List of University of Utah people

Last updated March 12, 2024

This list of University of Utah people includes notable alumni, non-graduate former students, faculty, staff, and former university presidents. The University of Utah, located in Salt Lake City, Utah, is a flagship public space-grant research university. The school is notable for having been one of the first four nodes of the ARPANET and the first node outside of California, as well as forming the first computer graphics research group.^[1]^[2]

The University of Utah offers more than 100 undergraduate majors and more than 92 graduate degree programs, and includes three professional graduate schools: the University of Utah School of Medicine, the David Eccles School of Business, and the S.J. Quinney College of Law.^[3] The enrollment for 2016 was 23,789 undergraduate and 8,071 graduate students, with 1,505 full-time faculty members and 5,230 staff.^[4]

Notable alumni

Famous U of U Alumni

Marsha K. Caddle

Bob Bennett

Laurel Thatcher Ulrich

Gordon B. Hinckley

Orson Scott Card

Alan C. Kay

Ralph Hartley

David Neelman

Andre Dyson

John Warnock

Jamal Anderson

Keith Van Horn

Virginia Cutler

Ed Catmull

Law and government

Ross "Rocky" Anderson – Mayor, Salt Lake City (2000–2008)
Norman H. Bangerter – Governor of Utah (1985–1993)
Ralph Becker – Mayor, Salt Lake City (2008–2016)
Bob Bennett – U.S. Senator, R-UT (1993–2011)
Wallace F. Bennett – U.S. Senator, R-UT (1951–1974)
Robert Braithwaite – Utah Fifth Circuit Court Judge (1987–2003)
Marsha K. Caddle - Barbados' Minister of Finance, Economic Affairs and Investment
Anson Vasco Call II – first Mayor of Afton, Wyoming; served nine terms; graduated with the first class in 1875
Adam M. Duncan – founder of the Utah branches of the ACLU and the NAACP
William T. Fairbourn – Major General in the Marine Corps
Karl A. Fox – senior staff economist in the U.S. Council of Economic Advisers (1953–1955), Fellow of the American Statistical Association
Ray D. Free – Major General in the U.S. Army Reserve and a member of the Utah House of Representatives
E. Jake Garn – former U.S. Senator, R-UT (1974–1993), and Astronaut
Larry Echo Hawk – Idaho Attorney General (1991–1995), head of the Bureau of Indian Affairs (2009–2012)
Jon Huntsman Jr. – Governor of Utah (2005–2009), United States Ambassador to Russia
Dale A. Kimball – judge for the U.S. District Court for the District of Utah
Edward L. Kimball – law professor at the University of Montana, University of Wisconsin, and Brigham Young University
David S. King – U.S. Representative, D-UT (1959–1967)
William H. King – U.S. Senator, D-UT (1917–1941)
George W. Latimer – original member of the U.S. Court of Military Appeals, member of the Utah Supreme Court, and represented Lt. William Calley Jr. during his court martial for the My Lai incident.
Myron E. Leavitt – Lieutenant Governor of Nevada; Justice, Nevada Supreme Court
Mark Maryboy – politician from San Juan County, Utah; former Navajo Nation Council Delegate
Scott M. Matheson – Governor of Utah (1977–1985)
Herbert B. Maw – Governor of Utah (1941–1949)
Oscar W. McConkie Jr. – attorney for the LDS Church; former president of the Utah State Senate
Frank Moss – U.S. Senator, D-UT (1959–1977)
Cal Rampton – Governor of Utah (1965–1977)
Joseph Lafayette Rawlins – U.S. Senator, R-UT (1897–1903)
Karl Rove – chief political strategist and adviser to George W. Bush; attended but never graduated
Judy Shelton – economic advisor to Donald Trump
I. Daniel Stewart – Utah Supreme Court justice
Ted Stewart – judge for the U.S. District Court for the District of Utah
David N. Sundwall – Executive Director, Utah Department of Health and former Assistant Surgeon General
Elbert D. Thomas – U.S. Senator from Utah (1933–1951)
Clark Waddoups – judge for the U.S. District Court for the District of Utah
Olene Walker – Governor of Utah (2003–2005)
Heber Manning Wells – Governor of Utah (1896–1905)
Bob Wright – Utah lawyer, Republican gubernatorial candidate in 1980, biographer of David O. McKay
Michael Zimmerman – former Chief Justice of the Utah Supreme Court
Patrick Reimherr - Lawyer, Political Advisor to Ben McAdams and Tom Perez

Business

Humanities and fine arts

Craig Arnold – poet
Fawn Brodie – historian and author
Vern Bullough – historian and sexologist
Orson Scott Card – science fiction author, Ender's Game
April Christofferson – novelist
Terese Coe - poet
Shannon Hale – author
Paul Y. Hammond – political scientist and national security scholar
Andrew Hunt – historian; vegan/animal rights advocate
Betsy James, writer and illustrator
Glen M. Leonard – historian of Utah and Mormonism
Paul McCarthy – artist
Cat Palmer – photographer
Carole Doyle Peel – artist
Linda Sillitoe – journalist, poet, and historian
Shelby Steele – author and columnist; research fellow at the Hoover Institution
Wallace Stegner – novelist
LeConte Stewart – artist primarily known for his landscapes of rural Utah; head of the Art Department at the University of Utah, 1938–1956
Laurel Thatcher Ulrich – Pulitzer Prize-winning historian of women and early America
Larry Watson – Milkweed National Fiction Prize-winning author
Robison Wells – novelist
Terry Tempest Williams – author, environmentalist
Susie Wind – Seattle artist, noted for "urban realism"
Don Carlos Young – architect, noted for his work for the LDS Church

Life and physical sciences

Allen V. Astin – physicist, fifth Director of the United States National Bureau of Standards (now the National Institute of Standards and Technology)
James F. Bonner – plant biochemist noted for discovering an efficient process for collecting natural rubber from trees
Michael Doleac – former professional basketball player for the Miami Heat and high school physics teacher in Park City, Utah
Willis J. Gertsch – arachnologist who described over 1,000 species of arachnids, including the Brown recluse spider and the Tooth cave spider
Jaqueline Kiplinger – chemist working at the Los Alamos National Laboratory
Michael Ghiselin – California Academy of Sciences biologist internationally recognized for work on sea slugs; has had both a species ( Hypselodoris ghiselini ) and the defensive chemical that it contains (ghiselinin) named after him
Tracy Hall – invented synthetic diamonds
Don L. Lind – American scientist and a former naval officer and aviator, and NASA astronaut
Calvin Quate – co-inventor of the atomic force microscope
William T. Silfvast – physicist noted for significant contributions to gas discharge lasers, Distinguished Staff at Bell Labs
Stanley Smith Stevens – developed Stevens's power law for psychoacoustics
Alvin V. Tollestrup – developed superconducting magnets for the Fermilab Tevatron and helped found the Collider Detector at Fermilab
Thomas Ypsilantis – co-discovered the antiproton
Lindsay Zanno – vertebrate paleontologist known for innovative use of X-ray computed tomography in reconstructing dinosaurs

Mathematics

Richard Eliot Chamberlin – geometric topologist, visiting scholar at the Institute for Advanced Study, and Invited Speaker at the International Congress of Mathematicians
Alessio Corti – geometer at Imperial College London and winner of the London Mathematical Society Whitehead Prize
John E. Dennis – editor-in-chief and founder of the SIAM Journal on Optimization, pioneered convergence analysis of quasi-Newton methods^[5]
Gordana Matic – geometric topologist, C. L. E. Moore instructor at MIT, Fellow of the American Mathematical Society

Computer science

Robert Adamson – computer scientist; developed Gener/OL, one of the first interpreted programming languages
Alan Ashton – computer scientist; co-founder of WordPerfect and Thanksgiving Point
Brian A. Barsky – professor at the University of California, Berkeley, working in computer graphics, geometric modeling, optometry, and vision science
David M. Beazley – author of Python Essential Reference, the SWIG software tool for creating Python C extensions, and the PLY parsing tool; fellow of the Python Software Foundation and two-time awardee of the IEEE Gordon Bell Prize
Jim Blinn – computer scientist; MacArthur Fellow; known for his work on Carl Sagan's Cosmos documentary and inventing the first method for representing surface textures in graphical images^[6]
Edwin Catmull – co-founder of Pixar
Jim Clark – computer scientist; entrepreneur; founder of several technology companies, including Silicon Graphics, Inc., Netscape Communications Corporation, myCFO, and Healtheon
Frank Crow – computer scientist; developed anti-aliasing methods for computer graphics
Alan L. Davis – computer architect, associate director of the University of Utah School of Computing
Alyosha Efros – computer vision researcher and winner of the ACM Prize in Computing
David Evans – computer scientist and graphics pioneer; co-founder of Evans & Sutherland
Olivier Faugeras – computational neuroscientist and computer vision researcher, member of the French Academy of Sciences and the French Academy of Technologies, and recipient of the 2014 Okawa Prize
Justin Frankel – developed Winamp media player and gnutella peer-to-peer network; founder of Cockos Incorporated, which creates music production and development software such as the REAPER digital audio workstation
Henry Fuchs – computer scientist; member of the National Academy of Engineering
Amy Ashurst Gooch – developed Gooch shading for non-photorealistic rendering
Henri Gouraud – computer scientist; inventor of Gouraud shading
Charles D. Hansen – co-editor of The Visualization Handbook
Paul Hudak – co-designer of the Haskell programming language
Robert Royce Johnson – computer engineer, inventor of the Johnson counter, and Utah computer science professor
Jim Kajiya – computer scientist; developed the frame buffer concept for storing and displaying single-raster images and the rendering equation
Alan Kay – computer scientist; recipient of the Turing Award; credited with the concept of the laptop computer
Gordon Kindlmann – developed the tensor glyph
Miriah Meyer – computer scientist, pioneer in interactive visualization for basic research
Martin Newell – computer scientist and graphics pioneer; creator of the Utah Teapot
Frederic Parke – made the first 3D animation of a human face
Bui Tuong Phong – computer scientist; inventor of the Phong reflection model and the Phong shading interpolation method
Jim Waldo – lead software architect of Jini, CTO of Harvard University
John Warnock – computer scientist; co-founder of Adobe Systems Inc.
Telle Whitney, CEO and President of the Anita Borg Institute for Women and Technology

Engineering

Rodney Bagley – co-inventor of the catalytic converter
Mary Blade – mechanical engineering professor at the Cooper Union noted for work in industrial design education
John C. Cook – played a crucial role in establishing the field of ground-penetrating radar^[7]
Wilbert L. Gore – co-inventor of Gore-Tex fabrics
Ralph Hartley – co-founder of information theory (with Shannon and Hamming); inventor of Hartley transform and Hartley oscillator
George Smoot Horsley - one of the original four employees of Shockley Semiconductor Laboratory, physicist, and pioneer in printed circuitry and semiconductors
Mark W. Fuller — CEO WET Design, creators of Fountains of Bellagio in Las Vegas
Akhlesh Lakhtakia – developed visualization technique for latent fingerprints in forensics
Gretchen W. McClain – President and CEO of Xylem Inc., former NASA Deputy Associate Administrator for Space Development
Simon Ramo – father of the intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM)
Ingo Titze – executive director of the National Center for Voice and Speech
Mac Van Valkenburg – member of the National Academy of Engineering and IEEE James H. Mulligan Jr. Education Medal laureate
Xuejun Wen – bioengineer, the William H. Goodwin Professor at the Institute for Engineering and Medicine, Virginia Commonwealth University

Medicine

T. Brian Callister – physician; health care quality expert
R Adams Cowley – researcher in emergency medicine; pioneer in shock trauma treatment
William DeVries – performed the first successful permanent artificial heart implant
Talmage Egan - anesthesiologist and professor
Robert Jarvik – inventor of the artificial heart
Lewis Judd – neurobiologist and psychiatrist, Director of the National Institute of Mental Health, pioneered biomedical study of mental illness
Grant Liddle – endocrinologist
Russell M. Nelson – physician and cardiothoracic surgeon; 17th president of the LDS Church
Cecil O. Samuelson – former president of Brigham Young University
Sylvester Sanfilippo – pediatrician who described Sanfilippo syndrome
Ellis Reynolds Shipp – one of the first female doctors in Utah

Media

Braden Barty – director and producer most notably of Flipping Vegas , Far Away Eyes, and Spirit Space
Amy Bender – sports reporter and producer
T. C. Christensen – Mormon filmmaker
Laura Chukanov – Miss Utah USA 2009
Lee Isaac Chung - Film director, most notably the 2021 Academy Award Best Picture nominee Minari^[8]
Keene Curtis – stage, film and television actor
Farhang Holakouee – host of popular Iranian radio programs
Jason Todd Ipson – licensed physician and screenwriter, transitioned from a surgical residency to the USC School of Cinematic Arts and went on to form Asgaard Entertainment as well as write/direct the theatrically released feature films Unrest and Everybody Wants to be Italian
Joseph Kearns – radio, film and television actor
Steven Koecher – Journalist missing since 2009.^[9]
Mills Lane – television judge; boxing referee
Bronzell Miller – actor, NFL player
Neal Moore – journalist, writer and canoeist
Kevin Murphy – castmember and writer for Mystery Science Theater 3000 and RiffTrax ^[10]
George Ouzounian, aka Maddox – humorist (attended but did not graduate)
Holly Rowe – sideline reporter for ESPN ^[11]
Mary Thurman – silent film actress
Bob Trumpy – former NFL tight end; current sports broadcasting color commentator

Education

Merrill J. Bateman – President of Brigham Young University (1996–2003); LDS general authority
Milton Bennion – longtime dean of the school of education
Stanford Cazier – President of California State University, Chico (1971–1979) and Utah State University (1979–1992)
G. Homer Durham – President of Arizona State University (1960–1969); professor and administrator at the University of Utah; and LDS general authority
Teppo Felin – Professor at the University of Oxford
Kathleen Flake – chair of Mormon studies at the University of Virginia
Lily Eskelsen García – vice-president of the National Education Association
Gordon Gee – has been the president of more universities than any other American
Ann Weaver Hart – first female president of Temple University
Francis Longstaff – finance academic
Sterling M. McMurrin – former E.E. Erickson Professor of Philosophy and U of Utah administrator; U.S. Commissioner of Education; Mormon philosopher
Darron Smith
Placida Garcia Smith – Phoenix, Arizona community organizer
Steven C. Wheelwright – President of Brigham Young University-Hawaii (2007–)
O. Meredith Wilson – President of the University of Oregon (1954–1960) and the University of Montana (1960–1967)

Athletics

Jamal Anderson – former NFL running back
Mike Anderson – former NFL running back and 2002 NFL Rookie of the Year
Marv Bateman – former NFL punter
Zane Beadles – Jacksonville Jaguars offensive lineman
Daria Bijak – German gymnast; four-time German World Championships team member (2002, 2003, 2005, 2006); 2008 Olympic Team member
Andrew Bogut – NBA center, most recently with the Golden State Warriors; first overall pick in the 2005 NBA draft; left early for the NBA and did not graduate
Garett Bolles - Denver Broncos offensive lineman
Anthony Brown – NFL offensive lineman
Carlon Brown - basketball player, 2013-14 top scorer in the Israel Basketball Premier League
Blake Burdette – USA Rugby; current member of the United States National Rugby Team; four-time All-American at Utah
Josh Burkman – former football player; current mixed martial artist formerly with World Series of Fighting and Ultimate Fighting Championship
Jerry Chambers – former NBA player; NCAA basketball tournament Most Outstanding Player in 1966
Tom Chambers – former NBA all-star
Norm Chow – college football coach Utah, offensive coordinator; NCAA All-America honorable mention as an offensive line
Will Clyburn - professional basketball player, 2016 top scorer in the Israel Basketball Premier League, 2019 EuroLeague Final Four MVP
C. J. Cron – MLB first baseman
Michael Doleac – NBA player; AP All-American Honorable Mention and GTE First Team Academic All-American
Andre Dyson – NFL defensive back
Kevin Dyson – former NFL wide receiver
Luther Elliss – former NFL defensive lineman
Charlie Evans – former NFL running back^[12]
Manny Fernandez – former NFL player for the Miami Dolphins defensive lineman
Arnie Ferrin – former NBA player, four-time NCAA All-American
Marv Fleming – NFL tight end, first player in NFL history to play in 5 Super Bowls
Chris Fuamatu-Ma'afala – former NFL running back
Scott Garson – college basketball coach
Jordan Gross – former NFL offensive lineman
Dominique Hatfield – NFL defensive back
Manny Hendrix – former NFL cornerback
Brian Johnson NFL and College Football coach
Jack Johnson – former NFL offensive tackle
Jeff Judkins – former NBA player
Kyle Kuzma – Washington Wizards forward
Hilary Lindh – FIS Alpine World Ski Champion and 1992 Winter Olympic medalist
Joe Machnik – National Soccer Hall of Fame, Fox Sports broadcaster
John Madsen – wide receiver Oakland Raiders
Billy McGill – All-American basketball player and NBA
Andre Miller – Former NBA guard, NCAA All-American
Scott Mitchell – back-up quarterback to Dan Marino on the Miami Dolphins and later started at QB for the Detroit Lions
Charles K. Monfort – Chairman and CEO of the Colorado Rockies Major League Baseball
Hanno Möttölä – former player in the NBA and with many European professional teams
Mike Newlin – former NBA player with the Houston Rockets, New Jersey Nets, and New York Knicks
Terry Nofsinger – NFL quarterback for St. Louis in the 1960s
Jared Norris – former NFL linebacker
Sean O'Connell – mixed martial artist ^[13]
Ralph Olsen – former NFL defensive end
Tenny Palepoi – NFL defensive end
Jakob Pöltl – San Antonio Spurs center/forward; left early for the NBA and did not graduate
Ashley Postell – gymnast; balance beam champion; 2002 World Artistic Gymnastics Championships, Debrecen, Hungary
Aldo Richins – NFL wingback, first Mexican to play in the NFL
Dick Romney – member of the College Football Hall of Fame
George Seifert – former NFL head coach of the San Francisco 49ers and the Carolina Panthers
Chris Shelton – MLB baseball player, first baseman
Alex Smith – former Washington Redskins quarterback, first overall pick in the 2005 NFL Draft
Dave Smith – former NFL running back
Kim Smith – Sacramento Monarchs, four-Time Mountain West Conference Player of the Year, 13th pick of 2006 WNBA draft
Steve Smith Sr. – former NFL wide receiver
Paul Soliai – NFL defensive tackle
Bill Spencer – biathlete who competed at the 1964 and 1968 Winter Olympics
George Theodore – Played for the Utes baseball team and earned a Master of Social Work in 1978^[14]
Shona Thorburn – Minnesota Lynx seventh overall pick of 2006 WNBA Draft
Dakarai Tucker (born 1994) - basketball player for Hapoel Haifa of the Israeli Basketball Premier League
Keith Van Horn – former NBA player
Danny Vranes – former NBA player
Eric Weddle – former safety for the Los Angeles Rams
Larry Wilson – Pro Football Hall of Fame member; All-Pro free safety
Delon Wright – Dallas Mavericks guard

Sharrieff Shah – Husband to Jen Shah, American Football Coach

Music and entertainment

Jen Shah – Reality TV star on The Real Housewives of Salt Lake City
Peter Breinholt – folk recording artist
Matthew Davis – actor noted for roles in Legally Blonde and The Vampire Diaries
Dan Farr – co-founder of Salt Lake Comic Con and technology entrepreneur
Denali Foxx, born Cordero Zuckerman – American Drag Performer, contestant on the thirteenth season of RuPaul's Drag Race
Kaskade, born Ryan Raddon – DJ
Steven Sharp Nelson – cellist, member of The Piano Guys ^[15]
Josh Rosenthal – performing singer/songwriter

Religion

Marvin J. Ashton – Apostle of the LDS Church (1971–1994)
M. Russell Ballard – Apostle of the LDS Church (1985–)
Adam S. Bennion – Apostle of the LDS Church (1953–1958), and Superintendent of Church Schools
H. David Burton – Presiding Bishop of the LDS Church (1995–2012)
Linda K. Burton – President of the Relief Society of the LDS Church (2012–2017)
J. Reuben Clark – Counselor in the First Presidency of the LDS Church (1934–1961)
Matthew Cowley – Apostle of the LDS Church (1945–1953)
Henry B. Eyring – Counselor in the First Presidency of the LDS Church (2007–)
James E. Faust – Counselor in the First Presidency of the LDS Church (1995–2007)
Susa Young Gates – LDS writer, periodical editor, and women's rights advocate in Utah
Robert D. Hales – Apostle of the LDS Church (1994–2017)
Gordon B. Hinckley – President of the LDS Church (1995–2008)
Elaine L. Jack – President of the Relief Society of the LDS Church (1990–1997)
Truman G. Madsen – longtime BYU religion professor and author
Neal A. Maxwell – Apostle of the LDS Church (1981–2004); LDS writer
Bruce R. McConkie – Apostle of the LDS Church (1972–1985); LDS author
David O. McKay – President of the LDS Church (1951–1970)
Coleen K. Menlove – President of the Primary organization of the LDS Church (1999–2005)
Joseph F. Merrill – Apostle of the LDS Church (1931–1952); key figure in the development of the Church Educational System
Thomas S. Monson – President of the LDS Church (2008–2018)
Henry D. Moyle – Counselor in the First Presidency of the LDS Church (1959–1963)
Dale G. Renlund – Apostle of the LDS Church (2015–)
George F. Richards – President of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles of the LDS Church (1945–50)
Stephen L Richards – Counselor in the First Presidency of the LDS Church (1951–59)
B. H. Roberts – General Authority of the LDS Church (1888–1933); historian of Mormonism; politician
Marion G. Romney – Counselor in the First Presidency of the LDS Church (1972–1985)
Eldred G. Smith – Presiding Patriarch of the LDS Church (1947–1979)
Joseph Fielding Smith – Presiding Patriarch of the LDS Church (1943–1946)
George Albert Smith – President of the LDS Church (1945–1951)
Reed Smoot – Apostle of the LDS Church (1900–1941); U.S. Senator from Utah (1903–1933)
Belle S. Spafford – President of the Relief Society of the LDS Church (1945–1974)
Sidney B. Sperry – longtime BYU religion professor and author
Moses Thatcher – Apostle of the LDS Church (1879–1896)
Barbara W. Winder – President of the Relief Society of the LDS Church (1984–1990)
Joseph B. Wirthlin – Apostle of the LDS Church (1986–2008)

Criminals

Ted Bundy – notorious serial killer; briefly attended Utah's law school prior to his 1975 arrest and conviction for kidnapping
Thad Roberts – former NASA intern who stole and attempted to resell the collection of Apollo program Moon rocks valued at $21 million^[16]
Nadir Soofi – Islamic extremist who attacked officers with gunfire at the entrance to an exhibit featuring cartoon images of Muhammad at the Curtis Culwell Center in Garland, Texas, on May 3, 2015.