List of Hunter College people

The list of Hunter College people includes notable graduates, professors and other people affiliated with Hunter College of the City University of New York.

Alumni

Nobel laureates

• Gertrude B. Elion – 1988, Medicine
• Rosalyn Sussman Yalow – 1977, Medicine

Pulitzer Prize winners

• Holland Cotter – art critic ^[1]
• Emily Genauer – art critic ^[2]
• Ada Louise Huxtable – architecture critic
• Liu Heung Shing – photographer ^[3]
• James Wright – poet

National Medal of Science winners

• Mildred Cohn – 1982, Biological Sciences
• Mildred Dresselhaus – Engineering Sciences
• Gertrude B. Elion

Presidential Medal of Freedom winners

• Antonia Pantoja – activist

Science, technology, medicine, and mathematics

• Patricia Bath – ophthalmologist
• Marjorie Clarke – environmental scientist
• Mildred Cohn – National Medal of Science winner
• Mary P. Dolciani – mathematician
• Madeline Early – mathematician and university professor
• Elsie Giorgi – physician
• Erich Jarvis – neurologist
• Esther Lederberg – pioneer of bacterial genetics
• Lena Levine – psychiatrist, gynecologist, pioneer of marriage counseling and birth control
• Celia Maxwell – infectious disease physician and academic administrator
• Beatrice Mintz – pioneer of mammalian transgenesis
• Arlie Petters – pioneer of gravitational lensing
• Mina Rees – mathematician, President of the American Association for the Advancement of Science
• Gillian Reynolds 1988 – third African American woman to earn a Ph.D. in physics from M.I.T. ^[4]
• Ruth Teitelbaum – ENIAC programmer
• Rosalyn Sussman Yalow – Nobel prize winner in Medicine

Business and economics

• Gerard Cafesjian – owner of West Publishing Corporation (now part of Thomson Corporation)
• Alan S. Chartock – president and CEO of WAMC
• Leon Cooperman – billionaire hedge fund manager
• Robert A. Daly – CEO of Warner Bros. and the Los Angeles Dodgers
• Mollie Orshansky – developer of the Orshansky Poverty Thresholds, the main poverty measure in the US
• Sylvia Field Porter – economist and journalist
• Melvin T. Tukman – co-founder and president of Tukman Grossman Capital Management, an investment firm. ^[5]

Law and politics

Members of Congress

• Bella Abzug – Congresswoman, 1971–1977
• Eliot L. Engel – Congressman, 1989–present
• Edna F. Kelly – Congresswoman, 1949–1969

State figures

• Teresa Patterson Hughes – California State Senator
• Roger Manno – Maryland House of Delegates

City figures

• Tony Avella – New York City councilman, 2009 candidate for mayor
• Adolfo Carrión Jr. – Bronx borough president
• Tom Murphy – mayor of Pittsburgh
• John Timoney – Miami chief of police

Lawyers

• Floria Lasky – prominent theater lawyer
• Soia Mentschikoff – chief developer of the Uniform Commercial Code and first woman to teach at Harvard Law School

Activists

• Norma Becker – anti-war activist
• Madeleine Cosman – health care and immigration advocate
• Alexander Dvorkin – anti-cult activist
• Theodora Lacey – civil rights activist
• Gertrude Lane – trade unionist ^[6]
• Audre Lorde – activist, writer, poet
• Pauli Murray – activist, lawyer, priest, and author
• Antonia Pantoja – activist, Presidential Medal of Freedom winner
• Mamphela Ramphele – Rockefeller Foundation trustee, anti-apartheid activist
• Sandra Schnur – pioneer of disability rights
• Judith Vladeck – labor lawyer and civil rights advocate

Journalism and news

• Mohamad Bazzi – journalist
• Richard Cohen – Washington Post columnist
• Corine Hegland – journalist
• Jack Newfield – muckraking journalist
• Shimon Prokupecz – CNN reporter
• Daniel Seaman – Israeli politician; expert on the Arab-Israeli conflict

Literature

• Grace Andreacchi – writer
• Maurice Berger – cultural critic
• Peter Carey – writer
• Colin Channer – writer
• Helen Gray Cone – poet
• Lucy Dawidowicz – author
• Martin Greif – writer, publisher
• Kaitlyn Greenidge – writer
• Evan Hunter – author and screenwriter
• Ada Louise Huxtable – writer, Pulitzer Prize-winning architectural critic
• Colette Inez – poet, academic
• Swati Khurana – writer
• Malka Lee – poet
• Audre Lorde – poet, essayist
• Paule Marshall – author, MacArthur Fellow "genius grant," Dos Passos Prize for Literature
• Barbara McMartin – environmental writer
• Melissa Plaut – writer
• Sylvia Field Porter – economist, journalist
• Sonia Sanchez – poet
• Augusta Huiell Seaman – writer
• Sadia Shephard – writer
• Gary Shteyngart – author
• René Taupin – writer
• Ned Vizzini – writer
• Joan Wolf – writer of romance novels
• James Wright – poet
• Ricky Anne Loew-Beer – Author, Artist & Photographer (married to fashion designer Ralph Lauren)

Film, theater, and television

• Ellen Barkin – actress
• Lewis Beale – film critic
• Ed Burns – actor, director
• Eva Condon – Broadway actress
• Judith Crist – film critic
• Ruby Dee – actress
• Vin Diesel – actor
• Hugh Downs – broadcaster, 20/20 and The Today Show anchor
• Lynnie Godfrey - Award-winning Actress, Singer, Director
• Tina Howe – Tony-nominated playwright
• Richard Jeni – comedian
• Suzanne Kaaren – actress
• Ephraim Katz – author of The Film Encyclopedia
• Evelyn Lear – opera singer
• Natasha Leggero – actress and comic
• Maitland McDonagh – film critic
• Daniel Mulloy – screenwriter and film director
• Barbara Myers – former child model and actress ^{[7] [8]}
• Julianne Nicholson – actress
• Rhea Perlman – actress
• Dascha Polanco – actress
• Esther Rolle – actress
• Regina Resnik – opera singer
• Al Santos – actor
• Elliot Tiber – screenwriter who "saved" Woodstock Festival
• Florence Ravenel – actress ^[9]
• Dreya Weber – producer

Art, architecture, and engineering

• Robert Altman – Rolling Stone photojournalist
• Firelei Báez – artist
• Maurice Berger – art critic and historian
• Jack Coggins – illustrator
• Francisco Costa – creative director of Calvin Klein Collection
• Jules de Balincourt – artist
• Jacqueline Donachie – artist
• Mildred Dresselhaus – engineer
• Echo Eggebrecht – painter
• Arthur Elgort – photographer for Vogue magazine
• Gabriele Evertz – abstract artist
• Denise Green – painter
• Ada Louise Huxtable – architecture critic
• Mel Kendrick – artist
• Kathleen Kucka – painter
• Terrance Lindall – artist
• Robert Morris – sculptor
• Jill Nathanson – painter ^[10]
• Doug Ohlson – abstract artist ^[11]
• Lucy Olcott – art historian and dealer
• Danielle Orchard – painter
• Claudia Peña Salinas – (MFA 2009) mixed media artist ^[12]
• Mitchell Silver – urban planner
• Jeff Sonhouse – (MFA 2001), painter ^[13]
• Richard Tinkler – abstract artist
• Louis A. Waldman – art historian
• Dan Walsh – painter
• Brian Wood – visual artist

Music

• David Sampson – composer
• Ashley Choi – lead singer of the band Ladies' Code ^[14]

Military

• Julia Jeter Cleckley – first African-American female line officer to be promoted to Brigadier General in the Army National Guard
• Thomas P. Noonan, Jr. – Medal of Honor recipient

Education

• Robert Davila – ninth president of Gallaudet University
• Howard McParlin Davis – prominent art history professor
• John Taylor Gatto – author of seminal books on education
• Haskel Greenfield – archaeologist at University of Manitoba
• Francis Kilcoyne (died 1985) – President of Brooklyn College
• Soia Mentschikoff – chief developer of the Uniform Commercial Code and first woman to teach at Harvard University
• Burton Pike – professor Emeritus, Comparative Literature, CUNY Graduate Center
• Jennifer Raab – president of Hunter College
• Henning Rübsam – choreographer, dance historian The Juilliard School
• Kay Toliver – mathematics educator

Fictional alumni

• Chad Kroski
• Harry "Parry" Sagan from The Fisher King
• Daniel Bae from The Sun Is Also a Star
• Marjorie Morningstar from the novel Marjorie Morningstar

Non-graduating attendees

• Harry Connick, Jr – musician
• Bobby Darin – musician
• Nikolai Fraiture – bassist, The Strokes
• April Lee Hernández – actress
• Grace Paley – writer
• Nick Valensi – guitarist, The Strokes
• Mitski – musician

Faculty

• Meena Alexander – poet and author
• James Aronson – journalist, founder of the National Guardian
• John Avlon – author, speech writer for Rudy Giuliani
• Jacqueline Barton – chemist
• William Baziotes – painter
• Harry Binswanger – philosopher
• Gertrude Blanch – pioneer of numerical analysis and computation
• Robert A. Brady – economist
• José Ferrer Canales – writer, activist
• Rosario Candela – influential architect
• Peter Carey – novelist
• Tina Chang – poet
• John Henrik Clarke – historian
• Buck Clayton – musician
• Daniel I. A. Cohen – mathematician and computer scientist
• Janet Cox-Rearick – art historian
• Noah Creshevsky – composer
• Susan Crile – painter
• Emil Draitser – author
• Cora Du Bois – cultural anthropologist
• Stuart Ewen
• Norman Finkelstein – political scientist
• Mary Flanagan
• Helen Frankenthaler – artist
• Bertram Myron Gross – author of the Humphrey-Hawkins Full Employment Act
• John Hollander – poet, literary critic
• Seymour Itzkoff – researcher
• George E. Kimball – pioneer of operations research algorithms
• Dong Kingman – artist
• Lyman Kipp – sculptor
• Rosalind E. Krauss – art critic
• Reiner Leist – photographer
• Nancy Milford – author
• Paul Moravec – composer
• Robert Motherwell – artist
• Leonard Peikoff – philosopher, founder of the Ayn Rand Institute
• Mina Rees – mathematician ^[15]
• Richard Reeves – political author
• Ruth Sager – geneticist
• Carolee Schneemann – artist
• Blake Schwarzenbach – musician
• Michael Shernoff – specialist in gay community mental health
• Tony Smith – sculptor
• Harry Edward Stinson – sculptor
• John Kennedy Toole – author
• Lionel Trilling – literary critic
• Nydia Velázquez – U.S. Congresswoman, New York, 1993–present
• Alice von Hildebrand – philosopher and author
• Robert C. Weaver – first U.S. Secretary of Housing and Urban Development
• Blanche Colton Williams, professor of English literature and head of the English department
• Nari Ward, professor of combined media

Administration

• David A. Caputo – president of Hunter College; president of Pace University
• Paul LeClerc – president of Hunter College; president and CEO of New York Public Library
• Michael P. Riccards – political scientist; author; executive director of the Hall Institute for Public Policy
• Donna Shalala – U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services; 10th president of Hunter College; president of University of Miami

References

1. "Hunter Headlines — Hunter College". cuny.edu. Retrieved November 28, 2016.
2. Staff, Times; Reports, Wire (August 27, 2002). "Emily Genauer, 91; Art Critic Awarded Pulitzer Prize in 1974" . Retrieved November 28, 2016– via LA Times.
3. "China: The Unforgotten Past". www.pdnonline.com. Archived from the original on September 19, 2008.
4. "Examples of Distinguished CUNY Alumni". Archived from the original on May 28, 2010. Retrieved June 1, 2010.
5. "Company Overview of Tukman Grossman Capital Management, Inc.: Melvin Theodore Tukman". Bloomberg Business. Retrieved February 8, 2016.
6. Shaun Richman (September 3, 2020). "A Brief History of the U.S. Government's Targeting of Left-Wing Immigrants". In These Times . Retrieved February 8, 2025.
7. "Sew a Subtle Borderline". Seventeen . January 1966. p. 96. ProQuest   2023926093. Barbara Myers, left, makes her fourth Broadway appearance in The Playroom–and counts residuals from her television commercials on the side. It all began when she became a model at four, an actress at seven. Now, as a nineteen-year-old New Yorker, she's had two years of college, hopes to go back to Hunter.
8. "Barbara Myers Affianced". The New York Times. November 13, 1966. p. B1. ProQuest   117684511. Mr. and Mrs. Ned Myers have announced the engagement of their daughter Miss Barbara Myers, to Gerald Siegal, son of Mr. and Mrs. Arthur Siegal of Marion, S. C., and New York. Miss Myers is a junior at Hunter College. Her fiancé attended the Valley Forge Military Academy.
9. "Rialto Players to Offer Mystery Play; Florence Ravenel". The Journal Times. September 29, 1928. p. 8. Retrieved May 4, 2024.
10. Rogers, Pat (June 25, 2018). "Artists Converse: Jill Nathanson in Conversation with A.V. Ryan at Berry Campbell". Hamptons Art Hub.
11. Smith, Roberta. "Doug Ohlson, Painter of Vivid Abstracts, Dies at 73", The New York Times , July 23, 2010. Accessed July 24, 2010.
12. "Claudia Pena Salinas". DALLAS CONTEMPORARY. Retrieved June 10, 2025.
13. Alexandre Keilmann (September 15, 2016). "Particulaars: An exhibition of new works by Jeff Sonhouse". BEAST Magazine. ISSN   2418-4799. Archived from the original on September 3, 2021. Retrieved September 3, 2021.
14. "[더★프로필] '레이디스 코드' 애슐리, "엄친아 리더? 마음은 여려요" :: The Star". Archived from the original on December 22, 2014. Retrieved November 21, 2017.
15. "Mina Spiegel Rees" (PDF). Archived from the original (PDF) on April 3, 2003.