young adult and fantasy writer, best known for the Graceling Realm series.

Wang Leehom, sometimes credited as Leehom Wang, is an American singer-songwriter, actor, producer, and film director. His music is known for fusing hip-hop and R&B, with traditional Chinese music.

Jeb Stuart Magruder was an American businessman and high-level political operative in the Republican Party who served time in prison for his role in the Watergate scandal.

Mary Victoria Price is an American public speaker and the author of the memoir, The Way of Being Lost: A Road Trip to My Truest Self and Vincent Price: A Daughter's Biography. She currently spends much of her time traveling and speaking about the life of her father, Vincent Price, as well as discussing self-development topics.

Bud Collyer was an American radio actor and announcer and game show host who became one of the nation's first major television game show stars. He is best remembered for his work as the first host of the TV game shows Beat the Clock and To Tell the Truth, but he was also famous in the roles of Clark Kent...

Sally Ann Kornbluth is an American cell biologist, currently serving as the 18th president of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology since January 2023. She served as provost of Duke University from July 2014 to December 2022.

Graham Jesse Winchester is a Canadian former professional ice hockey player. After graduating from Colgate University in 2008, Winchester turned professional, signing with the Ottawa Senators. He also played professional ice hockey with Jokerit of Finland and the Florida Panthers during his career, which lasted from 2008 to 2014.

Elias Kazantzoglou, known as Elia Kazan, was a Greek-American film and theatre director, producer, screenwriter and actor, described by The New York Times as "one of the most honored and influential directors in Broadway and Hollywood history".

George Michael Steinbrenner III, nicknamed "the Boss", was an American businessman who was the principal owner and managing partner of Major League Baseball's New York Yankees from 1973 until his death in 2010. He was the longest-serving owner in club history, and the Yankees won seven World Series championships and 11 American League pennants under his ownership. His outspokenness and...

Edward Williams Morley was an American scientist known for his precise and accurate measurement of the atomic weight of oxygen, and for the Michelson–Morley experiment.

James Abram Garfield was the 20th president of the United States, serving from March 1881 until his death in September that year after being shot in July. A preacher, lawyer, and Civil War general, Garfield served nine terms in the United States House of Representatives and is the only sitting member of the House to be elected president. Before he...

Adena T. Friedman is an American businesswoman. She currently serves as the President and CEO of Nasdaq, Inc. She was formerly a managing director and CFO of The Carlyle Group. Initially joining Nasdaq in 1993, she returned to Nasdaq from Carlyle in May 2014 as President of Global Corporate and information technology solutions. She was named the CEO of Nasdaq...

Christopher Michael Murphy is a Canadian musician and a member of the rock band Sloan.

Edgar Miles Bronfman was a Canadian-American businessman. He worked for his family's distilled beverage firm, Seagram, eventually becoming president, treasurer and CEO. As president of the World Jewish Congress, Bronfman initiated diplomacy with the Soviet Union, which resulted in the Soviet government legitimizing the Hebrew language in the USSR and contributed to Soviet Jews being legally able to practice their...

Goh Chok Tong AC SPMJ, also known by his initials GCT, is a Singaporean retired politician who served as the second prime minister of Singapore from 1990 to 2004 and as a senior minister of Singapore from 2004 to 2011. He served as the secretary-general of the People's Action Party (PAP) from 1992 to 2004 and was the member of...

Hikmet Çetin is a Turkish retired politician of Kurdish origin. He held various national posts during his career, including Foreign Affairs Minister (1991–1994) and Speaker of the Grand National Assembly (1997–1999). In November 2003, he was appointed NATO's inaugural Senior Civilian Representative in Afghanistan.

Fakhruddin Ahmed is a Bangladeshi economist and civil servant who served as the chief adviser of Bangladesh from 2007 to 2009. He previously served as governor of Bangladesh Bank, the country's central bank.

John Toland was an Irish rationalist philosopher and freethinker, and occasional satirist, who wrote numerous books and pamphlets on political philosophy and philosophy of religion, which are early expressions of the philosophy of the Age of Enlightenment. Born in Ireland, he was educated at the universities of Glasgow, Edinburgh, Leiden and Oxford and was influenced by the philosophy of John...

Granville Stanley Hall was an American psychologist and educator who earned the first doctorate in psychology awarded in the United States of America at Harvard University in the nineteenth century. His interests focused on human life span development and evolutionary theory. Hall was the first president of the American Psychological Association and the first president of Clark University. A 2002...