Notable people




  • Francis Hopkinson, signed the Declaration of Independence and designed the first official American flag.

  • George Clymer, Founding Father; early advocate for complete independence from Britain

  • James Wilson, Founding Father; one of the six original justices appointed by George Washington to the Supreme Court of the United States

  • Benjamin Rush, Founding Father of the United States; surgeon general of the Continental Army

  • William Henry Harrison, 9th president of the United States

  • Doc Holliday, famed gunslinger, attended the Pennsylvania College of Dental Surgery.

  • Martha Hughes Cannon, first female state senator elected in the United States

  • William Wrigley, Jr., founder and eponym of the Wm. Wrigley Jr. Company

  • American poet and critic Ezra Pound, a major figure in the early modernist movement, studied at the college.

  • Physician and poet William Carlos Williams graduated from Penn's School of Medicine

  • Noam Chomsky studied philosophy and linguistics at Penn, graduating with a BA in 1949, an MA in 1951 and a Ph.D. in 1955.

  • Donald Trump, American businessman, reality television personality and 45th president of the United States

  • Warren Buffett, considered by some to be one of the most successful investors in the world

  • Arlen Specter, former U.S. senator, majored in international relations and graduated Phi Beta Kappa in 1951.

  • Kwame Nkrumah, first president of Ghana, and previously first prime minister of Ghana

  • Drew Gilpin Faust, 28th president of Harvard University

  • Ed Rendell, 45th governor of Pennsylvania; 96th mayor of Philadelphia

  • Jon Huntsman Jr., politician, businessman, and diplomat

  • Donald Arthur Norman, co-founder of the Nielsen Norman Group, an IDEO fellow, and researcher and advocate of user-centered design

  • Elon Musk, co-founder of PayPal, and founder and CEO of Tesla Motors and SpaceX

  • Ralph J. Roberts, founder and longtime CEO of Comcast

  • Louis Kahn, architect, recipient of the AIA Gold Medal and the RIBA Gold Medal, considered one of the most influential architects of the twentieth century

  • Charles Addams, cartoonist for The New Yorker, creator of The Addams Family

  • Tory Burch, fashion designer and founder of Tory Burch LLC

  • John Legend, musician and recipient of Emmy, Grammy, Academy, and Tony Awards

  • Stanley B. Prusiner, neurologist and biochemist, recipient of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine

  • Christian B. Anfinsen, biochemist, recipient of the Nobel Prize in Chemistry

Penn has produced many alumni that have distinguished themselves in the sciences, academia, politics, the military, arts and media.

Some fourteen heads of state or government have attended or graduated from Penn, including current president Donald J. Trump; former president William Henry Harrison, who attended the medical school for less than a semester; former prime minister of the Philippines Cesar Virata; the first president of Nigeria, Nnamdi Azikiwe; the first president of Ghana, Kwame Nkrumah; and the current president of Ivory Coast, Alassane Ouattara. Other notable politicians who hold a degree from Penn include India's former minister of state for finance Jayant Sinha, former ambassador and Utah governor Jon Huntsman, Jr., Mexico's current minister of finance, Ernesto J. Cordero, former Pennsylvania senator Arlen Specter, and former Pennsylvania governor and DNC chair Ed Rendell.citation needed

The university's presence in the judiciary in and outside of the United States is also notable. It has produced three United States Supreme Court justices, William J. Brennan, Owen J. Roberts and James Wilson; Supreme Court justices of foreign states (e.g., Ronald Wilson of the High Court of Australia, Ayala Procaccia of the Israel Supreme Court, Yvonne Mokgoro, former justice of the Constitutional Court of South Africa); European Court of Human Rights judge Nona Tsotsoria; Irish Court of Appeal justice Gerard Hogan as well as founders of international law firms.

Penn is also a top feeder school for careers in finance and investment banking on Wall Street and its alumni have a strong presence in financial and economic life. Penn has educated several governors of central banks including Yasin Anwar (State Bank of Pakistan), Ignazio Visco (Bank of Italy), Kim Choongsoo (Bank of Korea), Zeti Akhtar Aziz (Central Bank of Malaysia), Pridiyathorn Devakula (governor, Bank of Thailand, and former minister of finance), Farouk El Okdah (Central Bank of Egypt) and Alfonso Prat Gay (Central Bank of Argentina), as well as the director of the United States National Economic Council, Gene Sperling.citation needed Other alumni include Warren Buffett note (CEO of Berkshire Hathaway), Steven A. Cohen (founder of SAC Capital Advisors), and Robert Kapito (president of BlackRock, the world's largest asset manager).citation needed

Penn alumni who are founders of technology companies include Ralph J. Roberts (co-founder of Comcast); Elon Musk (co-founder of PayPal, founder and CEO of Tesla Motors and SpaceX); Leonard Bosack (co-founder of Cisco); David J. Brown (co-founder of Silicon Graphics) and Mark Pincus (founder of Zynga, the company behind FarmVille).

Among other distinguished alumni are the current or past presidents of over one hundred universities including Harvard University (Drew Gilpin Faust, Harvard's first female president), Cornell University (Martha E. Pollack), Penn (Judith Rodin, first female president in the Ivy League), Princeton University (Harold Dodds), the University of California (Mark Yudof), Carnegie Mellon University (Jared Cohon), and Northwestern University (Morton O. Schapiro).citation needed

Penn's alumni also include poets William Augustus Muhlenberg, Ezra Pound and William Carlos Williams, linguist and political theorist Noam Chomsky, architect Louis Kahn, cartoonist Charles Addams, actresses Candice Bergen and Elizabeth Banks, journalist Joe Klein, fashion designer Tory Burch, and recording artist John Legend.citation needed

Within the ranks of Penn's most historic graduates are also eight signers of the Declaration of Independence and nine signers of the Constitution. These include George Clymer, Francis Hopkinson, Thomas McKean, Robert Morris, William Paca, George Ross, Benjamin Rush, James Wilson, Thomas Fitzsimons, Jared Ingersoll, Rufus King, Thomas Mifflin, Gouverneur Morris and Hugh Williamson.citation needed

Penn alumni have also had significant impact on the United States military as they include Samuel Nicholas, United States Marine Corps founder, and William A. Newell, whose congressional action formed a predecessor to the current United States Coast Guard,(p.1 col.5 – p.2 col.1) in addition to numerous generals or similar rank in the United States Armed Forces, as well as at least four United States Medal of Honor recipients.

As of October 2019, several Penn affiliates have won Nobel Prizes, of whom four are current faculty members and eight are alumni.citation needed Penn also educated members of the United States National Academies and the Academy of Arts and Sciences, eight National Medal of Science laureates, numerous Sloan Fellows, several members of the American Philosophical Society and many Guggenheim Fellowships.citation needed

Alumni relations and inter-Ivy eventsedit

In addition to active alumni chapters globally, in 1989, the university bought a 14-story clubhouse building in New York City from Yale for $15 million to house Penn's largest alumni chapter. After raising a separate $25 million (including $150,000+ donations each from Estee Lauder heirs, Leonard Lauder and Ronald Lauder, Saul Steinberg (businessman), Michael Milken, and Ronald Perelman) and two years of renovation, the Penn Club of New York moved to said current location on NYC's Clubhouse Row directly in front of the Harvard Club of New York, on the same block as the Cornell Club of New York, and a block away from the Yale Club of New York City and Princeton Club of New York for inter-Ivy events. Despite being in New York City, Columbia University shares a clubhouse with the Penn Club. The New York region of the university maintains an office in the Penn Club.

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