List of City College of New York alumni

Notable alumni

Nobel laureates

• Julius Axelrod 1933 - 1970 Nobel laureate in Medicine
• Kenneth Arrow 1940 - 1972 Nobel laureate in Economics
• Herbert Hauptman 1937 - 1985 Nobel laureate in Chemistry
• Robert Hofstadter 1935 - 1961 Nobel laureate in Physics
• Jerome Karle 1937 - 1985 Nobel laureate in Chemistry
• Arthur Kornberg 1937 - 1959 Nobel laureate in Medicine
• Leon M. Lederman 1943 - 1988 Nobel laureate in Physics
• Arno Penzias 1954 - 1978 Nobel laureate in Physics
• Robert J. Aumann 1950 - 2005 Nobel laureate in Economics

Rhodes Scholars

• James T. Molloy 1939
• Lev A. Sviridov 2005

Fulbright Scholars

• Vera Grant 1995
• Vivian Ka 2000

Truman Scholars

• Charles Claudio Simpkins 2005

Chancellors

• Matthew Goldstein, Current chancellor of the City University of New York.

Politics, government, and sociology

• Herman Badillo 1951, former Congressman and Chairman of CUNY's Board of Trustees, an architect of the University's academic rebirth
• Daniel Bell - sociologist, professor at Harvard University
• Bernard M. Baruch 1889 - Wall Street financier and adviser to American Presidents for 40 years, from Woodrow Wilson to John F. Kennedy
• Abraham D. Beame 1928 - mayor of New York City, 1974 to 1977
• Stephen Bronner - political theorist, Marxist, professor at Rutgers University
• Upendra J. Chivukula - first Asian American elected to the New Jersey General Assembly
• Henry Cohen 1943 - Director, Föhrenwald DP Camp; Founding Dean the Milano School for Management and Urban Policy at the The New School
• Felix Frankfurter 1902 - justice of the U.S. Supreme Court, January 30, 1939–August 28, 1962
• George Friedman - founder of Stratfor, author, professor of Political Science, security and defense analyst
• Nathan Glazer - neoconservative political pundit
• Irving Howe - coined the phrase "New York Jewish Intellectual"
• Henry Kissinger - Nobel Peace Prize and Secretary of State, National Security Advisor (did not graduate)
• Ed Koch 1945 - mayor of New York City, 1978 to 1989
• Irving Kristol 1940 - neoconservative pundit
• Abraham Foxman - National Director of the Anti-Defamation League
• Robert T. Johnson 1972 - Bronx District Attorney
• Melvin J. Lasky 1938 - anti-communist, editor of Encounter 1958 to 1991
• Guillermo Linares 1975 - the first Dominican-American New York City Council Member
• Colin L. Powell - United States Secretary of State (2001 – 2005; Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff (1989 – 1993) and U.S. Army General; National Security Advisor (1987 – 1989)
• {Sal Restivo} 1965 - Pioneeer ethnographer of science, one of the founders of the sociology of mathematics, founding member and former president of the Society for Social Studies of Science.
• Julius Rosenberg - infamous convicted spy during the Cold War
• Robert F. Wagner Sr. - United States Senator from New York, 1927 to 1949
• Michelle Wallace 1975 - a major figure in African-American studies, feminist studies and cultural studies
• Stephen Samuel Wise 1891- Reform rabbi, early Zionist and social justice activist.

The arts

• Maurice Ashley 1993 - the first African-American International Chess Grandmaster.
• Paddy Chayevsky - famed playwright and screenwriter, wrote Marty, Hospital and Altered States
• Ira Gershwin 1918 - American lyricist, collaborator with, and brother of George Gershwin
• Marv Goldberg 1964 - Music historian in the field of rhythm & blues
• Hazelle Goodman 1986 - Stage, screen and TV actress, was the first African-American to hold a leading role in a Woody Allen film, Deconstructing Harry.
• Sterling Morrison 1970 - Musician, co-founder of "The Velvet Underground"
• Arthur Guiterman, humorous poet
• Ben Shahn - artist
• Luis Guzmán - actor
• E.Y. "Yip" Harburg 1918 - American lyricist (The Wizard of Oz, Finian's Rainbow, others)
• Judd Hirsch 1960 - American actor
• David Margulies - actor
• Zero Mostel 1935 - actor
• Edward G. Robinson 1914 - actor
• Frank J. Sciame 1974- architect
• Richard Schiff 1983 - Emmy award winning actor and a star of The West Wing (his character, Toby Ziegler, also attended CCNY)
• Alfred Stieglitz 1884- photographer
• Eli Wallach 1938 (MA) - actor
• William Gati, AIA 1981,1982,1984 (BS, BArch, MArch) - Architect and Educator
• Ernest Lehman 1937 (BS) - Screenwriter ("North by Northwest," "The Sound of Music," "Sweet Smell of Success," "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?")

Literature and journalism

• Alan Abelson 1942 - columnist, former editor, Barron's
• Joe Cioffi 1982- Meteorologist. Initially worked at KRIS-TV in Texas and WVUE-TV in Louisiana later reporting on the weather for News 12 in Long Island and he is now currently doing weather for WPIX-TV in New York.
• Morris Raphael Cohen- Philosopher, lawyer, and legal scholar
• Oscar Hijuelos 1975 - won the 1990 Pulitzer Prize for his novel The Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love
• A.M. Rosenthal 1949, former Executive Editor of The New York Times.
• Mario Puzo - bestselling novelist, screenwriter The Godfather
• Walter Mosley 1991 MA, best-selling author whose novels about private eye Easy Rawlins have received Edgar and Golden Dagger Awards.
• Paul Levinson - author of The Plot to Save Socrates and The Silk Code (winner, Locus Award, 1999)
• Michael Oreskes 1975 - Executive Editor of The International Herald Tribune
• Henry Roth - novelist Call It Sleep, considered one of the best novels on the Jewish immigrant experience.
• Upton Sinclair 1897 (BA) - Author ( The Jungle (1906) )
• Dan Daniel 1910 - Dean of American Sportswriters
• Gary Weiss 1975 - Investigative Journalist, Author ( Born to Steal (2003), Wall Street Versus America (2006) )
• Jack Kroll 1937 - culture editor, Newsweek
• Stephen Shepard 1961 - editor in chief, Business Week
• Robert Scheer
• Bernard Malamud 1936 (BA) - Author (won the 1967 Pulitzer Prize and a National Book Award for his novel The Fixer, and another National Book Award for The Magic Barrel, also wrote The Natural (1952) )
• A.H. Raskin, former labor editor, The New York Times.
• Anatole Shub, editor and journalist specializing in Eastern European matters.
• Robert Sobel 1951 (BSS), 1952 (MA), best-selling author of business histories.

Science and technology

• Solomon Asch - psychologist, known for the Asch conformity experiments
• Julius Blank - engineer, member of the Traitorous Eight that founded Silicon Valley
• Adin Falkoff - engineer, computer scientist, co-inventor of the APL language interactive system
• George Washington Goethals 1887 - civil engineer, best known for his supervision of construction and the opening of the Panama Canal
• Dan Goldin 1962 - served as the 9th and longest-tenured administrator of NASA.
• Robert E. Kahn 1960 - Internet pioneer, co-inventor of the TCP/IP protocol, co-recipient of the Turing Award in 2004
• Gary A. Klein 1964 - research psychologist, known for pioneering the field of naturalistic decision making
• Leonard Kleinrock 1957 - Internet pioneer
• Solomon Kullback - Mathematician; NSA cryptology pioneer
• Michael A. Liguori 1979 - listed among the New York area's 100 best primary care doctors by New York Magazine
• Albert Medwin 1949 BSEE - engineer and inventor, developed CMOS integrated circuit technology
• Lewis Mumford - historian of technology
• Charles Lane Poor - noted astronomer
• Howard Rosenblum 1950 BSEE - NSA Engineer; developer of the STU (Secure Telephone Unit)
• Mario Runco, Jr. 1974 - astronaut.
• Jonas Salk 1934 - inventor of the Salk vaccine (see polio vaccine)
• Philip H. Sechzer 1934 - anesthesiologist, pioneer in pain management; inventor of patient-controlled analgesia (PCA)
• Abraham Sinkov - Mathematician; NSA (National Security Agency) cryptology pioneer
• David B. Steinman 1906 - engineer; bridge designer (Class 1906)
• Leonard Susskind 1962 - physicist, string theory

Business

• Robert Catell 1958 - CEO of KeySpan.
• Andrew Grove 1960 - 4th employee of Intel, and eventually its president, CEO, and chairman, and TIME magazine's Man of the Year in 1997, who donated $26,000,000 to CCNY's Grove School of Engineering in 2006.
• Stanley H. Kaplan 1939 - founded Kaplan Educational Services.
• Jack Rudin 1941 - real estate developer.
• Jonathan Better 1949 - real estate investor.
• Frank J. Sciame 1974 - architect and developer.
• Linda Kaplan Thaler 1972, the CEO of the fastest growing ad agency in New York, brought us the Aflac Duck.

Sports

• Red Holzman 1942 - legendary basketball coach for the New York Knicks.
• Holcombe Rucker 1962 - organizer and namesake of the Rucker Tournament

Fictional

• Lennie Briscoe (unknown) - character from the TV show Law & Order
• Brian Flanagan (unknown) - character from the 1988 film Cocktail
• Gordon Gekko (unknown) - character from the 1987 film Wall Street
• Toby Ziegler (unknown) - character from the TV show The West Wing
• Nancy (unknown) - character from the 1971 film Bananas

Footnotes

References and Further Reading

• S. Willis Rudy, College of the City of New York 1847-1947, 1949.
• James Traub, City on a Hill: Testing the American Dream at City College, 1994.
• Paul David Pearson, The City College of New York: 150 years of academic architecture, 1997.
• Sandra S. Roff, et al., From the Free Academy to Cuny: Illustrating Public Higher Education in New York City, 1847-1997, 2000.

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