List of Phi Beta Kappa members

This is a list of notable members of the Phi Beta Kappa who have Wikipedia biographies.

This is a dynamic list and may never be able to satisfy particular standards for completeness. You can help by adding missing items with reliable sources.

Notable members elected as undergraduates

Name	Year	College or University	Notability	References
Bushrod Washington	1778	College of William & Mary
John Heath	1779	College of William & Mary
Richard Bland Lee	1780	College of William & Mary
John Marshall	1780	College of William & Mary
James Kent	1781	Yale College
Stephen Van Rensselaer	1782	Harvard University		[1]
John Quincy Adams	1787	Harvard University
Eli Whitney	1792	Yale College
David Sherman Boardman	1792	Yale College
Joseph Story	1798	Harvard University
Oliver Ellsworth	1799	Yale College
Daniel Webster	1801	Dartmouth College
John Calhoun	1804	Yale College
Levi Woodbury	1809	Dartmouth College
Samuel Morse	1810	Yale College
William H. Prescott	1814	Harvard University
Joseph Tracy	1814	Dartmouth College
William H. Seward	1819	Union College
Rufus Choate	1819	Dartmouth College
Nathaniel Hawthorne	1824	Bowdoin College
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow	1825	Bowdoin College
Salmon Portland Chase	1826	Dartmouth College
William Strong	1828	Yale College
Ralph Waldo Emerson	1828	Harvard University		[2]
Benjamin Robbins Curtis	1829	Harvard University
Lorenzo Langstroth	1831	Yale College
Asa Fowler	1833	Dartmouth College
Timothy P. Redfield	1836	Dartmouth College
Morrison Remick Waite	1837	Yale College
Chester A. Arthur	1848	Union College
William S. Clark	1848	Amherst College
Timothy Dwight V	1848	Yale College
Joshua Chamberlain	1852	Bowdoin College
Joseph H. Choate	1852	Harvard University
Melville Weston Fuller	1853	Bowdoin College
George Shiras Jr	1853	Yale College
David Josiah Brewer	1856	Yale College
Henry Billings Brown	1856	Yale College
James A. Garfield	1856	Williams College
John B. Hinkson	1860	Lafayette College
Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.	1861	Harvard University
George Moulton Carpenter	1864	Brown University
William T. Sherman	1866	Dartmouth College		[3]
Henry Adams	1872	Harvard University		[4]
Henry James	1872	Harvard University		[5]
William Henry Moody	1876	Harvard University
Robert Peary	1877	Bowdoin College
William Howard Taft	1878	Yale College
John Dewey	1879	University of Vermont
Theodore Roosevelt	1880	Harvard University
Charles Evans Hughes	1881	Brown University
Edward Bouchet	1874	Yale College
John Hessin Clarke	1877	Case Western Reserve University
Henry Clay Folger	1879	Amherst College
George Santayana	1886	Harvard University
Henry Stimson	1888	Yale University
Bernard Baruch	1889	City College of New York
Benjamin Cardozo	1889	Columbia College
W. E. B. Du Bois	1890	Fisk University
Bainbridge Colby	1890	Williams College
Henrietta Swan Leavitt	1892	Radcliffe College
Edward E. Wilson	1892	Williams College
Learned Hand	1893	Harvard University
Alexander Meiklejohn	1893	Brown University
Andrew Sledd	1894	Randolph-Macon College
Harlan Fiske Stone	1894	Amherst College
Owen Roberts	1895	University of Pennsylvania
John Barlow	1895	Brown University
Louis Brandeis	1895	Harvard University		[6]
Caroline Ransom Williams	1896	Mount Holyoke College		[7]
John D. Rockefeller Jr.	1897	Brown University		[8]
Richard B. Carter	1898	Harvard University
Mary Annette Anderson	1899	Middlebury College
John Gresham Machen	1901	Johns Hopkins University
Felix Frankfurter	1902	City College of New York
Elihu Root	1903	Hamilton College
Stanley King	1903	Amherst College
John J. Tigert	1904	Vanderbilt University
Booker T. Washington	1904	Harvard University		[9]
Jessie Redmon Fauset	1905	Cornell University
Christine Iverson Bennett	1907	University of Michigan		[10]
Ernest Everett Just	1907	Dartmouth College
John J. Parker	1907	University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
William Burke Belknap	1908	Yale College
John Foster Dulles	1908	Princeton University
John Hall Wheelock	1908	Harvard University
Owen Brewster	1909	Bowdoin College
Harold Hitz Burton	1909	Bowdoin College
Walter Lippmann	1909	Harvard University
Harold Medina	1909	Princeton University
C.T. Wang	1910	Yale University
Paul Douglas	1913	Bowdoin College
Jane Barus	1913	Smith College
Katharine Lambert Richards Rockwell	1913	Smith College
Pearl Buck	1914	Randolph-Macon Woman's College
James Bryant Conant	1914	Harvard University
Carroll A. Edson	1914	Dartmouth College
Hu Hsen-Hsu	1914	University of California, Berkeley		[11]
Dean Acheson	1915	Yale University
Archibald MacLeish	1915	Yale University
Charles Hamilton Houston	1915	Amherst College
Alfred Kinsey	1916	Bowdoin College
Robert Frost	1916	Harvard University		[12]
Irwin Edman	1917	Columbia University
Jarvis Offutt	1917	Yale University
Thomas Granville Pullen Jr.	1917	College of William & Mary
Oliver Waterman Larkin	1918	Harvard University
Paul Robeson	1919	Rutgers University		[13]
K. K. Chen	1920	University of Wisconsin-Madison
William O. Douglas	1920	Whitman College
Percy Lavon Julian	1920	DePauw University
David E. Lilienthal	1920	DePauw University
Countee Cullen	1922	New York University
Henry Friendly	1923	Harvard University
Nathan F. Leopold	1923	University of Chicago
Herbert Brownell Jr.	1924	University of Nebraska
Grayson L. Kirk	1924	Miami University
J. Robert Oppenheimer	1925	Harvard University		[14]
Alger Hiss	1926	Johns Hopkins University
Martin Dobelle	1926	Fordham University
Joseph J. Spengler	1927	Ohio State University
George H. Hitchings	1927	University of Washington
Mildred Grosberg Bellin	1928	Smith College
Grace Hopper	1928	Vassar College
John C. Stennis	1928	University of Virginia
Carl Sandburg	1928	Harvard University		[15]
Leroy Anderson	1929	Harvard University
Harry Blackmun	1929	Harvard University
Paul S. Dunkin	1929	DePauw University
Margaret Burnham Geddes	1929	Vassar College
James Michener	1929	Swarthmore College
Lewis Franklin Powell Jr.	1929	Washington & Lee University
William Fields Carter	1930	University of Richmond	Virginia state delegate	[16]
Nelson Rockefeller	1930	Dartmouth College
Jonas Salk	1930	City College of New York
Carl Albert	1931	University of Oklahoma
Dean Rusk	1931	Davidson College
Fred Sington	1931	University of Alabama
Edward H. Levi	1932	University of Chicago
Eugene O'Neill Jr.	1932	Yale University
Eugene V. Rostow	1932	Yale University
Barry Wood	1932	Harvard University
Paul Weston (as Paul Wetstein)	1933	Dartmouth College
Frank Oppenheimer	1933	Johns Hopkins University
John Howard	1934	Case Western Reserve University
Daniel Boorstin	1934	Harvard University
Richard Helms	1935	Williams College
T. S. Eliot	1935	Harvard University
Samuel Belkin	1935	Brown University
Milton Babbitt	1936	New York University
Ed Muskie	1936	Bates College
Robert McNamara	1936	University of California Berkeley
Alan Lomax	1936	University of Texas
Potter Stewart	1937	Yale University
Byron White	1937	University of Colorado
Caspar Weinberger	1938	Harvard University
Doris Grumbach	1939	New York University
John L. Loos	1939	University of Nebraska
Nile Kinnick	1939	University of Iowa
Wilma Dykeman	1940	Northwestern University
Orville Freeman	1940	University of Minnesota
Bernard Epstein	1940	New York University
Ella T. Grasso	1940	Mount Holyoke College
Allen Ludden	1940	University of Texas
Robie Macauley	1941	Kenyon College
Ruth Barcan Marcus	1941	New York University
Wade H. McCree	1941	Fisk University
William Kunstler	1941	Yale University
John Paul Stevens	1941	University of Chicago
Betty Friedan	1942	Smith College
Carl W. Gottschalk	1942	Roanoke College
Jade Snow Wong	1942	Mills College
George C. Baldwin	1943	Kalamazoo College
James F. Howard Jr.	1943	Yale University
Phyllis Schlafly	1943	Washington University in St. Louis
Cid Corman	1945	Tufts University
Frank Church	1947	Stanford University
Jack St. Clair Kilby	1947	University of Illinois
Peter D. Lax	1947	New York University
Tom Lehrer	1947	Harvard University
Robert Bork	1948	University of Chicago
George H. W. Bush	1948	Yale University
Edward D. White Jr.	1948	Columbia University
Martin Lewis Perl	1948	Polytechnic Institute of Brooklyn
William Rehnquist	1948	Stanford University
Judith Tobin	1948	Mount Holyoke College
Brock Adams	1949	Washington University in St. Louis
Bill Naito	1949	Reed College
Edward O. Wilson	1949	University of Alabama
Jane Dempsey Douglass	c. 1950s	Syracuse University
Henry Kissinger	1950	Harvard University
Marv Levy	1950	Coe College
William Dickey	1951	Reed College
Ursula K. Le Guin	1951	Radcliffe College
Susan Sontag	1951	University of Chicago
Arlen Specter	1951	University of Pennsylvania
David Lee	1952	Harvard University
Arthur Levitt	1952	Williams College
Stephen Sondheim	1952	Williams College
John Shelby Spong	1952	University of North Carolina
Guido Calabresi	1953	Yale University
Clive Davis	1953	New York University
Ronald Dworkin	1953	Harvard University
John Hope Franklin	1953	Fisk University		[17]
Fredric Jameson	1953	Haverford College		[18]
Paul Donnelly Paganucci	1953	Dartmouth College
Thomas R. Pickering	1953	Bowdoin College
Ruth Bader Ginsburg	1954	Cornell University
Sheldon Glashow	1954	Cornell University
Richard Lugar	1954	Denison University
Victor Navasky	1954	Swarthmore College
Joan Rivers	1954	Barnard College
John Updike	1954	Harvard University
Steven Weinberg	1954	Cornell University
Franklin M. Fisher	1955	Harvard University
Ralph Nader	1955	Princeton University
Reynolds Price	1955	Duke University
John L. Hall	1956	Carnegie Mellon University
Gloria Steinem	1956	Smith College
Akira Iriye	1957	Haverford College
Elizabeth Dole	1958	Duke University
Anthony Kennedy	1958	Stanford University
Kris Kristofferson	1958	Pomona College
Joseph Nye	1958	Princeton University
Paul Comi	1958	University of Southern California
Robert Coleman Richardson	1958	Virginia Tech
Stephen Breyer	1959	Stanford University
Francis Ford Coppola	1959	Hofstra University
John W. Dower	1959	Amherst College
Bob Graham	1959	University of Florida
Robert Nozick	1959	Columbia University
Thomas Ruggles Pynchon Jr.	1959	Cornell University
Richard Posner	1959	Yale University
Richard Lindzen	1960	Harvard University
Robert E. Rubin	1960	Harvard University
David H. Souter	1960	Harvard University
Daniel Gillespie	1960	Rice University
Lester Thurow	1960	Williams College
Fay Vincent	1960	Williams College
Sheldon Goldman	1961	New York University
Elizabeth Parr-Johnston	1961	Wellesley College
Pat Schroeder	1961	University of Minnesota
David Souter	1961	Harvard University
Lamar Alexander	1962	Vanderbilt University
Tom Brokaw	1962	University of South Dakota
Lynne Cheney	1962	Colorado College
Robert Christgau	1962	Dartmouth College
Edward Ng	1962	University of Minnesota
Barack Obama Sr.	1962	University of Hawaii
Daniel C. Tsui	1962	Augustana College
David L. Boren	1963	Yale University
Richard Epstein	1963	Columbia University
David Satcher	1963	Morehouse College
John Edgar Wideman	1963	University of Pennsylvania
James Woolsey	1963	Stanford University
David Boies	1964	University of Redlands
Michael Crichton	1964	Harvard University
Leonard Bernstein	1964	Harvard University		[8]
Joseph Lieberman	1964	Yale University
Angela Davis	1965	Brandeis University
Carl Gershman	1965	Yale University		[19][20]
Terrence Malick	1965	Harvard University
Walter Murch	1965	Johns Hopkins University
W. Taylor Reveley III	1965	Princeton University
Paul Wellstone	1965	University of North Carolina
William Weld	1966	Harvard University
Philip Lader	1966	Duke University
George Smoot	1966	Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Jane Harman	1966	Smith College
John Postlethwait	1966	Purdue University
Douglas D. Osheroff	1967	California Institute of Technology
Richard Blumenthal	1967	Harvard University
Janet Yellen	1967	Brown University
Bill Clinton	1968	Georgetown University
Michio Kaku	1968	Harvard University
John C. Mather	1968	Swarthmore College
Henry Paulson	1968	Dartmouth College
Isaac Asimov	1972	Boston University		[9]
Laurie Anderson	1969	Barnard College
Jon Corzine	1969	University of Illinois
Hugh David Politzer	1969	University of Michigan
Frank J. Fabozzi	1969	City University of New York
E. Annie Proulx	1969	University of Vermont
Steven Chu	1970	University of Rochester
Frank Easterbrook	1970	Swarthmore College
Mazie Hirono	1970	University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa
Frank Wilczek	1970	University of Chicago
David Rubenstein	1970	Duke University
Louis Freeh	1971	Rutgers University
Michael Katze	1971	Boston University
Mike Nifong	1971	University of North Carolina
Chuck Schumer	1971	Harvard University
Pat Quinn	1971	Georgetown University
Roger Tsien	1971	Harvard University
Nadine Strossen	1972	Radcliffe College
Samuel Alito	1972	Princeton University
Robert B. Laughlin	1972	University of California Berkeley
Jeffrey K. Tulis	1972	Bates College
Benazir Bhutto	1973	Radcliffe College
Jeb Bush	1973	University of Texas
E.J. Dionne	1973	Harvard University
Rita Dove	1973	Miami University
John N. Kennedy	1973	Vanderbilt University
Paul Alan Levy	1973	Reed College
Austin Ligon	1973	University of Texas
Renée Montagne	1973	University of California Berkeley
Diana Nyad	1973	Lake Forest College
Carl Wieman	1973	Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Glenn Close	1974	College of William & Mary
Christie Hefner	1974	Brandeis University
Mark E. Kalmansohn	c. 1974	University of California, Los Angeles
Condoleezza Rice	1974	University of Denver
Ben Bernanke	1975	Harvard University
Susan Collins	1975	St. Lawrence University
Griffith R. Harsh	1975	Harvard University
Harold Hongju Koh	1975	Harvard University
Gale Norton	1975	University of Denver
Robert Zoellick	1975	Swarthmore College
Michael Burns	1976	University of California, Los Angeles	actor and historian
Lawrence B. Lindsey	1976	Bowdoin College
Jack A. Goldstone	1976	Harvard University
Alfredo Jocelyn-Holt	1976	Johns Hopkins University
John G. Roberts	1976	Harvard University
Sonia Sotomayor	1976	Princeton University
Joseph C. Nuesse	1976	Catholic University of America
Mark Warner	1977	George Washington University
Michael Stuart	1977	DePauw University		[21]
Jeffrey Vitter	1977	University of Notre Dame
Dale Archer	1978	Tulane University
Maurice Berger	1978	Hunter College
Karen Hughes	1978	Southern Methodist University
David Addington	1978	Georgetown University
Paula Franzese	1979	Barnard College
Debra Lehrmann	1979	University of Texas at Austin
David Merritt	1979	University of Santa Clara
Mary Lambeth Moore	1980	University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
Stavros Lambrinidis	1984	Amherst College
Jennifer Granholm	1980	University of California, Berkeley
Michael R. Barratt	1981	University of Washington
Lynn Barry	1981	College of William & Mary
Nicholas D. Kristof	1981	Harvard University
Elena Kagan	1981	Princeton University
I Michael Leitman	1981	Boston University
Eliot Spitzer	1981	Princeton University
Matthew Kramer	1981	Cornell University
Jill Zimmerman	1981	Purdue University
George Stephanopoulos	1982	Columbia University
Kateryna Yushchenko	1982	Georgetown University
Patrick Fitzgerald	1982	Amherst College
David Duchovny	1982	Princeton University		[22]
Jeffrey W. Legro	1982	Middlebury College
Jean Rhodes	1983	University of Vermont
Christopher Eisgruber	1983	Princeton University
Miguel Estrada	1983	Columbia University
Dinesh D'Souza	1983	Dartmouth College
Christiane Amanpour	1983	University of Rhode Island		[23]
Lisa Randall	1984	Harvard University
Lee Siegel	1984	Columbia University
Eric Allin Cornell	1985	Stanford University
Ken Stern	1985	Haverford College
Daniel Pearl	1985	Stanford University
Carol Queen	1985	University of Oregon
Anne Applebaum	1986	Yale University
Jeff Bezos	1986	Princeton University
Sabine Hyland	1986	Cornell University
Susan Rice	1986	Stanford University
Rafael Resendes	1987	University of California, Berkeley
Laura J. Snyder	1987	Brandeis University
Paul Clement	1988	Georgetown University
Neil Gorsuch	1988	Princeton University
KellyAnne Conway	1989	Trinity Washington University
Eudora Welty	1989	Millsaps College		[9]
Ashley Judd	1990	University of Kentucky
Rosa Brooks	1990	Harvard University
Joshua Redman	1991	Harvard University
Paul Adelstein	1991	Bowdoin College
Peter R. Orszag	1991	Princeton University
Carson Kressley	1991	Gettysburg College
Jimmy Carter	1991	Kansas State University		[24]
Dena Grayson	1991	University of Florida
Julie Story Byerley	1992	Rhodes College
Doris Eaton Travis	1992	University of Oklahoma
Danielle Allen	1993	Princeton University
Benjamin Radford	1993	University of New Mexico
Stephanie Herseth Sandlin	1993	Georgetown University
Amit Mehta	1993	Georgetown University
Bobby Jindal	1993	Brown University
Teresa N. Washington	1993	Fisk University	author, academic, activist
Matt Sherman	1994	University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
Amy Coney Barrett	1994	Rhodes College
Robb LaKritz	1994	University of Michigan
Burton Rocks	1994	Stony Brook University
Mamphela Ramphele	1994	Harvard University		[25]
James Kerwin	1995	Texas Christian University
Griff Aldrich	1996	Hampden-Sydney College
Matthew Kleban	1996	Reed College
Andrew Mueller	1996	University of California, Santa Cruz
Dan O'Brien	1996	Middlebury College	playwright
Emily Bergl	1997	Grinnell College
Richard Carrier	1997	University of California, Berkeley
Susan Haack	1997	University of Miami		[26]
Peyton Manning	1997	University of Tennessee		[27]
Michael Schur	1997	Harvard University
Ro Khanna	1998	University of Chicago		[28][29]
Kerry Washington	1998	George Washington University
Sufjan Stevens	1998	Hope College
Brad Delson	1999	University of California, Los Angeles
Rita Ng	2000	Stanford University		[30]
Heidi Cruz	2000	Claremont McKenna College		[31]
Holly A. Thomas	2000	Stanford University		[32]
Brianna Keilar	2001	University of California, Berkeley
Josh Hawley	2002	Stanford University
Pete Buttigieg	2004	Harvard University		[33]
Ben Shapiro	2004	University of California, Los Angeles
Rivers Cuomo	2006	Harvard University
Oludamini Ogunnaike	2007	Harvard University		[34]
Vivek Ramaswamy	2007	Harvard University
Isaiah Andrews	2009	Yale College
Lena Park	2010	Columbia University
Kurt Hugo Schneider	2010	Yale University
Annie E. Clark	2011	University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
Tamar Kaprelian	2016	Columbia University
Sylvia Swayne	2019	University of Alabama
Amanda Gorman	2020	Harvard University

Honorary members

Name	Date	Notability	References
Alexander Graham Bell
Leonard Bernstein			[35]
Barbara Bush			[36]
Jimmy Carter			[37][38]
Rosalynn Carter			[39]
Ta-Nehisi Coates			[40]
Calvin Coolidge			[37][41]
John Hope Franklin
R. Buckminster Fuller			[42][43]
Susan Haack
Rutherford B. Hayes			[44]
David Johnston			[45]
Helen Keller			[9]
Sandra Day O'Connor			[46]
Mary Oliver			[47]
Mamphela Ramphele
John D. Rockefeller			[35]
Fred Rogers			[48]
Eleanor Roosevelt			[49]
Franklin D. Roosevelt			[41][37]
Anne Sexton
Harry S. Truman			[41][37]
Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens)			[50][51]
Booker T. Washington			[9][35]
Woodrow Wilson			[41][37]
Willa Cather	2023		[52]

Fictional members

• Ellis Loew, fictional District Attorney in James Ellroy's novels The Black Dahlia, The Big Nowhere, and L.A. Confidential, is a member and he shows his key several times.
• Thomas Crown, title character of the movie The Thomas Crown Affair, toys with his golden Phi Beta Kappa key which he is wearing on a chain. It is stated that he is an alumnus of Dartmouth College and Harvard Business School.
• Richard Sumner, the main character of the movie Desk Set (1957), is mentioned as a member when Bunny Watson (Katharine Hepburn) reels off Sumner's character's accomplishments and says that he's a graduate of M.I.T. with a Ph.D. in Science and a Phi Beta Kappa, although he doesn't wear his key, which means either that he's modest or he lost it.
• Harry Bailey in the movie It's a Wonderful Life (1946) is greeted at the train station by George and Uncle Billy as “Professor Phi Beta Kappa Harry Bailey,” implying he is a member.
• Charley Bordelon West in TV show Queen Sugar is a member.^[53] This is referenced when she has to correct someone who incorrectly refers to it as a social fraternity.^[54]
• Rory Gilmore, the title character of the TV show Gilmore Girls, is referenced as a member of Emily and Richard Gilmore's graduation musical duo.
• Emily Sweeney in TV show The Big Bang Theory is revealed as a Phi Beta Kappa member. It is said to have been apparent on her online dating profile viewed by Rajesh Koothrappali. Also, Sheldon Cooper has a frame of Phi Beta Kappa in his office, suggesting that he is a member.
• Gavin Stevens, the protagonist of several pieces by William Faulkner exhibits the Phi Beta Kappa key from Harvard in the stories "Hand Upon the Water", "An Error in Chemistry" and "Knight's Gambit".
• Niles Crane of the TV show Frasier is a member.
• Greg Sanders of the TV show CSI: Crime Scene Investigation is a member.