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Helen Magill White (GRS 1877) – first woman in the
United States to earn a
Ph.D. File:Charles eastman smithsonian gn 03462a.jpg|link=|
Charles Eastman (MED 1890) – first
Native American in the
United States to earn an
MD File:John Wesley Edward Bowen (page 204 crop).jpg|link=|
John W. Bowen (STH 1885, STH 1887) – second
African American person, and the first person born a
slave, to earn a
Ph.D. File:Anna Oliver.jpg|link=|
Anna Oliver (STH 1876) – first woman in the
United States to earn a degree in
theology •
Mercy B. Jackson (MED 1860) – physician, one of the first women to receive a
Doctor of Medicine degree, in the United States •
Rebecca Lee Crumpler (MED 1864) – first
African American woman in the
United States to receive an
MD, or
Doctor of Medicine degree, one of first female physician authors in the 19th century •
Anna Oliver (STH 1876) – first woman in the
United States to receive a degree in
theology •
Helen Magill White (GRS 1877) – first woman in the
United States to earn a
Ph.D. •
Takeo Kikuchi (LAW 1877) – one of first Japanese to study law in the U.S., founder and president of
Tokyo's
Chuo University •
Charles Wesley Emerson (School of Oratory, 1877) – founder of
Emerson College •
Marion Talbot (CAS 1880) – influential leader in the early 20th century higher education of women, fought against efforts to restrict equal access to educational opportunities as
Dean of Women at the
University of Chicago (1895–1925), co-founded the
American Association of University Women with her mentor
Ellen Swallow Richards, the first woman admitted to
MIT •
Nathan Abbott (LAW 1881) – founder of
Stanford Law School and its first dean • Lelia Robinson Sawtelle (LAW 1881) – first woman admitted to the bar in
Massachusetts •
Solon Irving Bailey (CAS 1881, GRS 1884) –
astronomer, elected to
American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1892 •
John Calvin Ferguson (CAS 1883) –
art historian, influential in early 20th century education in
China, founder of
Nanking University,
National Chiao Tung University,
Shanghai Jiao Tong University, and
Xi'an Jiaotong University in China •
Samuel G. Plantz (STH 1883) – president of
Lawrence College • Louisa Holman Richardson (CAS 1883) –
Dean of Women at
Ohio Wesleyan University •
John W. Bowen (STH 1885, STH 1887) – influential in early
civil rights movement, creator of
The Voice of the Negro and the first accredited black high school in
St. Louis, second person of
African descent, and the first person born a
slave, to earn a doctorate in the U.S. • James Geddes (CAS 1887) –
linguist, spearheaded linguistic movement to create a universal alphabet for dictionaries of numerous languages, the precursor to the
phonetic alphabet •
Charles Eastman (MED 1890) –
physician, one of the first
Native Americans to receive an
MD in the U.S., prolific author and speaker on
Sioux ethnohistory and Native American affairs •
Mary Kingsbury Simkhovitch (CAS 1890) – pioneering
urban planner and
social worker, founder of
Greenwich House •
Cora Smith Eaton (MED 1892) – suffragist, physician and mountaineer, first woman licensed to practice medicine in
North Dakota •
Solomon Carter Fuller (MED 1897) – discovered
Alzheimer's disease through observations of
neurofibrillary tangles and miliary plaques, publishing the first comprehensive review of the disease, noted as the first Black
psychiatrist in the
United States •
Percy Jewett Burrel (School of Oratory, 1898) – creator of
pageantry in the
United States •
Gleason Archer, Sr. (CAS 1904, LAW 1906) – founder of
Suffolk University and
Suffolk University Law School •
Leonard Porter Ayres (GRS '10) –
statistician, best-known work dealt with comprehensive statistical studies of American casualties in the
first and
second world wars •
Shields Warren (CAS '18) –
pathologist, helped establish field of
radiobiology, first to study the pathology of
radioactive fallout, discovered that susceptibility to
cancer varied from person to person, mentored
Eleanor Josephine Macdonald •
Priscilla Fairfield Bok (CAS '18) –
astronomer, author, director of
Steward Observatory in Arizona, published a textbook "The Milky Way", coining the popular term '
milky way' •
Helen Brooke Taussig (CAS '25) – founded the field of pediatric
cardiology, known for her work in banning
thalidomide, first woman and first pediatrician to be elected head of the
American Heart Association, awarded a
Presidential Medal of Freedom (1964) •
Myrtle Bachelder (WED '39) – chemist noted for her secret work on the
Manhattan Project atomic bomb program, contributions to the purification of the rare elements and to
astrochemistry, for her analysis of
Moon rocks collected during the
Apollo missions •
Fe Del Mundo (MED '40) –
National Scientist of the Philippines and recipient of the
Ramon Magsaysay Award, the
Nobel Prize of Asia, founded the first pediatric hospital in the Philippines and is known for shaping the modern child healthcare system in the Philippines •
Samuel L. Myers Sr. (GRS '42) – economist, former university president, education adviser and civil rights advocate •
Esther A. H. Hopkins (CAS '47) – chemist, biophysicist, first
African-American woman to earn a Ph.D. from
Yale University, attorney for the
Massachusetts Department of Environmental Protection •
H. C. Robbins Landon (CFA '47) –
musicologist, journalist, historian,
BBC broadcaster, best known for his work in rediscovering neglected music by
Haydn, correcting misunderstandings about
Mozart •
Eldon Hall (GRS '47) –
computer scientist, leader of hardware design efforts for the
Apollo Guidance Computer (AGC) at the
Massachusetts Institute of Technology for the
Apollo program • Georgiana Jagiello (CAS '49) – physician, known for perfecting the technique for
in vitro fertilization, first woman appointed to an endowed chair at
Columbia University Medical School, first woman appointed to the Institute of Advanced Study at the
UIUC •
Rollin Williams (SSW '49) – first
African-American professor at the
University of Connecticut •
Elma Lewis (WED '50) – one of the first women to receive a
MacArthur Foundation Genius Grant, fellow of the
American Academy of Arts and Sciences, founder of
The Elma Lewis School of Fine Arts and
National Center of Afro-American Artists, awarded
National Medal of Arts by
President Reagan •
Ray Hyman (CAS '50) – one of the founders of the
modern skeptical movement, noted critic of
parapsychology, research on
Hick's Law •
Gertrude Hunter (MED '50) – doctor and professor of medicine, national director of health services •
Nathan Azrin (CAS '51, GRS '52) – psychologist, founder of
Token Economics and the
CRAFT model •
Raymond Coppinger (CAS '59) – biologist, expert in canine behavior and the
origin of the domestic dog, professor at
Hampshire College •
Alan L. Gropman (CAS '59) – professor of history and grand strategy, author and lecturer,
National Defense University •
Jean Briggs (GRS '60) – anthropologist, American expert on
Inuit languages, Lifetime Achievement Award from the
American Anthropological Association, a
Royal Society of Canada fellow •
William E. Doll Jr. (GRS '60) – educator, curriculum theorist, Lifetime Achievement Award by the
American Educational Research Association, among first group of scholars to introduce
complexity thinking to education in the 1980s •
Hugo Bedau (GRS '61) – philosopher, best known for work on
capital punishment •
Stanley Awramik (CAS '68) – biogeologist, paleontologist,
Geological Society of America •
Gabor Boritt (GRS '68) –
historian, received the
National Humanities Medal in 2008 from
Bush •
Diana Chapman Walsh (CAS '71,
UNI '83) – president of
Wellesley College (1993–2007) •
Lawrence C. Levy (B.S. '72) – executive dean of the National Center for Suburban Studies at
Hofstra University, and journalist •
John Nassivera (CAS '72) – author, playwright, Fellow in
Columbia University's Society of Fellows in the Humanities •
Theodora J. Kalikow (CAS '74) – president of
University of Maine at Farmington (1994–2012) •
Dana Mohler-Faria (CAS '74, 75) – president of
Bridgewater State College (2002–2015) •
David P. Baker (MS '75) – sociologist •
Celeste Freytes (SED '77) – interim president of
University of Puerto Rico (2013, 2016–2017) •
Owen Flanagan (GRS '78) – philosopher,
James B. Duke University Professor of
Philosophy, Professor of
Neurobiology at
Duke University •
Ted Landsmark (GRS '78) – president,
Boston Architectural College (1997–2014), Professor of Public Policy at
Northeastern University •
Cynthia Gómez (CAS '79) –
psychologist, served on
Presidential Advisory Council on HIV/AIDS for
Bush and
Clinton, known for work in field of
HIV/
AIDS prevention, health care access and
health equity for minority groups, founded Health Equity Institute at
SFSU •
Philip Kasinitz (CAS '79) –
sociologist, Presidential Professor of Sociology at
CUNY Graduate Center, PhD Chair in Sociology (2001–) •
I. Michael Leitman (CAS '81, MED '85) – Dean for Graduate Medical Education at
Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai •
Richard G. Frank (GRS '82) –
economist, known for contributions to
health economics,
Assistant Secretary of Health and Human Services for Planning and Evaluation under
Obama, Professor at
Harvard University •
Kevin J. Tracey (MED '83) – CEO,
Feinstein Institute for Medical Research, one of the most cited researchers in the world •
Donald Tomaskovic-Devey (GRS '84) –
sociologist, known for his research on
labor markets and
workplace inequality •
Ruth Agnes Daly (GRS '84, GRS '87) –
astrophysicist,
Fellow of the American Physical Society, Professor of Physics at
Penn State University, best known for work on the expansion and acceleration histories of the universe •
Andres Jaramillo-Botero (ENG '86) –
physicist, known for contributions to first-principles based modeling, design and characterization of
nanoscale materials and
devices, professor at
CalTech •
Drew Weissman (MED '87, MED '87) –
Nobel Prize-winning researcher, known for development of
mRNA vaccines, the best known of which are
those for COVID-19 produced by
BioNTech/
Pfizer and
Moderna. Weissman received the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 2023 "for discoveries concerning
nucleoside base modifications that enabled the development of effective mRNA vaccines against COVID-19" •
Shoshana Chatfield (CAS '88) – first woman
President of the Naval War College (2018–2023) •
David Ciardi (CAS '91) –
astrophysicist,
NASA Exceptional Scientific Achievement Medal for his work on
Kepler and his contributions to the fundamental nature of stellar variability,
NASA Silver Achievement Medal as part of the
TESS team, staff at
CalTech •
Morgan James Peters (CFA '91) – Director of Black Studies and associate professor of English,
UMass Dartmouth •
Saskia Hamilton (GRS '96) – poet, editor, and university administrator at
Barnard College •
Marie Jean Philip (GRS '96) – pioneering researcher in
American Sign Language and one of first researchers to focus on
ASL and
deaf culture, helped establish
ASL as a recognized language in the colleges of
Massachusetts (early 1980s) •
Richard Bohannon (SAR '93) – highly cited
physiotherapy researcher, editor-in-chief of two peer-reviewed medical journals,
Journal of Human Muscle Performance, Journal of Geriatric Physical Therapy •
Ha Jin (GRS '94) – writer,
National Book Award for Fiction and
PEN/Faulkner Award for
Waiting (1999),
Guggenheim Fellowship (1999),
National Book Award (1999), elected to the
American Academy of Arts and Letters •
Ben Bahan (GRS '96) – influential figure in
American Sign Language literature •
Jeffrey Docking (CAS '96) – president of
Adrian College (2005–present) •
Bogdan A. Dobrescu (GRS '97) –
theoretical physicist, expert in
high-energy physics, scientist at
Fermilab •
Christopher Nowinski (GRS '17) –
neuroscientist, professional wrestler, known for research on
concussions in American football and
CTE == Activism, clergy ==