Alumni

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The university has graduated many notable alumni, including five Founding Fathers of the United States, an author of the United States Constitution and a member of the Committee of Five. Three United States presidents have attended Columbia,^[293] as well as ten Justices of the Supreme Court of the United States, including three Chief Justices. As of 2011^[update], 125 Pulitzer Prize winners and 39 Oscar winners have attended Columbia.^[294] As of 2006^[update], there were 101 National Academy members who were alumni.^[295]

In a 2016 ranking of universities worldwide with respect to living graduates who are billionaires, Columbia ranked second, after Harvard.^[296]^[297]

Former U.S. Presidents Theodore Roosevelt and Franklin Delano Roosevelt attended the law school. Other political figures educated at Columbia include former U.S. President Barack Obama,^[298] Associate Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court Ruth Bader Ginsburg,^[299] former U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright,^[300] former chairman of the U.S. Federal Reserve Bank Alan Greenspan,^[301] U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder, and U.S. Solicitor General Donald Verrilli Jr.^[302] The university has also educated 29 foreign heads of state, including president of Georgia Mikheil Saakashvili, president of East Timor José Ramos-Horta, president of Estonia Toomas Hendrik Ilves and other historical figures such as Wellington Koo, Radovan Karadžić, Gaston Eyskens, and T. V. Soong. One of the founding fathers of modern India and the prime architect of the Constitution of India, B. R. Ambedkar, was an alumnus.^[303]^[304]

Alumni of Columbia have occupied top positions in Wall Street and the rest of the business world. Notable members of the Astor family^[305]^[306] attended Columbia, while other business graduates include investor Warren Buffett,^[307] former CEO of PBS and NBC Lawrence K. Grossman,^[308] chairman of Walmart S. Robson Walton,^[309] Bain Capital Co-Managing Partner, Jonathan Lavine,^[310]^[311] Thomson Reuters CEO Tom Glocer,^[312]^[313] New York Stock Exchange president Lynn Martin,^[314] and AllianceBernstein Chairman and CEO Lewis A. Sanders.^[315] CEO's of top Fortune 500 companies include James P. Gorman of Morgan Stanley,^[316] Robert J. Stevens of Lockheed Martin,^[317] Philippe Dauman of Viacom,^[318] Robert Bakish of Paramount Global,^[319]^[320] Ursula Burns of Xerox,^[321] Devin Wenig of EBay,^[322] Vikram Pandit of Citigroup,^[323] Ralph Izzo of Public Service Enterprise Group,^[324]^[325] Gail Koziara Boudreaux of Anthem,^[326] and Frank Blake of The Home Depot.^[327] Notable labor organizer and women's educator Louise Leonard McLaren received her degree of Master of Arts from Columbia.^[328]

In science and technology, Columbia alumni include: founder of IBM Herman Hollerith;^[329] inventor of FM radio Edwin Armstrong;^[330] Francis Mechner; integral in development of the nuclear submarine Hyman Rickover;^[331] founder of Google China Kai-Fu Lee;^[332] scientists Stephen Jay Gould,^[333] Robert Millikan,^[334] Helium–neon laser inventor Ali Javan and Mihajlo Pupin;^[335] chief-engineer of the New York City Subway, William Barclay Parsons;^[336] philosophers Irwin Edman^[337] and Robert Nozick;^[338] economist Milton Friedman;^[339] psychologist Harriet Babcock;^[340] archaeologist Josephine Platner Shear;^[341] and sociologists Lewis A. Coser and Rose Laub Coser.^[342]^[343]

Many Columbia alumni have gone on to renowned careers in the arts, including composers Richard Rodgers,^[344] Oscar Hammerstein II,^[345] Lorenz Hart,^[346] and Art Garfunkel;^[347] and painter Georgia O'Keeffe.^[348] Five United States Poet Laureates received their degrees from Columbia. Columbia alumni have made an indelible mark in the field of American poetry and literature, with such people as Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg, pioneers of the Beat Generation;^[349] and Langston Hughes and Zora Neale Hurston, seminal figures in the Harlem Renaissance,^[350]^[351] all having attended the university. Other notable writers who attended Columbia include authors Isaac Asimov,^[352] J.D. Salinger,^[353] Upton Sinclair,^[354] Ursula K. Le Guin,^[355] Danielle Valore Evans,^[356] and Hunter S. Thompson.^[357] In architecture, William Lee Stoddart, a prolific architect of U.S. East Coast hotels, is an alumnus.^[358]

University alumni have also been very prominent in the film industry, with 33 alumni and former students winning a combined 43 Academy Awards (as of 2011^[update]).^[294] Some notable Columbia alumni that have gone on to work in film include directors Sidney Lumet (12 Angry Men)^[359] and Kathryn Bigelow (The Hurt Locker),^[360] screenwriters Howard Koch (Casablanca)^[361] and Joseph L. Mankiewicz (All About Eve),^[362] and actors James Cagney,^[363] Ed Harris and Timothée Chalamet.^[364]

Notable Columbia University alumni include:
Alexander Hamilton: Founding Father of the United States; author of The Federalist Papers; first United States Secretary of the Treasury — King's College
John Jay: Founding Father of the United States; author of The Federalist Papers; first Chief Justice of the United States; second Governor of New York — King's College
Robert R. Livingston: Founding Father of the United States; drafter of the Declaration of Independence; first United States Secretary of Foreign Affairs — King's College
Gouverneur Morris: Founding Father of the United States; author of the United States Constitution; United States Senator from New York — King's College
DeWitt Clinton: United States Senator from New York; sixth Governor of New York; responsible for construction of Erie Canal — Columbia College
Barack Obama: 44th President of the United States; United States Senator from Illinois; Nobel laureate — Columbia College
Franklin D. Roosevelt: 32nd President of the United States; 44th Governor of New York — Columbia Law School
Theodore Roosevelt: 26th President of the United States; 25th Vice President of the United States; 33rd Governor of New York; Nobel laureate – Columbia Law School
Wellington Koo: acting President of the Republic of China; judge of the International Court of Justice — Columbia College, Graduate School of Arts and Sciences
B. R. Ambedkar: Founding Father of India; architect of the Constitution of India; First Minister of Law and Justice — Graduate School of Arts and Sciences
Ruth Bader Ginsburg: Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States — Columbia Law School
Neil Gorsuch: Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States — Columbia College
Charles Evans Hughes: 11th Chief Justice of the United States; 44th United States Secretary of State; 35th Governor of New York — Columbia Law School
Harlan Fiske Stone: 12th Chief Justice of the United States; 52nd United States Attorney General — Columbia Law School
William Barr: 77th and 85th United States Attorney General – Columbia College, Graduate School of Arts and Sciences
Hamilton Fish: 26th United States Secretary of State; United States Senator from New York; 16th Governor of New York — Columbia College
Madeleine Albright: 64th United States Secretary of State; first female Secretary of State — School of International and Public Affairs
Frances Perkins: fourth United States Secretary of Labor; first female member of any U.S. Cabinet — Graduate School of Arts and Sciences
Robert A. Millikan: Nobel laureate; measured the elementary electric charge — Graduate School of Arts and Sciences
Isidor Isaac Rabi: Nobel Laureate; discovered nuclear magnetic resonance — Graduate School of Arts and Sciences
Julian S. Schwinger: Nobel laureate; pioneer of quantum field theory — Columbia College, Graduate School of Arts and Sciences
Milton Friedman: Nobel laureate, leading member of the Chicago school of economics — Graduate School of Arts and Sciences
Simon Kuznets: Nobel laureate; invented concept of GDP; Milton Friedman's doctoral advisor — School of General Studies, Graduate School of Arts and Sciences
Alan Greenspan: 13th Chair of the Federal Reserve — Graduate School of Arts and Sciences
Warren Buffett: CEO of Berkshire Hathaway; one of the world's wealthiest people — Columbia Business School
Herman Hollerith: inventor; co-founder of IBM – School of Engineering and Applied Sciences
Robert Kraft: billionaire; owner of the New England Patriots; chairman and CEO of the Kraft Group — Columbia College
Richard Rodgers: legendary Emmy, Grammy, Oscar, and Tony award-winning composer; Pulitzer Prize winner — Columbia College
Langston Hughes: Harlem Renaissance poet, novelist, and playwright — School of Engineering and Applied Science
Zora Neale Hurston: Harlem Renaissance author, anthropologist, and filmmaker — Barnard College, Graduate School of Arts and Sciences
Allen Ginsberg: poet; founder of the Beat Generation — Columbia College
Jack Kerouac: poet; founder of the Beat Generation — Columbia College
Isaac Asimov: science fiction writer; biochemist — School of General Studies, Graduate School of Arts and Sciences
J. D. Salinger: novelist, The Catcher in the Rye — School of General Studies
Amelia Earhart: first female aviator to fly solo across the Atlantic Ocean — School of General Studies
Jake Gyllenhaal: actor and film producer — Columbia College

Faculty

As of 2021, Columbia employs 4,381 faculty, including 70 members of the National Academy of Sciences,^[365] 178 members of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences,^[366] and 65 members of the National Academy of Medicine.^[367] In total, the Columbia faculty has included 52 Nobel laureates, 12 National Medal of Science recipients,^[368] and 32 National Academy of Engineering members.^[369]

Columbia University faculty played particularly important roles during World War II and the creation of the New Deal under President Franklin D. Roosevelt, who attended Columbia Law School. The three core members of Roosevelt's Brain Trust: Adolf A. Berle, Raymond Moley, and Rexford Tugwell, were law professors at Columbia.^[370] The Statistical Research Group, which used statistics to analyze military problems during World War II, was composed of Columbia researchers and faculty including George Stigler and Milton Friedman.^[371] Columbia faculty and researchers, including Enrico Fermi, Leo Szilard, Eugene T. Booth, John R. Dunning, George B. Pegram, Walter Zinn, Chien-Shiung Wu, Francis G. Slack, Harold Urey, Herbert L. Anderson, and Isidor Isaac Rabi, also played a significant role during the early phases of the Manhattan Project.^[372]

Following the rise of Nazi Germany, the exiled Institute for Social Research at Goethe University Frankfurt would affiliate itself with Columbia from 1934 to 1950.^[373] It was during this period that thinkers including Theodor Adorno, Max Horkheimer, and Herbert Marcuse wrote and published some of the most seminal works of the Frankfurt School, including Reason and Revolution, Dialectic of Enlightenment, and Eclipse of Reason.^[374] Professors Edward Said, author of Orientalism, and Gayatri Spivak are generally considered as founders of the field of postcolonialism;^[375]^[376] other professors that have significantly contributed to the field include Hamid Dabashi and Joseph Massad.^[377]^[378] The works of professors Kimberlé Crenshaw, Patricia J. Williams, and Kendall Thomas were foundational to the field of critical race theory.^[379]

Columbia and its affiliated faculty have also made significant contributions to the study of religion. The affiliated Union Theological Seminary is a center of liberal Christianity in the United States, having served as the birthplace of Black theology through the efforts of faculty including James H. Cone and Cornel West,^[380]^[381] and Womanist theology, through the works of Katie Cannon, Emilie Townes, and Delores S. Williams.^[382]^[383]^[384] Likewise, the Jewish Theological Seminary of America was the birthplace of Conservative Judaism movement in the United States, which was founded and led by faculty members including Solomon Schechter, Alexander Kohut, and Louis Ginzberg in the early 20th century, and is a major center for Jewish studies in general.^[385]

Other schools of thought in the humanities Columbia professors made significant contributions toward include the Dunning School, founded by William Archibald Dunning;^[386]^[387] the anthropological schools of historical particularism and cultural relativism, founded by Franz Boas;^[388] and functional psychology, whose founders and proponents include John Dewey, James McKeen Cattell, Edward L. Thorndike, and Robert S. Woodworth.^[389]

Notable figures that have served as the president of Columbia University include 34th President of the United States Dwight D. Eisenhower, 4th Vice President of the United States George Clinton, Founding Father and U.S. Senator from Connecticut William Samuel Johnson, Nobel Peace Prize laureate Nicholas Murray Butler, and First Amendment scholar Lee Bollinger.^[24]

Notable Columbia University faculty include Zbigniew Brzezinski, Sonia Sotomayor, Kimberlé Crenshaw, Lee Bollinger, Franz Boas, Margaret Mead, Edward Sapir, John Dewey, Charles A. Beard, Max Horkheimer, Herbert Marcuse, Edward Said, Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, Orhan Pamuk, Edwin Howard Armstrong, Enrico Fermi, Chien-Shiung Wu, Tsung-Dao Lee, Jack Steinberger, Joachim Frank, Joseph Stiglitz, Jeffrey Sachs, Robert Mundell, Thomas Hunt Morgan, Eric Kandel, Richard Axel, and Andrei Okounkov.