It’s easy to find out. Just look up your school in Wikipedia and find the section titled “Notable Alumni,” “Alumni” or “List of (name of your school here) people.”
I attended the University of Pittsburgh, and my complete list is here.
Among them are actor/dancer Gene Kelly and Fred “Mr.” Rogers, plus a slew of athletes to the tune of Dan Marino, Tony Dorsett, and Mike Ditka.
Also on the list is Carl Kurlander, a screenwriter that co-wrote St. Elmo’s Fire and was co-producer of Saved by the Bell: The New Class. As it turns out, I had him as a professor for a “Pittsburgh and Film” course. He was sort of a nut case.
Current Chicago Bulls backup center Aaron Gray is a Pitt Alumn. I saw him around campus many times, once walking right past him as he sit at the top of a flight of stairs in the Cathedral of Learning. Sitting down, he was still almost as tall as me. We’re also Facebook friends, and I think we may have fooled around with the same girl.
If we go back to high school, country singer Taylor Swift was in seventh grade when I was a senior (I attended a small school, so grades 7-12 were in one building). She moved to Tennessee in between eighth and ninth grade, and the rest is history.
So, what about everyone else? Any run-ins with notable people at your high schools or universities? What famous alumni went to your schools? Please share!
We’ve got Senator-Elect Jean Shaheen, Rep. John Kline of Minnesota, author Dean Koontz, NFL player John Kuhn, and a lot of top military types because of its affiliation with the Army War College in Carlisle. (War College students can get a master’s from Ship.)
Other than me and Two Trouts (who were both there at the same time in the early '70s, though we didn’t know each other), UC Santa Barbara has Michael Douglas and Jack Johnson.
Off the top of my head, we had Charlton Heston, David Duchovny, Julia Louis-Dreyfus (although I don’t think she completed her degree), and the chick who played Seven of Nine on Deep Space Nine.
Whoops, I forgot to mention the school: Northwestern U, Evanston IL.
Oh snap, and you had Jason Lezak! I caught his epic comeback leg in the 4x100 freestyle relay at the Olympics to win the gold, and was blown away! The video clip is on my computer; watching it still brings a tear to my eye.
Joe Biden
Joe Flacco (Baltimore Ravens QB)
George Thorogood,
Rich Gannon (former NFL quarterback )
three signers of the Declaration of Independence.
Robert Gore (Inventor of GoreTex)
Susan Stroman (Broadway Director)
Three British PM’s (including the current PM, Gordon Brown)
Two signatories to the American Declaration of Independence
Former Presidents/Prime Ministers of Canada, Tanzania, South Korea, Malawi and Nicaragua
Seven Nobel Laureates
In particular, some notable alumni:
James Hutton (father of geology)
David Hume
Charles Darwin
James Clarke Maxwell (Einstein of the 19th century)
Colin MacLaurin
Alexander Graham Bell
Peter Higgs (something about some big machine in Switzerland, or something :p)
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
J M Barrie
Robert Louis Stevenson
etc.
I went to MacMurray College in Jacksonville, IL. Wikipedia lists two alumni of note, both of which I’m not quite sure about. One actress, who most people have never heard who only went to school there for two years. The other is a dean at Rutgers.
But, to be fair, the student body at Mac only numbers about 650 at any given time.
