This is an incomplete list of University of Adelaide people including notable alumni and staff associated with the University of Adelaide in Australia.
Government
Politicians
National leaders
All other countries
- Peter Ong Boon Kwee – Head of the Civil Service, Singapore since 2010,[2][3] the Permanent Secretary of the Ministry of Finance, Singapore since 2009,[4] and Permanent Secretary with Special Duties in the Prime Minister's Office, Singapore[5]
- Ong Teng Cheong – 5th President of Singapore (1993–1999)[6]
- Joseph Pairin Kitingan – 7th Chief Minister of Sabah, Malaysia (1985–1994)
- Abdul Taib – 4th Chief Minister of Sarawak, Malaysia (1981–2014); Governor of Sarawak (2014–)
- Adenan Satem – 5th Chief Minister of Sarawak, Malaysia (2014–2017)
- Tony Tan Keng Yam – 7th President of Singapore (2011–2017);[7] Deputy Prime Minister of Singapore (1995–2005[8])
South Australian premiers
Other Federal politicians
- Benjamin Benny – Senator for South Australia (1920–1926)
- Gordon Bilney – Member for Kingston (1983–1996), former minister
- Simon Birmingham – Senator for South Australia (2007–), former minister
- Julie Bishop – Member for Curtin (1998–), former minister
- Mark Bishop – Senator for Western Australia (1996–2014)
- Nick Bolkus – Senator for South Australia (1981–2005), former minister
- Mark Butler – Member for Hindmarsh (2007–), current minister
- Peter Duncan – Member for Makin (1984–1996), former minister
- Don Farrell – Senator for South Australia (2008–2014, 2016–), current minister
- Janine Haines – Senator for South Australia (1977–1978, 1981–1990)
- Sarah Hanson-Young – Senator for South Australia (2008–)
- Robert Hill – Senator for South Australia (1981–2006), former minister, and Permanent Representative of Australia to the United Nations
- Annette Hurley – Senator for South Australia (2005–2011)
- Linda Kirk – Senator for South Australia (2002–2008)
- Keith Laught – Senator for South Australia (1951–1969)
- Alexander McLachlan – Senator for South Australia (1926–1944), Postmaster-General
- Andrew Nikolic – Member for Bass (2013–2016)
- Christopher Pyne – Member for Sturt (1993–2019), former minister
- Margaret Reid – Senator for the Australian Capital Territory (1981–2003)
- Andrew Southcott – Member for Boothby (1996–2016)
- Natasha Stott Despoja – Senator for South Australia (1995–2008), Leader of the Australian Democrats (2001–2002)
- Amanda Vanstone – Senator for South Australia (1984–2007), former minister, Ambassador to Italy (2007–2010)
- David Vigor – Senator for South Australia (1984–1987)
- Keith Wilson – Senator for South Australia (1938–1944), Member for Sturt (1949–1954, 1955–1966)
- Penny Wong – Senator for South Australia (2002–), current minister
- Nick Xenophon – Senator for South Australia (2008–2018)
Other state and territory politicians
- Adair Blain – Member for the Northern Territory (1934–1949)
- Pru Goward – Member of the New South Wales Legislative Assembly, current minister
- Shane Stone – Chief Minister of the Northern Territory (1995–1999)
- Ian Wilson – Member for Sturt (1966–1969, 1972–1993), former minister
Humanities
Literature, writing and poetry
Judiciary and the law
- Amanda Banton – lawyer
- John Basten – Justice of the New South Wales Court of Appeal
- Richard Blackburn – former Chief Justice of the Australian Capital Territory
- Catherine Branson – former President of the Australian Human Rights Commission and Justice of the Federal Court of Australia
- John Bray – Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of South Australia, poet and classicist
- James Crawford – legal academic; Judge of the International Court of Justice (2014)
- Bill Denny – Attorney-General of South Australia
- John Doyle – Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of South Australia
- John Finnis – legal scholar and philosopher
- Regina Graycar – Emeritus Professor of Law School, University of Sydney
- Hermann Homburg – Attorney-General of South Australia
- Elliott Johnston – Communist activist and Justice of the Supreme Court of South Australia
- Len King – South Australian Attorney-General; Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of South Australia
- Robert Lawson – Attorney-General of South Australia
- Chris Kourakis – Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of South Australia
- Bruce Lander – South Australia's first Independent Commissioner Against Corruption
- G. C. Ligertwood – Judge of the Supreme Court of South Australia
- Brian Martin – Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of the Northern Territory
- Robin Millhouse – lawyer, politician, Justice of the Supreme Court of South Australia; Chief Justice of Kiribati and Nauru
- Roma Mitchell – lawyer, first female Queen's Counsel in Australia (1962); Justice of the Supreme Court of South Australia; first female superior court judge in the British Commonwealth (1965)
- George Murray – Chief Justice of South Australia
- Mellis Napier – Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of South Australia
- Rosemary Owens – Dean of Law at the University of Adelaide Law School
- Angas Parsons – former judge of the Supreme Court of South Australia and former Attorney-General of South Australia
- Geoffrey Reed – Judge in the Supreme Court of South Australia; the first director-general of ASIO
- Len Roberts-Smith – former Justice of the Supreme Court of Western Australia
- Paul Rofe – former South Australian Director of Public Prosecutions
- Colin Rowe – Attorney-General of South Australia
- Reginald Rudall – Attorney-General of South Australia
- Chris Sumner – Attorney-General of South Australia
- Margaret White – first female judge of the Supreme Court of Queensland
Medicine and science
Nobel laureates
- William Lawrence Bragg – physicist, Nobel laureate with his father (William Henry Bragg) "for their services in the analysis of crystal structure by means of X-rays"[10]
- Howard Florey – pharmacologist, Nobel laureate (Physiology or Medicine, 1945) "for the discovery of penicillin and its curative effect in various infectious diseases"[11]
- Robin Warren – pathologist, Nobel laureate (Physiology or Medicine, 2005), for the "discovery of the bacterium Helicobacter pylori and its role in gastritis and peptic ulcer disease"
Science and mathematics
- Herbert Basedow – anthropologist, geologist, politician, explorer and medical practitioner
- Warren Bonython – conservationist, explorer, author, and chemical engineer
- Keith Briggs – mathematician
- Henry Brose – physicist
- Helen Caldicott – physician and anti-nuclear advocate
- Herbert Condon – ornithologist
- Constance Davey – psychologist
- Margaret M. Davies – herpetologist
- Anthony C. Hearn – computer scientist
- Tim Jarvis – environmental scientist
- Norman Jolly – forest researcher
- Rodney Jory – physicist
- Abdul Karim – soil scientist[12]
- Aubrey Lewis – first professor of psychiatry at the Institute of Psychiatry
- Trevor McDougall – physical oceanographer and climate researcher
- Brian Morris – molecular biologist
- Keith Nugent – physicist
- Mark Oliphant – nuclear physicist
- Ian Plimer – professor and global warming critic
- Hugh Possingham – mathematical ecologist
- Lindsay Pryor – botanist and founding designer of the Australian National Botanic Gardens
- Enid Lucy Robertson – Systematic botanist
- Roy Robinson – forest researcher
- Nagendra Kumar Singh – National Professor, Dr. B.P.Pal Chair, Indian Council of Agricultural Research
- Reg Sprigg – geologist and conservationist; discovered Ediacara biota
- Ted Strehlow – Australian anthropologist
- Andy Thomas – first Australia-born professional astronaut to enter space
- Cecil Edgar Tilley – petrologist and geologist
- Norman Tindale – Australian anthropologist, archaeologist, entomologist and ethnologist
Chancellors
More information Order, Chancellors ...
Order | Chancellors | Term start | Term end | Time in office | Notes |
1 | Sir Richard Hanson | 1874 | 1876 | 1–2 years | [16] |
2 | The Rt. Rev'd Augustus Short | 1876 | 1883 | 6–7 years |
3 | Sir Samuel Way PC | 1883 | 1916 | 32–33 years |
4 | Sir George Murray KCMG | 1916 | 1942 | 25–26 years |
5 | Sir William Mitchell KCMG | 1942 | 1948 | 5–6 years | [17] |
6 | Sir Mellis Napier KCMG | 1948 | 1961 | 12–13 years | [16] |
7 | Sir George Ligertwood | 1961 | 1966 | 4–5 years |
8 | Sir Kenneth Wills KBE, MC, KStJ, ED | 1966 | 1968 | 1–2 years | [18] |
9 | John Jefferson Bray AC | 1968 | 1983 | 14–15 years | [16] |
10 | Dame Roma Mitchell AC, DBE, CVO, QC | 1983 | 1990 | 6–7 years |
11 | William Faulding Scammell AO, CBE | 1991 | 1997 | 5–6 years |
12 | Bruce Phillip Webb AM | 1998 | 2000 | 1–2 years |
13 | Robert Champion de Crespigny AC | 2000 | 2004 | 3–4 years |
14 | John von Doussa AO, QC | 2004 | 2010 | 5–6 years |
15 | Robert Hill AC | 2010 | 2014 | 3–4 years |
16 | Rear Admiral Kevin Scarce AC, CSC, RANR | 1 December 2014 (2014-12-01) | 4 May 2020 (2020-05-04) | 5 years, 155 days | [19] |
17 | Catherine Branson AC, QC | 14 July 2020 (2020-07-14) | incumbent | 4 years, 68 days | [20] |
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Vice-chancellors
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Science
Mathematicians
- Keith Briggs – mathematician, formerly on the staff of the Physics Department
- Gavin Brown – mathematician, former vice chancellor of Adelaide and Sydney Universities
- Charles E. M. Pearce – applied mathematician
- Renfrey Potts – Adelaide's first professor of applied mathematics
- George Szekeres – mathematician known for the Erdős–Szekeres theorem
- Ernie Tuck – applied mathematician
- Mathai Varghese – pure mathematician, Elder Professor of Mathematics, Australian Laureate Fellow (2018)