List of University of Alberta people

This is a list of distinguished people affiliated with the University of Alberta.

Current faculty

• Ali A. Abdi – anthropologist and author; education and international development
• Jordan Abel – poet
• John Acorn – naturalist and science communicator
• William Anselmi – professor of Italian and Italian-Canadian literature and culture
• Florence Ashley – law professor, first openly transfeminine clerk of the Supreme Court of Canada
• Lorne Babiuk – immunologist and virologist
• Harold Barclay – anthropologist
• Howard Bashaw – composer
• Norman C. Beaulieu – electrical engineer
• Ted Bishop – English professor
• Stan Boutin – wildlife population ecologist
• Mark Boyce – wildlife population ecologist
• Ludwig N. Carbyn – wolf biologist
• D. Jean Clandinin – education researcher
• Kerry Courneya – kinesiologist
• Philip J. Currie – palaeontologist
• Patricia Demers – English professor
• Jaroslaw Drelich – chemical engineer
• Marilyn Dumont - poet
• Janet A. W. Elliott – distinguished professor, faculty of engineering
• Andrew Gow – historian of medieval and early modern Europe
• Jonathan Locke Hart – author, literary scholar and historian ^[1]
• Peter Hide – sculptor
• John-Paul Himka – historian of Eastern Europe
• Greg Hollingshead – novelist and professor of English
• Michael Houghton – Nobel laureate, co-discoverer of hepatitis C
• Tasha Hubbard – filmmaker and scholar of Indigenous studies
• Peter L. Hurd – biologist
• Karim Jamal – business professor
• Stephen A. Kent – sociologist
• Jacobus Kloppers – organist
• Natalie Kononenko – folklorist
• Mark A. Lewis – mathematical ecologist and the Canada Research Chair in Mathematical Biology at the Centre for Mathematical Biology ^[2]
• Michael Lounsbury – Associate Dean of Research, Thornton A. Graham Chair and professor of strategic management, organizations and sociology
• Austin Mardon – adjunct professor, recipient of Order of Canada
• Jacob Masliyah – pioneer researcher in oil-sands extraction, recipient of Order of Canada ^[3]
• Takahiko Masuda – psychologist
• Iman Mersal – poet, professor of Arabic literature and Middle Eastern and African studies
• Robert Moody – mathematician, co-inventor of Kac–Moody algebra
• Adam Morton – philosopher and member of the Royal Society of Canada ^{[4] [5]}
• Don Page – theoretical cosmologist
• Raj Pannu – sociologist, former head of the Alberta New Democratic Party
• Graham Pearson – geologist
• Mike Percy – economist
• Leonard Ratzlaff – professor of choral music
• Jia Rongqing – mathematician
• Arturo Sanchez-Azofeifa – director of the university's Center for Earth Observation Sciences
• Jonathan Schaeffer – computer scientist and the Canada Research Chair in Artificial Intelligence ^[6]
• James Shapiro – professor of surgery, medicine and surgical oncology; director of the Clinical Islet Transplant Program; leader of the team that developed the Edmonton protocol
• Arya Mitra Sharma – Alberta Health Services endowed Chair in Obesity Research and Management
• Toby Spribille – lichenologist
• Richard S. Sutton – computer scientist
• Frank Sysyn – historian of Eastern Europe
• Kim TallBear – professor of native studies
• Darren Tanke – palaeontologist
• Ban Tsui – professor of anesthesiology and pain medicine
• D. Lorne Tyrrell – infectious disease physician
• Allan Warrack – Department of Marketing, Business Economics and Law in the Faculty of Business and also serves as the Associate Dean of the Master of Public Management Program and Vice-President of Administration
• Lana Whiskeyjack – artist and scholar of gender, sexuality, and Indigenous identity
• Rudy Wiebe – novelist, two-time Governor General's Award-winner
• Douglas Wiens – statistician
• David S. Wishart – computational biologist
• Toshifumi Yokota – medical geneticist
• Osmar R. Zaiane – computer scientist
• Vaclav Zizler – mathematician

Past faculty

• Ibrahim M. Abu-Rabi‘ – Islamic scholar
• Jane Alexander – Anglican bishop
• William Hardy Alexander – one of the university's first four professors; university historian ^[7]
• Violet Archer – composer and performer
• Margaret-Ann Armour - chemist, supporter of women in science and engineering, member of the Order of Canada
• Margaret Atwood – author of The Handmaid's Tale and many other novels, poetry collections, and works of criticism; two-time Booker Prize winner
• George Ball - entomologist ^[8]
• Henry Beissel – poet and playwright
• C. Fred Bentley – soil scientist
• Stanford Blade – agronomist
• Edward D. Blodgett – author and researcher in comparative literature, religion and film/media ^[9]
• Russell Brown – professor of law, Justice of the Supreme Court of Canada
• Donald Cameron – academic administrator and member of the Senate of Canada
• Clive Carruthers – classicist
• Karl Clark – chemist and oil sands researcher
• Jagannath Prasad Das – educational psychologist; member of the Order of Canada
• John B. Dossetor – professor emeritus of medicine and bioethics
• Pierre Flor-Henry – psychologist
• Robert Folinsbee – geologist
• Malcolm Forsyth – composer; Juno Award winner and member of the Order of Canada
• John Gamon – plant physiologist and Earth observation scientist, developer of the Photochemical Reflectance Index
• Victor Golla – linguist and anthropologist
• Thomas B. Greenfield – scholar of educational administration
• Allan Gregg – pollster and political advisor
• Ronald Hamowy – libertarian intellectual
• W. G. Hardy – classicist, writer, ice hockey administrator, member of the Order of Canada ^[10]
• H. A. Hargreaves – science fiction writer
• Walter Edgar Harris – analytical chemist
• Myer Horowitz – early childhood education scholar, president of the University of Alberta
• Werner Israel – professor of physics and leader in the theory of black holes; Fellow of the Royal Society and Royal Society of Canada
• George Ivany – president of the University of Saskatchewan
• Martin Joos – linguist
• William Alexander Robb Kerr – president of the University of Alberta
• Mors Kochanski – bushcraft and wilderness survival pioneer
• Karol Józef Krótki – demographer who helped establish the Population Research Laboratory, Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada
• Gérard Vincent La Forest – dean of law (1968–1970), past Justice of the Supreme Court of Canada
• Francis John Lewis – botanist
• Andy Liu – mathematician
• Dorothy Livesay – poet, two-time winner of Governor General's Awards
• John M. MacEachran – psychologist, proponent of eugenics
• Walter Mackenzie – surgeon
• Barry J. Mailloux – computer scientist
• Eli Mandel – poet, winner of a Governor General's Award
• Anne McLellan – law professor, former Deputy Prime Minister of Canada and holder of multiple other Cabinet positions
• Carlo Montemagno – bionanotechnologist, winner of the Feynman Prize in Nanotechnology
• Angus Munn – soldier and anesthesiologist
• Joseph S. Nelson – ichthyologist
• Hope A. Olson – library scientist
• John Orrell – theatre historian who advised the reconstruction of Shakespeare's Globe
• Jim Parr – metallurgist, broadcaster, and composer
• Solomiia Pavlychko – literary critic
• Graham Peacock – abstract painter
• Anatol Roshko – physicist, one of only three people alive to have a dimensionless number (Roshko number) named after them
• George A. Rothrock – European historian
• David Schindler – limnologist, winner of the Volvo Environment Prize and the Tyler Prize for Environmental Achievement
• Stephen Scobie – poet
• Gail Sidonie Sobat – writer and educator
• Ian Stirling – Arctic ecologist
• Mathukumalli V. Subbarao – number theorist
• Morris Swadesh – pioneer of lexicostatistics and creator of the Swadesh list
• Yasushi Takahashi – physicist, co-discoverer of the Ward–Takahashi identity
• Henry Marshall Tory – first president of the University of Alberta, founder of three universities, the Alberta Research Council and National Research Council of Canada
• Thomas Thundat – Canada Excellence Research Chair in Oilsands Molecular Engineering
• Nicole Tomczak-Jaegermann – mathematician
• Hiroomi Umezawa – physicist
• Maury Van Vliet – physical education scholar
• Ludwig von Bertalanffy – theoretical biologist who helped establish the Advanced Center for Theoretical Psychology, originator of General Systems Theory and creator of the Von Bertalanffy function
• Ella May Walker – visual artist and writer
• Sheila Watson – novelist, author of The Double Hook
• Wilfred Watson – poet and dramatist
• Thaddeus E. Weckowicz – psychologist
• John Alexander Weir – first Dean of Law
• Daniel Woolf – historian
• Norman Yates – painter

Alumni

Academics

• Dominique Abrioux – President of Athabasca University (1995–2005)
• Charlene Bearhead – first educational lead at the National Centre for Truth and Reconciliation at the University of Manitoba
• Sir John Bell – Regius Chair of Medicine, University of Oxford ^[11]
• Andrew Brook – Chancellor's Professor of Philosophy and Cognitive Science at Carleton University
• Tania Bubela – professor and dean in the Faculty of Health Sciences at Simon Fraser University
• Franco Romano Calaresu (1931–1996) – professor of neurophysiology, University of Western Ontario
• James Collip – biochemistry professor, played key role in discovery of insulin
• Jim Cummins – professor and author, Ontario Institute for Studies in Education
• Bernadette Louise Dean – Principal of Kinnaird College, Pakistan
• Su Guaning – President of Nanyang Technological University
• Aja Huang – Google Deep Mind; with David Silver, a main researcher of Alpha Go
• Joy Johnson – Vice-President, Research, Simon Fraser University
• Charles Lee – cytogeneticist
• Raymond U. Lemieux – chemistry pioneer, winner of the Wolf Prize in Chemistry (1999) and the Albert Einstein World Award of Science (1992)
• Jacqueline P. Leighton - educational psychologist, academic and author
• Tak Wah Mak – molecular biologist
• Joseph B. Martin – Dean of Harvard Medical School ^[12]
• Ravi S. Menon – Canadian-American biophysicist and professor The University of Western Ontario
• Martin P. Mintchev – bioengineering academic and inventor
• Piers Nash – cancer research professor at the University of Chicago and founder of Sympatic
• Jordan B. Peterson – media commentator, clinical psychologist, and former professor at the University of Toronto
• Joseph Pivato – writer and researcher in ethnic minority writing in Canada; professor, Athabasca University, Edmonton
• Noris Salazar Allen – Panamanian bryologist
• David Silver – Google Deep Mind; with Aja Huang, a main researcher of Alpha Go
• Janice Stein – international relations researcher
• Wallace Sterling – past president of Stanford University
• Richard E. Taylor – high-energy physicist, winner of the 1990 Nobel Prize in Physics
• Zoe Todd – anthropologist and Indigenous scholar
• Satish K. Tripathi – President of University at Buffalo
• Bas van Fraassen – philosopher of science, developer of constructive empiricism
• Kristopher Wells – scholar of gender and sexuality at MacEwan University and Senator

Authors

• Jordan Abel
• Todd Babiak
• Billy-Ray Belcourt
• Gary Botting
• Chris Craddock
• Norma Dunning
• Caterina Edwards
• Edmundo Farolan
• Katherine Govier
• Karen Graham – dietitian
• Myrna Kostash
• Arthur Kroeger
• Robert Kroetsch
• Steve Lillebuen
• Suzette Mayr
• Wendy McGrath
• W. O. Mitchell
• Premee Mohamed
• Mieko Ouchi
• Kit Pearson
• Emily Riddle
• Candace Savage
• Lesley-Anne Scorgie
• Vivek Shraya
• Timothy Taylor
• Vern Thiessen
• Adam Thrasher – author of Space Moose ^[13]
• Brian Tracy
• Aritha Van Herk
• Matthew James Weigel
• Rudy Wiebe
• M.Enamul Hossain- scientist

Judges

• Adam Germain – Justice of the Court of King’s Bench of Alberta (retired), member of the Legislative Assembly of Alberta (retired)
• Lionel Locksley Jones – Justice of the Court of King's Bench of Alberta (retired) (deceased 2016)
• Joe Kryczka – past Justice of the Court of King’s Bench of Alberta, president of the Canadian Amateur Hockey Association
• Ronald Martland – past Justice of the Supreme Court of Canada
• Beverley McLachlin – Chief Justice of Canada
• Henry Grattan Nolan – past Justice of the Supreme Court of Canada
• William Stevenson – past Justice of the Supreme Court of Canada
• Allan Wachowich – past Chief Justice of the Court of Queen's Bench of Alberta (retired)
• Edward R. Wachowich – past Chief Judge of the Provincial Court of Alberta (deceased 2012)

Politicians

• Rona Ambrose – Minister of Intergovernmental Affairs
• Pat Binns – former Premier of Prince Edward Island
• Joe Clark – former Prime Minister of Canada
• Charles Dent – former Cabinet Minister of the Northwest Territories
• David Emerson – Minister of International Trade
• David Hancock – former Premier of Alberta and Minister of Education of Alberta
• Lou Hyndman – former Alberta cabinet minister ^[14]
• Don Iveson – former Mayor of Edmonton
• Matt Jeneroux – Member of Parliament for Edmonton Riverbend, former MLA
• J. Wilton Littlechild – former Member of Parliament ^[15]
• Peter Lougheed – former Premier of Alberta
• Preston Manning – former leader of the Reform Party of Canada, and founder of two Canadian political parties
• Greg McLean – Member of Parliament for Calgary Centre
• Roland Michener – former Governor General
• Rachel Notley – former Premier of Alberta
• Jim Prentice – former Premier of Alberta and Minister of Environment
• Jan Reimer – first female mayor of Edmonton
• Ed Stelmach – former Premier of Alberta (attended, did not graduate)
• Jane Sterk – Leader of the Green Party of British Columbia
• Claudette Tardif – Canadian Senator for Alberta, Deputy Leader of the Opposition in the Senate of Canada

Other notable alumni

• Greg Abel (born 1961/62) – businessman, Berkshire Hathaway ^[16]
• Harry Ainlay – educational administrator, three-term mayor of Edmonton, namesake of Harry Ainlay High School
• Doris Anderson – editor and rights activist
• Anil Arora – former Chief Statistician of Canada
• Allan Gordon Bell – composer
• Nereo Bolzon – football player
• Ron Butlin – ice hockey executive
• Clarence Campbell – former National Hockey League president
• Neil Campbell – discovered gold in Yellowknife
• Juan Chioran – voice and stage actor at the Stratford Festival
• Joel H. Cohen – Canadian-Jewish comedy writer for The Simpsons
• Ted Corday – soap opera creator ( Days of Our Lives )
• Ernest Côté – soldier, diplomat and civil servant ^[17]
• Jim Coutts – political advisor
• Clare Drake – ice hockey coach in CIS history, inducted to the Hockey Hall of Fame in 2017
• Nicole Dunsdon – the last person to win the Miss Canada competition before it was cancelled
• Bernard Ebbers – Worldcom co-founder and CEO; briefly attended the university
• William Epstein –- international expert on disarmament who worked at the United Nations
• Tim Feehan – songwriter
• Nathan Fillion – actor
• Andrew French – abstract sculptor
• Jay Gilday – singer-songwriter
• Allan Gilliland – composer
• Patrick Gilmore – actor
• Randy Gregg – former National Hockey League player and medical researcher
• Paul Gross – actor
• Ted Harrison – painter and illustrator
• Ivan Head – former policy adviser of Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau
• Violet King Henry – first black woman lawyer in Canada
• Daryl Katz – billionaire entrepreneur, owner of the Rexall Pharmacy chain and the Edmonton Oilers
• Lewis Kay – scientist
• Lylian Klimek – sculptor
• Eric Allan Kramer – character actor, most notable in the role of Bob Duncan in Good Luck Charlie
• Joseph Kubanek – American psychiatrist
• Melina Laboucan-Massimo – climate justice and Indigenous rights advocate
• Thomas Rockwell Mackie – medical physicist, inventor of tomotherapy
• Ken Macklin – sculptor
• Glenna Matoush – visual artist
• Shelley Moore – special education expert
• Ray Muzyka – BioWare co-founder
• Sidney Richard Carlyle Nelson – Canadian Air Marshal for the RAF
• Tom Radford – documentary filmmaker
• Jan Randall – composer and musician
• Daniel K. Riskin – evolutionary biologist and co-host of Daily Planet
• Joseph H. Shoctor – real estate developer, co-founder of the Citadel Theatre
• George Stanley – designer of the Canadian flag
• Robert Steadward – former International Paralympic Committee President ^[18]
• Olawale Sulaiman – neurosurgeon, philanthropist and academic
• Esther Tailfeathers – physician and Indigenous health expert ^[19]
• William Thorsell – editor, The Globe and Mail; Director, the Royal Ontario Museum
• Jason Tuffs – CEO of MNP LLP ^[20]
• Malorie Urbanovitch – fashion designer
• Jean Wallbridge – architect
• Lorne Warneke – psychiatrist and LGBTQ+ advocate
• Anne Wheeler – film director
• Dayo Wong Tze-Hwa (黃子華) – Hong Kong comedian, actor, singer-songwriter and screenwriter; pioneered Cantonese stand up comedy
• Suzie Wong (蘇施黃) – Hong Kong disk jockey and television cooking program host
• Greg Zeschuk – BioWare co-founder
• Jason Zuback – golfer; five-time world long drive champion

Rhodes Scholars

The University of Alberta has produced 76 Rhodes Scholars, including the following:

• Roland Michener (1919) – 20th governor general of Canada
• George Stanley (1929) – designer of the Canadian flag
• Arthur Kroeger (1956) – academic, federal deputy minister and chancellor of Carleton University
• Billy-Ray Belcourt (2016) – first First Nations Rhodes Scholar, poet and winner of the Griffin Poetry Prize

Honorary degree recipients

See also: List of University of Alberta honorary degree recipients

• His Highness the Aga Khan – spiritual leader of the Ismaili Muslims
• Douglas Cardinal – architect
• Victor Cavendish – former Governor General of Canada
• Charles III
• Jean Chrétien – former Prime Minister of Canada
• John Diefenbaker – former Prime Minister of Canada
• King Edward VIII
• Randy Gregg - former National Hockey League and Olympic hockey player, physician and philanthropist ^[21]
• Wayne Gretzky – former National Hockey League player
• Horace Harvey – second Chief Justice of Alberta; chairman of the University of Alberta Board of Governors
• Frederick Haultain – the first and only premier of Canada's North-West Territories
• Lois Hole – former Lieutenant Governor of Alberta
• Ernest Manning – former Premier of Alberta
• Don Mazankowski – former Deputy Prime Minister of Canada
• Walter Murray – first President of the University of Saskatchewan
• Alexander Rutherford – first Premier of Alberta
• Arthur Sifton – former Premier of Alberta
• Manmohan Singh – former Prime Minister of India
• Donald Smith – 1st Baron Strathcona and Mount Royal
• Donna Strickland, Canadian Nobel Prize in Physics winner ^[22]

• Harry Strom – former Premier of Alberta
• Mother Teresa – missionary
• Pierre Trudeau – former Prime Minister of Canada
• Desmond Tutu – former Archbishop of Cape Town and current chair of the Global Elders
• Max Ward – pioneering aviator

References

1. "Jonathan Hart". Macmillan . Retrieved October 20, 2009.
2. "Mark Lewis Home Page". University of Alberta. Retrieved December 9, 2009.
3. "Dr. Jacob Masliyah". Home Page. University of Alberta. Retrieved October 20, 2009.
4. "Adam Morton, FRSC". University of Alberta. June 14, 2006. Archived from the original on August 27, 2009. Retrieved October 20, 2009.
5. "Adam Morton". Home page. University of Alberta Faculty of Arts. Archived from the original on April 5, 2005. Retrieved October 20, 2009.
6. "Jonathan Schaeffer Home Page". University of Alberta. Archived from the original on April 9, 2008. Retrieved October 20, 2009.
7. "Event Details: William Hardy Alexander Award for Excellence in Sessional Teaching". University of Alberta. Archived from the original on August 27, 2009. Retrieved October 20, 2009.
8. "In Memorium: Dr. George Ball".
9. "UAP Books: Apostrophes IV". University of Alberta. Archived from the original on August 27, 2009. Retrieved October 20, 2009.
10. "Author not working as hard". Medicine Hat News. Medicine Hat, Alberta. June 29, 1979. p. 29.
11. "Sir John Bell". Oxford Health Alliance. Retrieved July 27, 2012.
12. "Dean of Harvard med school returns to his roots". University of Alberta. Archived from the original on August 27, 2009. Retrieved October 20, 2009.
13. Schoek, Ellen. I Was There: A Century of Alumni Stories about the University of Alberta, 1906–2006. University of Alberta, 2006. 635. Retrieved from Google Books on February 4, 2011. ISBN   0-88864-464-7, ISBN   978-0-88864-464-0.
14. "Former chancellor Lou Hyndman receives an honorary degree". University of Alberta. Archived from the original on December 8, 2008. Retrieved October 20, 2009.
15. "Mr. Wilton Littlechild". UNPFII . Retrieved October 20, 2009.
16. "Warren Buffett's Canadian lieutenant eyes Alberta expansion" . Retrieved 10 January 2018– via The Globe and Mail.
17. "The planner Ernest Côté was a WWII veteran who helped plan the invasion of Normandy". University of Alberta. Retrieved 22 August 2020.
18. "The Steadward Centre for Personal & Physical Achievement". The University of Alberta. Retrieved October 20, 2009.
19. "Medical doctor and changemaker, Dr. Esther Tailfeathers, to receive University of Lethbridge honorary degree | UNews". University of Lethbridge . Archived from the original on 2024-06-05. Retrieved 2024-06-05.
20. "Jason Tuffs, CPA, CA". MNP. MNP LLP. Retrieved 8 September 2021.
21. Townsend, Sean (26 September 2024). "Two leading community builders to receive honorary degrees this fall". Folio. University of Alberta. Retrieved 13 October 2024.
22. Camminga, Sandrine (23 April 2024). "Meet eight honorary degree recipients who are building a better world". Folio. University of Alberta. Retrieved 13 October 2024.