Notable alumni of the University of Groningen include:
Heads of government •
Paramanga Ernest Yonli, Prime Minister of
Burkina Faso •
John Stuart, 3rd Earl of Bute, Prime Minister of
Great Britain •
Suzanne Camelia-Römer, Prime Minister of the
Netherlands Antilles •
Etienne Ys, Prime Minister of the
Netherlands Antilles •
Johan Remkes, Deputy Prime Minister of the
Netherlands Business leaders •
Bart Becht, former CEO of
Reckitt Benckiser and former partner of
JAB Holding Company •
Maarten van den Bergh, Chairman of
Lloyds Bank •
Marc Bolland, former CEO of
Heineken,
Morrisons and
Marks & Spencer •
Dolf van den Brink, CEO of
Heineken N.V. •
Paul Polman, CEO of
Unilever •
Roel de Vries, Global Head of Marketing at
Nissan Motor Corporation •
Hans Wijers, Chairman of the Supervisory Board of
ING, former CEO of
AkzoNobel •
George Möller, CEO of
Robeco, former CEO of
Euronext •
Chris Vogelzang, CEO of
Danske Bank •
Volkert Engelsman, CEO of
Eosta •
Paul Fentener van Vlissingen, CEO of
SHV Holdings •
Marjan Rintel, CEO of
KLM, former CEO of
Dutch Railways •
Louise Gunning-Schepers, chairman of the Supervisory Board of the
Schiphol Group •
Maria Oudeman, president of
Utrecht University, former director of
Equinor Economists and scientists •
Wim Duisenberg, first president of the
European Central Bank •
Klaas Knot, current President of the Dutch
central bank De Nederlandsche Bank (DNB) •
Dirk Stikker,
Secretary General of NATO •
Gerbrand Bakker, early 19th century physician •
Johan van Benthem, logician •
Johann Bernoulli, mathematician •
Bart Bok,
astronomer •
Hans van Abeelen, first Dutch
behavior geneticist •
Corina Brussaard, Antarctic researcher in viral ecology and phytoplankton •
Anita Buma, Antarctic researcher in marine
ecophysiology •
Wei Ji Ma, professor of psychology and neuroscience •
Ben Feringa, recipient of the
Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 2016 for his work on molecular motors •
Heike Kamerlingh Onnes, recipient of the
Nobel Prize in Physics while professor in
Leiden for his experiments on the properties of matter at low temperatures which made the production of liquid
helium possible •
Frits Zernike, recipient of the
Nobel Prize in Physics for his invention of the
phase-contrast optical microscope in 1953.
Politicians •
Bruno Bruins, former Dutch State Secretary for Education, Culture and Science •
Job Cohen, former mayor of
Amsterdam and former leader of the
Dutch Labour Party •
Pim Fortuyn,
lecturer, later politician and founder of the
Pim Fortuyn List (and assassinated in 2002) •
Niccolò Invidia, member of parliament
Italy •
Pavela Mitova, member of parliament
Bulgaria •
Agnes Mulder, politician (King's Commissioner of Drenthe) •
Jacques Wallage, former mayor of Groningen •
Halbe Zijlstra, former Dutch Minister of Foreign Affairs
Others •
Albert Hofman, epidemiologist at the
Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health • Matthijs Valstar (oral and maxillofacial surgeon), scientist at the
Netherlands Cancer Institute, led the discovery of the
Tubarial salivary gland in 2020 •
Turtle Bunbury, Irish historian and author •
James Burnett, Scottish judge and a founder of modern comparative historical linguistics •
Lex van Dam, hedge fund manager, featured on
Million Dollar Traders on
BBC2 •
Ubbo Emmius, founder of the University of Groningen and first
rector magnificus •
Willem Frederik Hermans, lecturer and writer •
Gerardus Heymans, philosopher and psychologist •
Jack Hoeksema, linguist and professor in the Department of Dutch Language and Culture •
Pieter Crull, jurist, attorney-general of Suriname and acting governor •
Peter Hofstee, professor of
theoretical physics, joined
IBM in 1996, currently the chief architect of the
Synergistic Processor Element (SPE) of the Cell microprocessor •
Johan Huizinga, historian •
Aletta Jacobs, first woman in the
Netherlands to receive an
MD •
Ashin Jinarakkhita, Indonesian Buddhist monk •
Roland Kupers, Dutch theoretical physicist •
Johann Heinrich Alting, theologian •
Annemarie, Duchess of Parma, journalist, consultant, and member of the
Dutch royal family •
Jaap Kunst, ethnomusicologist (studied law) • Prince
Maurits van Oranje Nassau, first cousin of King
Willem-Alexander of the Netherlands •
John Nerbonne, professor of humanities computing, expert in dialectology, member of the Dutch Royal Academy of Science •
Wubbo Ockels, first Dutch
astronaut, received a PhD degree in
physics and
mathematics, 1973 •
Jan Oort, astronomer •
Johannes Jacobus Poortman, philosopher, psychologist •
Dagmar Reichardt, professor of Cultural Industry at
University of Latvia •
James Renwick (1662–1688) Scottish
Covenanter •
Willem de Sitter, astronomer •
Tom Snijders, statistician and
sociologist, expert on
multilevel analysis and developer of Siena in R, a program for longitudinal
social network analysis •
Henk G. Sol, Professor of
Business Engineering and ICT •
Pieter Jelles Troelstra, lawyer, politician (early 20th century) •
René Veenstra, professor of
sociology, expert on
social network analysis and group processes in
bullying •
Wietse Venema, programmer and physicist •
Clemens von Bönninghausen, lawyer, botanist, homeopathic physician •
Epke Zonderland,
2012 Olympics gold medalist ==Notable researchers==