List of City College of New York people

Here follows a list of notable alumni and faculty of the City College of New York.

This is an incomplete list, which may never be able to satisfy certain standards for completion. You can help by expanding it with reliably sourced additions.

Nobel laureates

• Julius Axelrod 1933 - 1970 Nobel laureate in Medicine
• Kenneth Arrow 1940 - 1972 Nobel laureate in Economics
• Robert J. Aumann 1950 - 2005 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^[1]
• 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
• Julian Schwinger - transferred to Columbia University - 1965 Nobel laureate in Physics

Politics, government, sociology, and philosophy

• Herman Badillo 1951 Congressman and Chairman of CUNY's Board of Trustees
• Bernard M. Baruch 1889 - Wall Street financier and adviser to American Presidents; author of the Baruch Plan
• Daniel Bell 1939 - neoconservative sociologist, professor at Harvard University
• 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
• Morris Raphael Cohen - graduate of CCNY and professor at CCNY; philosopher, lawyer, and legal scholar; the Cohen Library at CCNY is named for him
• Marty Dolin - former Manitoba NDP MLA for Kildonan
• Benjamin B. Ferencz - international jurist and criminal justice pioneer; co-winner of the 2009 Erasmus Prize
• Abraham Foxman - National Director of the Anti-Defamation League
• Felix Frankfurter 1902 - justice of the U.S. Supreme Court
• George Friedman - founder of Stratfor, author, professor of Political Science, security and defense analyst
• Nathan Glazer - sociologist, professor at Harvard University; author of Beyond the Melting Pot with Daniel Patrick Moynihan
• Stanley Graze - economist and former lecturer at CCNY. Worked in the United Nations, State Department, US Army and the Brookings Institution. MA from Columbia University.
• Sidney Hook 1923 - writer and philosopher
• Robert T. Johnson 1972 - Bronx District Attorney
• Henry Kissinger - Secretary of State under Richard Nixon
• Ed Koch 1945 - mayor of New York City, 1978 to 1989
• Irving Kristol 1940 - neoconservative intellectual, professor at New York University
• David Landes 1942 - historian, professor at Harvard University
• Melvin J. Lasky 1938 - anti-communist, editor of Encounter 1958 to 1991
• Guillermo Linares 1975 - the first Dominican-American New York City Council Member
• Seymour Martin Lipset - political sociology, trade unions
• David Mechanic - medical sociology, health behavior
• Sidney Morgenbesser - philosopher, John Dewey Professor of Philosophy, Columbia University, known to have witheringly applied Jewish humor to issues in metaphysics and epistemology^[2]
• Henry Morgenthau, Sr. - financier and diplomat; as ambassador to Ottoman Empire attempted to warn the world about the Armenian genocide
• Daniel Patrick Moynihan - spent a year at CCNY before he was drafted; author of Beyond the Melting Pot with Nathan Glazer; ambassador to the U.N., senator representing New York
• Colin L. Powell 1961- United States Secretary of State, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, U.S. Army General, National Security Advisor
• Alexander Rosenberg - Lakatos Award-winning philosopher at Duke University
• Bertrand Russell - in 1940, invited by the Philosophy Department to become a professor but his appointment was blocked by a suit and timidity on the part of the Board of Higher Education; see more details in City College of New York
• Henry Schwarzschild -, founder of NCADP, LCDC, and head of ACLU's Capital Punishment project in America
• Morrie Schwartz - sociologist, author, and subject of Tuesdays with Morrie.
• Julius Rosenberg - infamous convicted spy during the Cold War
• Friedrich Ulfers 1959 - Deconstructionist writer, Dean of Media and Communications at European Graduate School, and NYU professor
• Robert F. Wagner, Sr. - United States Senator from New York, 1927 to 1949; introduced the National Labor Relations Act
• Michele Wallace 1975 - a major figure in African-American studies, feminist studies and cultural studies
• General Alexander S. Webb - second president of the college; winner of the Congressional Medal of Honor for heroism at the Battle of Gettysburg
• Stephen Samuel Wise 1891- Reform rabbi, early Zionist and social justice activist.
• Aubrey Arcangel 2010 - New York City Director of the Student Veterans of America

Psychology

• Solomon Asch 1928 - psychologist, known for the Asch conformity experiments
• Lawrence Balter - psychology professor, NYU
• Leonard Bickman - quantitative research methods
• Isidor Chein - minority group identification, wrote amicus curiae brief in Brown v. Board of Education
• Kenneth Clark - CCNY professor who studied attitudes toward race and testified at Brown v. Board of Education
• Jacob Cohen - psychologist and statistician, developed the coefficient kappa to assess the reliability of ratings of discrete categories of behavior (e.g., diagnoses of mental disorder); expert on factor analysis and regression analysis
• Morton Deutsch - social psychology, conflict resolution
• Jack Elinson - pioneer in sociomedical science
• Leonard Eron - expert on the development of aggression
• Leon Festinger 1939 - social psychologist. Pioneered experimental social psychology, the theory of cognitive dissonance
• Norman Garmezy - risk research, clinical psychology, resilience
• Murray Glanzer - cognition, perception, and neuroscience
• Robert Glaser - educational psychology
• Henry Gleitman - cognitive psychology, psycholinguistics
• Arno Gruen - psychologist and psychoanalyst
• Ernest Harberg - research on social stress and blood pressure (and son of CCNY alumnus Yip Harberg)
• Richard Herrnstein - quantitative analysis of behavior; co-author of The Bell Curve; Harvard professor
• Julian Hochberg - human perception, perception of the represented world
• Philip Holtzman - schizophrenia research, Harvard professor
• Rachel G. Klein - expert on childhood mental disorder
• Richard Lazarus - emotion, stress, and coping
• Sarnoff Mednick - behavioral genetics
• Donald Meichenbaum - expert in cognitive behavior therapy
• Allan F. Mirsky - neuroscientist
• Walter Mischel - social and personality psychology
• Harold Proshansky - social psychology, president of the CUNY Graduate Center
• Irvin Rock - human perception
• Gertrude R. Schmeidler - human perception, parapsychology
• Jerome L. Singer - psychopathology and clinical psychology
• Hans Strupp - (attended City College but did not graduate) expert in psychotherapy research
• Sigmund Tobias - educational psychology, aptitude-treatment interaction; also published on Jewish refugee experience in World War II Shanghai^[3]
• Lenore E. A. Walker - expert on battered women (master's degree)
• Alfred Wellner - clinical psychology, head injury
• Frank Wexler - psychologist and psychoanalyst

The arts

• Woody Allen attended City College for a brief period of time
• Maurice Ashley 1993 - the first black International Chess Grandmaster.
• Joshua Brand - Emmy Award-winning writer, director, and producer
• Paddy Chayevsky - famed playwright and screenwriter, wrote Marty, The Hospital, and Altered States
• Madeleine Cosman - Author of medieval cookbook
• Julie Dash [1] - filmmaker best known for the dreamy Daughters of the Dust
• William Gati 1981, 1982, 1984 (BS, BArch, MArch) - Architect and educator
• Ira Gershwin 1918 - American lyricist, collaborator with, and brother of George Gershwin
• William Gibson (playwright) 1938 - Playwright - The Miracle Worker
• Marv Goldberg 1964 - Music historian in the field of rhythm & blues
• Hazelle Goodman 1986 - Stage, screen and TV actress
• Bill Graham Music Promoter
• Arthur Guiterman, humorous poet
• Luis Guzmán - actor
• E.Y. "Yip" Harburg 1918 - American lyricist (Brother Can You Spare a Dime?, The Wizard of Oz, Finian's Rainbow)
• Judd Hirsch 1960 - Actor
• Antonio Jerkovic - Photographer
• Arthur Knight 1940 - Movie critic, historian, teacher and TV host
• Stanley Kubrick 1946 - Film Director.
• Ernest Lehman 1937 (BS) - Screenwriter
• Donald Madden - Stage, television, and screen actor
• David Margulies - Actor
• Jackie Mason - Comedian and Actor
• Jerry Masucci - Founder of Fania Records
• Sterling Morrison 1970 - Musician, co-founder of "The Velvet Underground"
• Zero Mostel 1935 - Actor
• George Preston 1961 - Founder and curator of the Museum of Art and Origins, retired professor of art history at CCNY
• Faith Ringgold - Artist well known for her painted story quilts
• Edward G. Robinson 1914 - Actor
• Chris Rush 1968 - Stand-up comedian
• Frank J. Sciame 1974- Architect/Contractor/Developer
• Hrvoje Slovenc - Photographer
• Richard Schiff 1983 - Emmy award winning actor and a star of The West Wing (played Toby Ziegler; see "Fictional" below)
• Ben Shahn - artist
• Gabourey Sidibe - actress, majored in psychology
• Russell Simmons - never finished City College, rap mogul
• Alfred Stieglitz 1884- photographer
• J. Buzz Von Ornsteiner - Forensic Psychologist/Television Personality
• Eli Wallach 1938 (MA) - actor
• Dirk Weiler, singer and actor
• Cornel Wilde 1935 - Actor

Literature and journalism

• Audre Lorde
• Toni Cade Bambara
• Addison Gayle, Jr. 1965 - African American literary critic and teacher
• Larry Neal
• June Jordan
• Barbara Christian
• Alan Abelson 1942 - columnist, former editor, Barron's
• Marc D. Angel- (MA) - rabbinic leader, published author
• Maurice Ashley 1988 - chess grandmaster, chess promoter, and author
• Helen Boyd 1995 - writer, speaker, and educator on gender and transgender theory
• Joe Cioffi 1982 - television meteorologist
• Dan Daniel 1910 - dean of American sportswriters
• Reuben Fine 1932 - chess grandmaster, psychologist, and author
• Rebecca Newberger Goldstein - novelist, philosopher, MacArthur Fellow
• Vivian Gornick - writer, memoirist, feminist, professor; author of Fierce Attachments (1987)
• Peter Grad 1974 - The Record, Hackensack, NJ Op-Ed Page Editor, technology columnist (The PC Guy)
• Clyde Haberman 1966 - New York Times reporter and columnist
• Oscar Hijuelos 1975 - won the 1990 Pulitzer Prize for his novel The Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love
• Irving Howe 1940 - author of World of Our Fathers, literary critic, coined the phrase "New York Jewish Intellectual"
• Bernard Kalb 1951 - journalist and television news correspondent
• Marvin Kalb 1951 - journalist and television news correspondent
• David Karp 1948 - novelist and television writer
• Alfred Kazin - Author of A Walker in the City, literary critic
• Jack Kroll 1937 - culture editor, Newsweek
• Joseph P. Lash 1931 - Pulitzer Prize for Biography winner, author of Eleanor and Franklin
• Paul Levinson - author of The Plot to Save Socrates and The Silk Code (winner, Locus Award, 1999)
• Bernard Malamud 1936 (BA) - author (won the 1967 Pulitzer Prize and a National Book Award); author of The Assistant
• Ralph Morse - career photographer for LIFE Magazine; youngest war correspondent in World War II (recipient of the 1995 Joseph A. Sprague Memorial Award, the highest honor in the field of photojournalism)
• Walter Mosley 1991 (MA) - best-selling author whose novels about private eye Easy Rawlins have received Edgar and Golden Dagger Awards.
• Michael Oreskes 1975 - executive editor of The International Herald Tribune
• Mario Puzo - best-selling novelist, screenwriter The Godfather
• Ernesto Quiñonez 1996 (BA, MA) national bestselling author of Bodega Dreams and other titles.
• A.H. Raskin - former labor editor, The New York Times.
• Robert Rosen 1974 (BA, MA) - author of the best-selling biography Nowhere Man: The Final Days of John Lennon.
• A.M. Rosenthal 1949 - former executive editor of The New York Times.
• Henry Roth - novelist, author of Call It Sleep
• Robert Scheer - journalist
• Daniel Schorr 1939 - journalist, veteran newscaster and commentator for CBS, CNN, and NPR
• Stephen Shepard 1961 - editor in chief, Business Week
• Anatole Shub - editor and journalist specializing in Eastern European matters.
• Upton Sinclair 1897 (BA) - author (The Jungle)
• Robert Sobel - 1951 (BSS), 1952 (MA) - best-selling author of business histories.
• Elsie B. Washington (1942 – 2009), author (using the pseudonym Rosalind Welles) of the 1980 book Entwined Destinies, considered the first romance novel featuring African American characters written by an African American author.^[4]
• Gary Weiss 1975 - Investigative journalist, author
• Barry Wilner 1973 - Sports Writer (NFL, Olympic Sports) for the Associated Press. 2002 AP Sports Editor Awards for Deadline Writing and Story of the Year. 8-Time Richard Dreyfuss Look-A-Like Contest Winner (2000-2008)

Science and technology

• Solomon A. Berson 1938 - medical scientist at Mt. Sinai Hospital who would probably have won a Nobel with his colleague Rosalyn Yalow had he not died prematurely
• Julius Blank - engineer, member of the Traitorous Eight that founded Silicon Valley
• Charles DeLisi 1963 (BA) - scientist, "Father of the Human Genome Project"
• Joel S. Engel 1957 - scientist and electrical engineer instrumental in mobile phone technology
• Adin Falkoff - engineer, computer scientist, co-inventor of the APL language interactive system
• Jeffrey Flier 1969 - dean, Harvard Medical School
• Wolcott Gibbs - distinguished chemistry professor at the Free Academy
• George Washington Goethals 1887 - civil engineer, supervised the construction and opening of the Panama Canal
• Joseph Goldberger - Started in engineering; transferred to Bellevue Hospital Medical School. Discovered that B vitamin deficiency was cause of pellagra; paved way for Elvehjem to narrow cause to vitamin B3
• Dan Goldin - served as the 9th and longest-tenured administrator of NASA.
• Andrew S. Grove 1960 - ChE. Founder and Former Chairman of Intel Corp. Dr. Grove donated $26 Million, the largest gift ever received by the City College of New York.
• Herman Hollerith - early computer pioneer, invented Key punch
• Robert E. Kahn - Internet pioneer, co-inventor of the TCP/IP protocol, co-recipient of the Turing Award in 2004
• Michio Kaku - CCNY professor; theoretical physicist and co-founder of string field theory
• 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
• Arthur J. Levenson - Lieutenant Colonel, United States Army, National Security Agency official, cryptographer, mathematician^[5][6]
• Michael A. Liguori 1979 - listed among the New York area's 100 best primary care doctors by New York Magazine
• Valentino Mazzia (1922-1999), forensic anesthesiologist.^[7]
• Albert Medwin 1949 BSEE - engineer and inventor, developed CMOS integrated circuit technology
• Lewis Mumford - historian of technology; author of The City in History
• Charles Lane Poor - noted astronomer
• Martin Pope 1939 - physical chemist, Davy Medal winner (2006), known for pioneering work in electronic process in organic crystals and polymers, particularly discoveries in area of ohmic contacts
• Jacob Rabinow - an engineer and an inventor. He earned a total of 230 U.S. patents on a variety of mechanical, optical and electrical devices. Mainly in defense systems, and eventually became Chief of the Electro-Mechanical Ordnance Division at NBS. Scientific achievements: Among them are the President's Certificate of Merit (1948), the Industrial R&D Scientist of the Year Award (1960), the IEEE's Harry Diamond Award (1977), and the Lemelson-MIT Lifetime Achievement Award (1998). He published his book, Inventing for Fun and Profit, in 1989
• Haskell Reich - physicist and scientist for IBM Research. He did his undergraduate degree at City College, and received his Ph.D. from Columbia University in 1955, joining the research team of Dr. Richard Garwin at Watson Labs.^[8][9]
• Howard Rosenblum 1950 BSEE - NSA Engineer; developer of the STU (Secure Telephone Unit)
• Jack Ruina 1944 BSEE - former director of ARPA
• 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
• Milton Zaslow 1942 - cryptologist, ranking National Security Administration (NSA) official^[10]
• Benjamin W. Zweifach 1931 - Professor Emeritus Bioengineering, University of California, San Diego^[11]

Business

• Hiroaki Aoki - 1964, the founder of the Benihana chain of "Japanese Steakhouse" restaurants
• Jonathan Better 1949 - real estate investor
• Edward Blank - industrialist and pioneer in the telemarketing industry, founder of Edward Blank Associates, and the United Nations representative for the Jewish National Fund.
• 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
• Joseph Gurwin (1920-2009), philanthropist who dropped out after becoming a partner in a textile firm and "realized I was making more money than my professors".^[12]
• Stanley H. Kaplan 1939 - founded Kaplan Educational Services
• Jack Rudin 1941 - real estate developer
• Melvin Simon 1949 - real estate developer, co-founder of Simon Property Group.
• Bernard Spitzer 1943 - real estate developer
• Linda Kaplan Thaler 1972, the CEO of the fastest growing ad agency in New York, brought us the Aflac Duck

Sports

• Benny Friedman - outstanding quarterback at the University of Michigan and superb NFL player, coached the CCNY football team from 1935 to 1941
• Red Holzman 1942 - All-American guard at CCNY, legendary basketball coach for the New York Knicks.^[13]
• Harold Goldsmith 1952 - a foil and épée fencer, won the 1952 NCAA foil championship, competed in three Olympiads for the US, won 2 Pan American Games gold medals and 2 silver medals
• Henry Wittenberg - Olympic wrestler, won gold medal at 1948 Olympics and silver medal in 1952
• Ed Warner - player involved in the CCNY basketball scandal [2]
• Ed Roman - player involved in the CCNY basketball scandal [3]
• Floyd Layne - player involved in the CCNY basketball scandal [4]; later coached the CCNY men's basketball team
• Al Roth - player involved in the CCNY basketball scandal [5]

Fictional

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

Prestigious Scholarships

Rhodes Scholars

• James T. Molloy 1939
• Lev A. Sviridov 2005
• David L.V. Bauer 2009

Fulbright Scholars

• Vera Grant 1995
• Vivian Ka 2000
• Jessica Tibbets 2007
• Corey E. Sullivan (MA) 2008

Goldwater Scholars

• Lev A. Sviridov 2004
• Philipa A. Njau 2005
• David L.V. Bauer 2007
• Itamar M. Belisha 2007

Truman Scholars

• Charles Claudio Simpkins 2005
• David L.V. Bauer 2008
• Don Gomez 2009

References