List of Hamilton College people

Hamilton College is a private, independent liberal arts college located in Clinton, New York. It has been coeducational since 1978, when it merged with Kirkland College.

Below is a non-comprehensive list of Hamiltonians who have made notable achievements or contributions in their chosen fields.

Notable alumni

Selected Hamilton Alumni

Nobel Peace Prize-winning US Secretary of State Elihu Root, class of 1864

US Vice President James S. Sherman, class of 1878

US Secretary of Agriculture, Tom Vilsack, class of 1972

Renowned modern poet Ezra Pound, class of 1905

Nobel Prize-winning neuroscientist Paul Greengard, class of 1948

Actor and writer Paul Lieberstein, class of 1989

Law, government, and public affairs

Legislative branch

• David Jewett Baker, class of 1816 - U.S. Senator from Illinois[1]
• Matt Cartwright, class of 1983 - U.S. Representative from Pennsylvania[2]
• Michael Castle, class of 1961 - 69th Governor of Delaware, U.S. Representative from Delaware, 2010 Senate candidate (graduation speaker 2004)[3]
• Thomas Treadwell Davis, class of 1831 - U.S. Representative from New York[4]
• Joseph Irwin France, class of 1895 - U.S. Senator from Maryland[5]
• Abijah Gilbert, class of 1822 - U.S. Senator from Florida[6]
• Joseph Roswell Hawley, class of 1847 - served two terms in the United States House of Representatives; four-term U.S. Senator from Connecticut; 42nd Governor of Connecticut[7]
• John N. Hungerford, class of 1846 - U.S. Representative from New York (1877–79)[8]
• Irving Ives, class of 1919 - U.S. Senator from New York[9]
• Henry B. Payne, class of 1832 - U.S. Senator from Ohio[10]
• Theodore M. Pomeroy, class of 1842 - U.S. Representative from New York[11]
• Glenni William Scofield, class of 1840 - U.S. Representative from Pennsylvania[12]

Executive branch

• Drew S. Days, III, class of 1963 - United States Solicitor General, 1993–1996; currently Alfred M. Rankin Professor of Law at Yale Law School
• Michael Dubke, class of 1992 - former White House Communications Director and former Executive Director of the Ripon Society
• William Henry Harrison Miller, class of 1861 - United States Attorney General, 1889–1893
• Victor H. Metcalf, Law School class of 1868 - US Secretary of the Navy (1906–08)
• Ralph Oman, class of 1962 - United States copyright law luminary
• Elihu Root, class of 1864 - United States Secretary of State and recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize in 1912
• James S. Sherman, class of 1878 - Vice President of the United States
• Tom Vilsack, class of 1972 - United States Secretary of Agriculture; 40th Governor of Iowa
• Jim Walden, class of 1988 - lawyer, former federal prosecutor with the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of New York[13]

Judicial branch

• Charles Fremont Amidon, class of 1882 - Judge for the United States District Court for the District of North Dakota
• Charles Holland Duell, class of 1871 - Judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit
• Randolph Moss, class of 1983 - Judge of the United States District Court for the District of Columbia
• David Aldrich Nelson, class of 1954 - Judge on the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit
• Alfred W. Newman, class of 1857 - Wisconsin Supreme Court Justice
• Charles Prentiss Orr, class of 1879 - Judge of the United States District Court for the Western District of Pennsylvania
• Glenni William Scofield, class of 1840 - Judge of the United States Court of Claims
• Augustus Sherrill Seymour, class of 1857 - Judge of the United States District Court for the Eastern District of North Carolina
• Roger Gordon Strand, class of 1955 - Judge for the United States District Court for the District of Arizona
• Amos Madden Thayer, class of 1862 - Judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit
• John Curtiss Underwood, class of 1832 - lawyer, abolitionist politician, judge of the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia
• William James Wallace, class of 1857 - Judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit
• Hiram Wilson, class of 1832 - Judge of the United States District Court for the Northern District of Ohio

Diplomats

• John B. Emerson, class of 1975 - United States Ambassador to Germany (2013 - present)
• Philip Jessup, class of 1917 - diplomat, international law scholar, ambassador
• Sol Linowitz, class of 1935 - attorney, diplomat; negotiated return of the Panama Canal
• William H. Luers, class of 1951 - U.S. Ambassador to Czechoslovakia (1983–86)
• Arnold Raphel, class of 1964 - U.S. Ambassador to Pakistan (1987–88)
• Edward S. Walker, Jr., class of 1962 - former Ambassador to Israel, Egypt, and the United Arab Emirates, Middle East Institute president, Hamilton professor

State and city politicians, attorneys, activists, and other

• Dean Alfange, class of 1922 - politician; founding member of the Liberal Party of New York; Greek-American; Zionist activist[14]
• Mary Bonauto, class of 1983 - gay rights activist and attorney; successfully argued the Obergefell v. Hodges case that overturned state bans on same-sex marriage in 2015.
• George W. Clinton, class of 1825 - Mayor of Buffalo, District Attorney of Ontario County, United States Attorney for the Northern District of New York, Judge of the Buffalo Superior Court[15]
• Steve Culbertson, class of 1979 - President & Chief Executive Officer at Youth Service America
• Bruce Cutler, class of 1970 - criminal defense lawyer; attorney for John Gotti and Louis Eppolito
• George T. Downing, attended
• Bela Hubbard, class of 1834 - Michigan pioneer, writer, geologist, lawyer, lumberman
• William A. Jacobson, class of 1981, conservative commentator and clinical professor at Cornell Law School
• Ron Kim, class of 2001, member of New York State Assembly and first Korean-American ever elected in New York State.
• Bob Moses, class of 1956 - civil rights activist (the Algebra Project)
• Bill Purcell, class of 1976 - mayor of Nashville
• Dan Siegel, class of 1967- Labor attorney and civil rights activist
• Gerrit Smith, class of 1818 - leading abolitionist, philanthropist, and temperance activist. Member of the so-called Secret Six group of abolitionists who financed John Brown's raid on Harper's Ferry.
• Lloyd Paul Stryker, class of 1906, noted American criminal defense lawyer (defended Alger Hiss)
• Theodore Dwight Weld - abolitionist
• Hiram Wilson, class of 1832 - abolitionist, educator, worked with Josiah Henson to establish the British-American Institute, delegate to the 1843 World Anti-Slavery Convention

Literature and journalism

• Samuel Hopkins Adams, class of 1891 - author and investigative journalist
• Henry Allen, class of 1963 - critic who won Pulitzer Prize for Criticism (most prominently associated with The Washington Post)
• Frank Baldwin, class of 1985 - author of Balling the Jack
• Albert Barnes, class of 1820 - theologian
• Josh Billings, class of 1840 (did not graduate) - pen name of Henry Wheeler Shaw
• Terry Brooks, class of 1966 - fantasy author
• Benjamin Woodbridge Dwight, class of 1835 - educator and author
• Alf Evers, class of 1928 (did not graduate) - historian
• Amanda Filipacchi, class of 1988 - author of Nude Men, Vapor, and Love Creeps
• Michael Greenspan, class of 1969 -- CNN correspondent and documentary filmmaker
• James Grinwis - poet
• George Wheeler Hinman, class of 1884 - newspaper publisher and writer
• Bob Kerr, longtime journalist and columnist at The Providence Journal
• Harry Kondoleon, class of 1977 - author and playwright, Obie Award winner
• Sarah J. Maas, class of 2008 - author of best-selling fantasy series
• Thomas Meehan, class of 1951 - wrote the books for the musicals Annie and The Producers
• John Nichols, class of 1962 - author of The Milagro Beanfield War and The Sterile Cuckoo
• Ezra Pound, class of 1905 - poet, modernist polemicist, critic
• Kamila Shamsie, class of 1995 - novelist
• Clinton Scollard, class of 1881 - poet
• Evan Smith, class of 1987 - Texas Tribune CEO and editor-in-chief
• Charles Dudley Warner, class of 1851 - essayist
• Alexander Woollcott, class of 1909 - critic and commentator; early contributor to The New Yorker; member of the Algonquin Round Table

Scientists, physicians, psychologists, mathematicians and researchers

• Lauren Ackerman, class of 1927, American physician and pathologist, who championed the subspecialty of surgical pathology in the mid-20th century.
• Edward L. Deci, class of 1964, psychologist famous for studies of human motivation ("self-determination theory")
• Paul Greengard, class of 1948 - neuroscientist awarded Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine in 2000
• Edward Skinner King, class of 1887 - astronomer and developer of the King Tracking Rate
• William Howell Masters, class of 1938 -physician and research pioneer in the fields of hormone replacement therapy and sexology; co-author (with Virginia E. Johnson) of Human Sexual Response (1966)
• Jonathan Schooler, class of 1981, psychologist who developed the theory of verbal overshadowing
• B.F. Skinner, class of 1926 - behavioral psychologist considered the most influential psychologist of the 20th century.[16]
• Augustus William Smith, class of 1825 - mathematician and astronomer
• Lawrence Weed, class of 1945 - academic physician and inventor of the problem-oriented medical record
• Edward J. Wickson- class of 1868, American agronomist and researcher at University of California, Berkeley
• John Werner - class of 1992, Founding managing director for MIT Media Lab's Emerging Worlds Special Interest Group (SIG)

Academics and scholars (not otherwise listed)

• Robert Livingston Allen - linguist credited with developing "Sector Analysis" (professor at Columbia University)
• David K. Backus- financial economist (Heinz Riehl Professor at New York University's Stern School of Business)
• John J. Donohue III- law and economics scholar (professor at Yale Law School and Stanford Law School)
• Theodore William Dwight - pioneering legal educator who served on Hamilton faculty before serving as founding dean at Columbia Law School
• Benjamin A. Elman - Sinologist (Gordon Wu '58 Professor of Chinese Studies, Princeton University)
• Samih Farsoun - influential Arab Studies scholar
• Daniel Willard Fiske (did not graduate) - archivist, chess writer (co-author of Paul Morphy) and Icelandic studies scholar at Cornell University
• Erica Flapan - mathematician
• Charles L. Flynn, Jr. - historian and President of the College of Mount Saint Vincent
• John M. Jacobus Jr. - art historian and Professor at Princeton University and the University of California at Berkeley
• Matthew E. Kahn - economist at Johns Hopkins University, author of Climatopolis
• Harvey J. Levin - American economist, studied spectrum allocation
• Jeffrey Mass - historian, author and Japanologist (formerly Yamato Ichihashi Professor of Japanese History at Stanford University)
• Benjamin Dean Meritt - a classical scholar, professor and epigraphist of ancient Greece (served on faculties at Princeton University, University of Michigan and the Institute for Advanced Study)
• James H. Morey - medievalist (and English professor at Emory University)
• Edward Orton Sr. - first President of The Ohio State University and geologist
• Alicia Ouellette - Dean of Albany Law School
• John H. Peck - 8th President of Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute
• John Norton Pomeroy - former dean of New York University Law School
• Kosali Simon - health economist

Arts and entertainment

• Otis Bigelow, class of 1943, Broadway actor and New York socialite (later, Professor at Dartmouth College)
• Robert Bilheimer, class of 1966 - Academy Award-nominated documentary filmmaker, A Closer Walk
• Kevin Burns, class of 1977 - Emmy Award-winning television producer and filmmaker
• Lisa Daniels, class of 1994 - MSNBC anchor
• Peter Falk, class of 1949 (did not graduate) - actor, most famous for Columbo TV series
• Nat Faxon, class of 1997 - Academy Award-winning screenwriter (The Descendants); actor (Grosse Pointe, Joey, Beerfest)
• Helaman Ferguson, class of 1962, sculptor and mathematician
• Yance Ford - producer and director[17]
• Deborah Forte, class of 1975, producer of children's television and movies (President of Scholastic Media)
• Josh Gardner - actor, comedian, writer; best known as the titular character in the cult TV show Gerhard Reinke's Wanderlust
• Jonathan Gilbert - actor, Little House on the Prairie
• Eugene Goossen (1921–1997) - art critic and historian.[18]
• David Grubin, class of 1965, Emmy-winning documentary filmmaker
• Joe Howard, class of 1970 - actor, Mathnet
• Frederick King Keller, class of 1972 - television and movie director and writer
• Harry Kondoleon, class of 1977 - playwright and novelist; awarded Fulbright, National Endowment for the Arts, Rockefeller, and Guggenheim fellowships
• Christopher Kostow, class of 1999 - executive chef, The Restaurant at Meadowood; James Beard Foundation Award winner and recipient of three Michelin stars
• Paul Lieberstein, class of 1989 - writer and actor famous for depicting Toby Flenderson on NBC's The Office
• Grayson McCouch, class of 1991 - actor, As the World Turns
• Richard Nelson, class of 1972 - playwright; current director of playwriting program at Yale University
• Sarah Rafferty, class of 1993 - actress, Suits, 2011–present
• Jay Reise, class of 1982 - composer
• Ryan Serhant, class of 2006 - actor, realtor, Million Dollar Listing New York[19]
• David Thornton, class of 1977 - actor; husband of Cyndi Lauper
• Thomas Tull, class of 1992 - founder, chairman and CEO of Legendary Pictures; film producer
• Melinda Wagner, class of 1979 - winner of the 1999 Pulitzer Prize in Music Composition

Business leaders

• J. Carter Bacot, class of 1955 - former chairman and CEO, Bank of New York
• David Blood, class of 1981 - co-founder (with Al Gore) and Managing Partner of Generation Investment Management; former CEO of Goldman Sachs Asset Management
• William McLaren Bristol, class of 1882 - co-founder of Bristol-Myers Squibb
• Henry Elghanayan - New York real estate developer[20]
• Dan Ferguson, class of 1948 - former CEO of Newell Rubbermaid
• Edward Gelsthorpe, class of 1942 - marketing executive called "Cranapple Ed" for his best-known product launch[21]
• David P. Hess, class of 1977 - President of Pratt & Whitney
• Joel Johnson, class of 1965 - CEO of Hormel (1993–2005)
• John Jay Knox, class of 1849 - financier and Comptroller of the Treasury (1867–84)
• A. G. Lafley, class of 1969 - CEO of Procter & Gamble; named one of America's Best Leaders by US News
• John Ripley Myers, class of 1887 - co-founder of Bristol-Myers Squibb
• Dan Nye, class of 1988 - former CEO of LinkedIn
• Marc Randolph, class of 1980 - co-founder of Netflix
• John G. Rice, class of 1978 - Vice Chairman of General Electric, and President and CEO of GE Infrastructure
• Stephen Sadove, class of 1973 - CEO of Saks Incorporated, the parent company of Saks Fifth Avenue
• David M. Solomon, class of 1984 - CEO of Goldman Sachs[22]

Clergy

• David Riddle Breed, class of 1867 - Presbyterian theologian, author of History and Use of Hymns and Hymn Tunes
• Edwin Otway Burnham, class of 1852 - rifle-shooting Presbyterian missionary in Sioux Indian territory
• Benjamin Woodbridge Dwight, class of 1835, Congregationalist minister, philologist and educator
• Franklin Clark Fry, class of 1921 - President of the United Lutheran Church in America and the Lutheran Church in America
• Arthur Tappan Pierson, class of 1857 - Presbyterian theologian; author of The Crisis of Missions (1886)
• George Warren Wood Jr., class of 1865 - Presbyterian missionary to Northern Michigan, missionary to the Dakota Mission, and charter member of the utopian Fairhope Single Tax Corporation[23]

Sports

• André Matias, class of 2012 - 2016 Olympic rower
• Guy Hebert, class of 1989 - professional hockey player
• Jeff Hewitt, class of 1974 - professional football player
• Garret Kramer, class of 1984 - sports psychologist
• Merritt Paulson, class of 1995 - majority owner of Portland Timbers and Portland Thorns
• Bill Smith, class of 1980 - General Manager, Minnesota Twins
• Kyle Smith, class of 1992 - head men's basketball coach, Columbia University
• Ward Wettlaufer, class of 1959 - amateur golfer
• Gillian Zucker, class of 1990 - former president of Auto Club Speedway, and currently president of business operations for the Los Angeles Clippers.

Alumni from works of fiction

• Newspaper editor Charles Webb from the Thornton Wilder play Our Town
• Radio host Sheridan Whiteside from the George S. Kaufman and Moss Hart play and film The Man Who Came to Dinner, based on the real Hamilton graduate Alexander Woollcott

Notable faculty

Current members

• Frank Anechiarico - government and law
• Dennis Gilbert - sociologist, developed the Gilbert Model
• Shelley Haley - Professor of Classics and Africana Studies
• Maurice Isserman - historian with notable works on the American Left, the 1960s, and mountaineering
• Derek C. Jones - economist
• Philip Klinkner - political scientist specializing in American politics
• Jack F. Matlock, Jr. - former U.S. Ambassador to Soviet Union under Reagan
• Nancy Sorkin Rabinowitz - feminist literary critic, classicist
• Heidi Ravven - expert on Jewish ethics, Spinoza, and the relationship between religion and science
• Edward S. Walker - former U.S. Ambassador to Israel, Egypt, and the UAE; Middle East specialist

Former members (both permanent and visiting)

• Agha Shahid Ali - poet, finalist for the National Book Award
• Robert C. Allen - economic historian and professor at Oxford University
• Alfred Atherton - former United States Ambassador to Egypt
• J. Brian Atwood - diplomat and former Administrator of the United States Agency for International Development
• Natalie Babbitt - author of children's literature, Tuck Everlasting
• Thomas Bass - author, The Eudaemonic Pie
• Joel Black - literary critic
• Brigitte Boisselier - Raëlian and CEO of Clonaid, the "scientific wing" of the Raëlian movement
• Hermann Carl George Brandt - German literature and language scholar
• Francis Marion Burdick - legal scholar and longtime professor at Columbia Law School
• Mary Bucci Bush - American short story writer
• Albert Huntington Chester - geologist and mountaineer
• Richard N. Current - historian, winner of the Bancroft Prize
• Eugene Domack - American geologist
• Hubert Dreyfus - artificial intelligence philosopher and professor at University of California, Berkeley
• Sereno Edwards Dwight - intellectual historian and Congregationalist minister
• Theodore William Dwight - jurist and pioneering dean of Columbia Law School
• Edwin Erickson - member of the Pennsylvania Senate, representing the 26th District
• James Fankhauser - conductor
• Elizabeth Flower - American philosopher
• Karl Geiringer - German-American musicologist and biographer
• Richard Haas - President of the Council on Foreign Relations
• Elaine Tuttle Hansen - president of Bates College
• Jerome B. Komisar - economist and President of the University of Alaska
• John Hiram Lathrop - first president of the University of Missouri; first chancellor of the University of Wisconsin-Madison; president of Indiana University
• George Lenczowski - political scientist and longtime professor at University of California, Berkeley
• Cheng Li - director of the John L. Thornton China Center at the Brookings Institution
• Arthur Marder - naval historian
• Chandra Talpade Mohanty - post-colonial feminist theorist
• John Monteith - first President of the University of Michigan
• Howard Nemerov - poet, twice Poet Laureate of the United States
• Jay Reise - composer, now at University of Pennsylvania
• Duncan Rice - Principal of the University of Aberdeen; former Vice-Chancellor of New York University
• David P. Robbins - mathematician
• Bernie Sanders - U.S. Senator from Vermont
• Clinton Scollard - poet
• Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick - gender theorist and cultural critic
• Kamila Shamsie - novelist
• Charles Henry Smyth, Jr. - geologist
• Leo Strauss - political philosopher and classicist
• Orest Subtelny - scholar of Ukrainian history

Presidents of Hamilton College[24]

• Azel Backus, 1812-16
• Henry Davis, 1817-33
• Sereno Edwards Dwight, 1833-35
• Joseph Penney, 1835-39
• Simeon North, 1839-57
• Samuel Ware Fisher, 1858-66
• Samuel Gilman Brown, 1866-81
• Henry Darling, 1881-91
• Melancthon Woolsey Stryker, 1892-1917
• Frederick Carlos Ferry, 1917-38
• William Harold Cowley, 1938-44
• David Worcester, 1945-47
• Thomas Brown Rudd, 1947-49
• Robert Ward McEwen, 1949-66
• Richard Watrous Couper, 1966-68 (acting)
• John Wesley Chandler, 1968-73
• Samuel Fisher Babbitt, 1968-78 (Kirkland College)
• J. Martin Carovano, 1974-88
• Harry C. Payne, 1988-93
• Eugene M. Tobin, 1993-2003
• Joan Hinde Stewart, 2003 -2016
• David Wippman, 2016--

References

1. "Class of 1816 Letter David Jewett Baker". Hamilton College. Archived from the original on July 17, 2014. Retrieved July 9, 2014.
2. "Matthew Cartwright '83 Runs for Congress Alumni News & Notes". Hamilton College. Retrieved July 11, 2014.
3. "Delaware Congressman, Alumnus Mike Castle to Deliver Commencement Address". Hamilton College. Retrieved July 11, 2014.
4. Hamilton College (1860). Catalogue. Hamilton College. p. 33. Retrieved 15 July 2014.
5. Clark University (Worcester, Mass.) (1899). Decennial celebration, 1889-1899. Clark. p. 494. Retrieved 15 July 2014.
6. "GILBERT, Abijah, (1806 - 1881)". Biographical Directory of the United States Congress. Retrieved July 11, 2014.
7. "HAWLEY, Joseph Roswell, (1826 - 1905)". Biographical Directory of the United States Congress. Retrieved July 15, 2014.
8. Hamilton College (1904). Hamilton Literary Magazine, Volume 39. Hamilton College. p. 48.
9. Courier Press (1916). Hamilton Literary Magazine, Volume 51. Courier Press. p. 419.
10. Hamilton College (1917). Hamilton Literary Magazine, Volume 52. Hamilton College. p. 33. Retrieved 15 July 2014.
11. "Theodore M. Pomeroy". The New York Times. March 24, 1905. Retrieved 22 August 2016.
12. "Pennsylvania State Senate - Glenni William Scofield Biography". www.legis.state.pa.us. Retrieved 24 March 2019.
13. "Lawyer Jim Walden - New York, New York Attorney | Best Lawyers". www.bestlawyers.com. Retrieved 2017-12-14.
14. The Trustees of Hamilton College (2010). "An Inspiration to All: Dean Alfange, Class of 1922". Clinton, Oneida County, New York: Hamilton College. Archived from the original on 6 June 2010. Retrieved 16 April 2010.
15. Ellis, William Arba (1911). Norwich University, 1819-1911: Her History, Her Graduates, Her Roll of Honor, Volume 3. Montpelier, VT: Capital City Press. p. 567.
16. Haggbloom, Steven J.; Warnick, Renee; Warnick, Jason E.; Jones, Vinessa K.; Yarbrough, Gary L.; Russell, Tenea M.; Borecky, Chris M.; McGahhey, Reagan; et al. (2002). "The 100 most eminent psychologists of the 20th century". Review of General Psychology. 6 (2): 139–152. doi:10.1037/1089-2680.6.2.139.
17. "Yance Ford on Family Photographs in His Film "Strong Island" - 1World1Family.me". 6 September 2017.
18. Dobryznski, Judith H. "Eugene Goossen, 76, Art Critic", The New York Times, July 17, 1997. Accessed July 25, 2010.
19. "Ryan Serhant NestSeekers International Million Dollar Listings". Nest Seekers. 2015-10-15. Retrieved 2015-11-07.
20. The Real Deal: "Henry Elghanayan" By Katherine Clarke retrieved November 5, 2016
21. Grimes, William. "Edward Gelsthorpe, Master Marketer, Dies at 88", The New York Times, September 27, 2009. Accessed September 29, 2009.
22. LaCapra, Lauren (2011-06-26). "Goldman's Solomon: Dark horse contender in CEO race". Reuters. Retrieved 2012-12-04.
23. Tompkins, Hamilton Bullock (1877). Biographical Record of the Class of 1865, of Hamilton College. class. p. 77. Retrieved 11 April 2016. George W. Wood evangelist.
24. "Office of the President - Hamilton College Presidents - Hamilton College". Hamilton.edu. 2001-08-15. Retrieved 2015-11-07.