FamousHARVARD UNIVERSITY Alumni a to z

John Adams was a Founding Father, the first vice president of the United States and the second president. His son, John Quincy Adams, was the sixth president.

James Agee was a film critic for TIME magazine, penned the screenplay for The African Queen, and won the 1958 Pulitzer Prize for his novel A Death in the Family.

Howard H. Aiken was a 20th century mathematician and engineer who came up with the idea behind the Mark I, a forerunner to modern computing devices.

Financier John Jacob Astor IV was the great-grandson of John Jacob Astor. He helped build the Waldorf-Astoria hotel and died in the sinking of the RMS Titanic.

Margaret Atwood is a Canadian award-winning writer best known for her poetry, short-stories and novels such as The Circle Game, The Handmaid’s Tale, Snowbird and The Tent.

Roger Baldwin was an American civil rights activist who co-founded the American Civil Liberties Union.

George Bancroft was known as the "father of U.S. history." His work, History of the United States, was the first comprehensive study of U.S. History.

Robert Benchley was an American humorist, drama critic and film actor who is best known for his small roles in over 40 films, including How To Sleep.

Economist Ben Bernanke replaced Alan Greenspan as chairman of the Federal Reserve System in 2006. Luckily, he was an expert on the Great Depression.

Leonard Bernstein was one of the first American-born conductors to receive worldwide fame. He composed the score for the Broadway musical West Side Story.

Benazir Bhutto became the first female prime minister of Pakistan in 1988. She was killed by a suicide bomber in 2007.

J. Michael Bishop is a Nobel Prize winning physician and scholar who made groundbreaking discoveries in cancer research.

Harry Blackmun was the 98th U.S. Supreme Court Justice, known for his landmark ruling in the case of Roe v. Wade.

Michael Bloomberg is a billionaire buisnessman and a three-term mayor of New York City.

American poet and activist Robert Bly is best known for writing Iron John: A Book About Men which is credited for starting the Mythopoetic men's movement.

Author Paula Broadwell made headlines in 2012, when her extramarital affair with U.S. General David Petraeus was uncovered.

American clergyman Phillips Brooks, ordained as an Episcopal priest in 1860, is best known for authoring the Christmas carol "O Little Town of Bethlehem."

African-American poet Sterling Brown is best known for writing poetry distinctly rooted in folklore and authentic black dialect. His works, including Southern Road (1932), have been widely praised for their authenticity and phonetic spelling.

Ralph Bunche was a U.S. diplomat, a key member of the United Nations for more than two decades, and the winner of the 1950 Nobel Prize for Peace.

William S. Burroughs was a Beat Generation writer known for his startling, nontraditional accounts of drug culture, most famously in the book Naked Lunch.

Miguel de la Madrid was president of Mexico from 1982 to 1988. He was a political conservative and his administration was characterized by an economic crisis.

Astrophysicist Neil DeGrasse Tyson hosted NOVA ScienceNow and appeared on such shows as The Daily Show and Real Time with Bill Maher.

W.E.B. Du Bois was one of the most important African-American activists during the first half of the 20th century. He co-founded the NAACP and supported Pan-Africanism.

Esther Dyson, named by Forbes magazine as one of the most powerful women in American business, is regarded as one of the most influential voices in technology.

T.S. Eliot was an American-born English poet, playwright, and literary critic, arguably the most important English-language poet of the 20th century.

Brooke Ellison became a quadriplegic after she was struck by a car as a seventh-grader. In 2002, her inspirational life story was published in Miracles Happen: One Mother, One Daughter, One Journey.

Daniel Ellsberg strengthened public opposition to the Vietnam War in 1971 when he leaked the Pentagon Papers to the New York Times.

Ralph Waldo Emerson was an American Transcendentalist poet, philosopher and essayist during the 19th century. One of his best-known essays is "Self-Reliance.”

American feminist and journalist Susan Faludi wrote Backlash: The Undeclared War Against American Women, which argues that the media distort news about women.

A four-time Pulitzer Prize winner in poetry, American Robert Frost depicted realistic New England life through language and situations familiar to the common man.

Clifford Geertz was a leading proponent of a form of anthropology that stresses the importance of symbols and interpretation in human social life.

Frank Gehry is a Canadian-American architect known for postmodern designs, including the Walt Disney Concert Hall and the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, Spain.

Ruth Bader Ginsburg is a U.S. Supreme Court Justice, the second woman to be appointed to the position.

Doris Kearns Goodwin is best known for authoring biographies of American presidents, including Lyndon B. Johnson, John F. Kennedy, Franklin D. Roosevelt and Abraham Lincoln.

Al Gore was the 45th Vice President of the United States from 1993 to 2001. He is also known for his work regarding environmental issues.

Edward Gorey was an American illustrator best known for his cartoons of Edwardian children coming to macabre ends. He work can be seen in the animated credits of PBS' Masterpiece Mystery.

Fred Grandy played Gopher on the 1970s television show The Love Boat. He was also an Iowa congressman and the president and CEO of Goodwill Industries.

Michael Graves is an American postmodernist architect who designed the Indianapolis Art Center and restored the Washington Monument.

American psychologist G. Stanley Hall was a trailblazer in his field. He established the concept of child psychology and founded Clark University.

John Hancock was an 18th century U.S. merchant who was president of the Continental Congress and the first person to sign the Declaration of Independence.

Randolph A. Hearst was born a billionaire, but he helped transform the vast Hearst newspaper empire built by his father from a flagging company to a profitable private media company. However, the media melee over his daughter, Patty Hearst's abduction by the Symbionese Liberation Army overshadowed other aspects of his life.

Samuel P. Huntington was a political scientist who wrote the influential book The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order.

Philip Johnson was an American architect best known for the design for his own home, the Glass House, in New Canaan, CT.

Liberian President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf is the world's first elected black female president and Africa's first elected female head of state.

Tommy Lee Jones is an American actor known for his roles in Men in Black, The Fugitive, No Country for Old Men and Lincoln (2012).

African-American chemist Percy Julian was a pioneer in the chemical synthesis of medicinal drugs such as cortisone, steroids and birth control pills.

Ted Kaczynski is a mathematician best known for a campaign of letter bombs he sent as "The Unabomber" over a 20 year period, resulting in three fatalities.

Joseph P. Kennedy is best known as the father of three political leaders: President John F. Kennedy, U.S. Representative Ted Kennedy and Robert Kennedy, who served as a U.S. senator and attorney general.

Robert Kennedy was Attorney General during his brother JFK's administration. He later served as a U.S. Senator and was assassinated during his run for the presidency.

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is the son of former New York senator and U.S. attorney general Robert F. Kennedy, and nephew of former U.S. president John F. Kennedy.

Rufus King was an American lawyer and politician from Massachusetts best known as one of the framers and signers of the constitution.

Biologist Alfred Kinsey wrote Sexual Behavior in the Human Male, which was based on research he and his colleagues conducted at the Institute for Sex Research.

Henry Kissinger is an American political scientist and diplomat who won the Nobel Peace Prize for efforts to broker a peaceful settlement of the Vietnam War.

Stanley Kunitz was an American poet who served as Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress (1974; 2000). He won the Pulitzer Prize for his work Selected Poems 1928-1958 (1958).

Edwin Land is best known as the inventor of the Polaroid camera and film, and as the co-founder of the Polaroid Corporation.

The winner of two Oscars, Jack Lemmon was one of Hollywood’s finest actors, known for his roles in films like Some Like it Hot and The Odd Couple.

American artist Jack Levine is best remembered for his American Social Realist paintings, including "Gangster Funeral," which satirized corruption in the modern world.

With a string of wins in early 2012, New York Knicks guard Jeremy Lin has become one of basketball's most famous players.

Robert Todd Lincoln was an American lawyer and secretary of war best known as the first-born son of President Abraham Lincoln.

Equally versed in comedy and drama, John Lithgow has won raves for his work in World According to Garp, 3rd Rock from the Sun, and Dexter.

Henry Cabot Lodge was an American politician from Massachusetts and the first U.S. Senate majority leader.

Yo-Yo Ma is an acclaimed cellist and songwriter who has produced dozens of albums and won more than 15 Grammy Awards.

Author Norman Mailer used a style combining fiction and journalism to write the Pulitzer Prize-winning book The Executioner's Song.

Terrence Malick is a critically acclaimed American film director who films include: Badlands, Days of Heaven and The Tree of Life.

Robert C. Maynard was a journalist and publisher best known for being the first African American to own and publish a major daily newspaper (Tribune).

Scott McNealy co-founded the computer technology company Sun Microsystems, a fervent rival of Windows.

J.P. Morgan Jr. was a finance executive who followed in his father’s footsteps to head the firm J.P. Morgan and Co.

Comedian and writer Conan O'Brien rose to fame as the host of the talk show Late Night and later the Tonight Show and Conan.

Bill O'Reilly is best known for his cable news program, The O'Reilly Factor, which has been airing on Fox News since 2001, and is also a bestselling author of several books. Until 2009, he ran a popular radio show, The Radio Factor.

J. Robert Oppenheimer is often called the "father of the atomic bomb" for leading the Manhattan Project, the program that developed the first nuclear weapon during World War II.

James Otis was a lawyer in colonial Massachusetts who is best remembered for the phrase, "Taxation without representation is tyranny."