40 Famous People and Celebrities Who Went to Harvard

A photo of Michelle Obama by Lawrence Jackson – Wikimedia commons

40 Famous People and Celebrities Who Went to Harvard

The opportunity to immerse oneself in a setting of great academic rigour and intellectual curiosity provided by attending Harvard University is unmatched. The institution’s illustrious status as one of the top educational institutions in the world is proof of the high calibre of education it offers.

Importantly, Harvard’s amazing list of graduates, which includes a host of notable figures and celebrities, demonstrates the university’s ability to develop extraordinary talent and give them a platform to succeed in their chosen industries. The notable alumni of Harvard have gone on to experience extraordinary success in a variety of fields, including politics, business, entertainment, and the arts.

For example, the alumni list of Harvard University features a who’s who of distinguished public leaders, including U.S. Presidents John F. Kennedy and Barack Obama, as well as renowned corporate giants. In the article are 40 famous people and celebrities who went to Harvard.

1. Barack Obama

Barack Obama photo by Pete Souza – Wikimedia commons

Barack Hussein Obama II is an American retired politician who served as the 44th president of the United States from 2009 to 2017. Obama, a member of the Democratic Party, was the first African-American president of the United States. He previously served as a U.S. senator from Illinois from 2005 to 2008 and as an Illinois state senator from 1997 to 2004, and previously worked as a civil rights lawyer before entering politics.

Obama was born in Honolulu, Hawaii. After graduating from Columbia University in 1983, he worked as a community organizer in Chicago. In 1988, he enrolled in Harvard Law School, where he was the first black president of the Harvard Law Review. After graduating, he became a civil rights attorney and an academic, teaching constitutional law at the University of Chicago Law School from 1992 to 2004.

2. Thomas Schelling

A photo of Thomas Schelling by Hessam Armandehi – Wikimedia commons

Thomas Crombie Schelling was an American economist and professor of foreign policy, national security, nuclear strategy, and arms control at the University of Maryland, College Park School of Public Policy. He was also a co-faculty at the New England Complex Systems Institute. He was awarded the 2005 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences which he shared with Robert Aumann for “having enhanced our understanding of conflict and cooperation through game-theory analysis.

Schelling was born on April 14, 1921, in Oakland, California. Schelling graduated from San Diego High. He received his bachelor’s degree in economics from the University of California, Berkeley in 1944. He received his PhD in economics from Harvard University in 1951.

3. Donald J. Cram

Donald James Cram was an American chemist who shared the 1987 Nobel Prize in Chemistry with Jean-Marie Lehn and Charles J. Pedersen “for their development and use of molecules with structure-specific interactions of high selectivity.” They were the founders of the field of host-guest chemistry.

In 1942, he graduated from the University of Nebraska–Lincoln with an MS in organic chemistry, with Norman O. Cromwell serving as his thesis adviser. However, this was not the end of his education career. So, in 1947, Cram graduated from Harvard University with a PhD in organic chemistry, with Louis Fieser serving as the adviser on his dissertation on Syntheses and reactions of 2-(keto alkyl)-3-hydroxy-1,4-naphthoquinones.

4. Mario Capecchi

A photo of Mario Capecchi by Thaler Tamas – Wikimedia commons

Mario Ramberg Capecchi is an Italian-born molecular geneticist and a co-awardee of the 2007 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for discovering a method to create mice in which a specific gene is turned off, known as knockout mice. He shared the prize with Martin Evans and Oliver Smithies. He is currently a Distinguished Human Genetics and Biology Professor at the University of Utah School of Medicine.

Capecchi embarked upon his academic journey as a graduate student at MIT, harbouring a proclivity for physics and mathematics. However, his academic pursuits took a compelling turn when he developed a burgeoning fascination with molecular biology. This shift in interest was fueled by his proclivity for conducting research in small teams, without the need for behemoth scientific apparatus.
Thus, he made the astute decision to transfer to Harvard, where he joined forces with James D. Watson, a celebrated scientist who had co-discovered the fundamental structure of DNA. Capecchi ultimately obtained his doctorate in biophysics in 1967, with the wise guidance of Watson as his doctoral supervisor.

5. Gregg L. Semenza

A photo of Greg L. Semenza by Us Embassy Sweden – Wikimedia commons

Dr Gregg Leonard Semenza, an eminent scholar in the field of pediatric medicine, holds the distinguished position of Professor of Genetic Medicine at the prestigious Johns Hopkins School of Medicine. As the head of the vascular program at the esteemed Institute for Cell Engineering, he has garnered critical acclaim for his revolutionary work in the realm of medical research.

In recognition of his groundbreaking contributions, he was the recipient of the prestigious Albert Lasker Award for Basic Medical Research in 2016. Dr Semenza’s pioneering discovery of the HIF-1 protein, which endows cancer cells with the remarkable ability to survive in low-oxygen conditions, has earned him a formidable reputation as a trailblazer in his field.

The erudite individual in question later matriculated at Sleepy Hollow High School, where he participated in varsity soccer as a mid-fielder and obtained his diploma in 1974. Subsequently, during his undergraduate studies at the distinguished Harvard University, he developed an avid interest in medical genetics and conducted extensive research endeavours in the field. His achievements in this arena were remarkable, including his innovative gene mapping efforts on chromosome 21 that have drawn significant scholarly attention.

6. Brian Schmidt

A photo of Brian Schmidt by Markus Pössel – Wikimedia commons

Brian Paul Schmidt is the Vice-Chancellor of the Australian National University (ANU). He was previously a Distinguished Professor, Australian Research Council Laureate Fellow and astrophysicist at the University’s Mount Stromlo Observatory and Research School of Astronomy and Astrophysics. He is known for his research in using supernovae as cosmological probes.

He currently holds an Australian Research Council Federation Fellowship and was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society (FRS) in 2012. Schmidt shared both the 2006 Shaw Prize in Astronomy and the 2011 Nobel Prize in Physics with Saul Perlmutter and Adam Riess for providing evidence that the expansion of the universe is accelerating, making him the only Montana-born Nobel laureate.

He graduated with a BS in Physics and Astronomy from the University of Arizona in 1989. He received his AM in Astronomy in 1992 and then a PhD in 1993 from Harvard University. Schmidt’s PhD thesis was supervised by Robert Kirshner and used Type II Supernovae to measure the Hubble Constant.

7. John F. Kennedy

A photo of John F. Kennedy by Cecil Stoughton, White House – Wikimedia commons

John Fitzgerald Kennedy often referred to by his initials JFK, was an American politician who served as the 35th president of the United States from 1961 until his assassination in 1963. He was the youngest person to assume the presidency by election and the youngest president at the end of his tenure. Kennedy served at the height of the Cold War, and the majority of his foreign policy concerned communist states such as the Soviet Union and Cuba. A Democrat, Kennedy represented Massachusetts in both houses of the U.S. Congress before his presidency.

Kennedy enrolled at Harvard College in September 1936. He tried out for the football, golf, and swimming teams and earned a spot on the varsity swimming team. Kennedy also sailed in the Star class and won the 1936 Nantucket Sound Star Championship. Kennedy graduated cum laude from Harvard with a Bachelor of Arts in government, concentrating on international affairs in 1941.

8. Michelle Obama

A photo of Michelle Obama by Lawrence Jackson – Wikimedia commons

Michelle LaVaughn Robinson Obama is an American attorney and author who served as the first lady of the United States from 2009 to 2017 as the wife of President Barack Obama. She was the first African-American woman to serve in this position. She campaigned for her husband’s presidential bid throughout 2007 and 2008, delivering a keynote address at the 2008 Democratic National Convention.

Robinson pursued professional study, earning her Juris Doctor (J.D.) degree from Harvard Law School in 1988. By the time she applied for Harvard Law, biographer Bond wrote, her confidence had increased. Her faculty mentor at Harvard Law was Charles Ogletree. At Harvard, Robinson participated in demonstrations advocating the hiring of professors who were members of minority groups.

9. Ban Ki-moon

Ban Ki-moon is a South Korean politician and diplomat who served as the eighth secretary-general of the United Nations between 2007 and 2016. Before he was appointed secretary-general, Ban was his country’s Minister of Foreign Affairs and Trade between 2004 and 2006. Ban was the foreign minister of South Korea between 2004 and 2006.

Ban graduated from Seoul National University in 1970 with a bachelor’s degree in international relations. He subsequently went on to complete a Master of Public Administration degree at the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University in 1985. At Harvard, he studied under Joseph Nye, an American political scientist who co-founded with Robert Keohane the international relations theory of neoliberalism.

10. Benazir Bhutto

Benazir Bhutto was a Pakistani politician who served as the 11th and 13th prime minister of Pakistan from 1988 to 1990 and again from 1993 to 1996. She was the first woman elected to head a democratic government in a Muslim-majority country. Ideologically a liberal and a secularist, she chaired or co-chaired the Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) from the early 1980s until her assassination in 2007.

From 1969 to 1973, Bhutto studied for an undergraduate degree at Radcliffe College, Harvard University. She started when she was sixteen, which was younger than normal, but Zulfikar had pulled strings to allow her premature admittance. At Harvard, Bhutto majored in comparative government and graduated cum laude with a Bachelor of Arts in 1973.

11. Mary Robinson

Mary Therese Winifred Robinson is an Irish politician who was the 7th president of Ireland, serving from December 1990 to September 1997, and the first woman to hold this office. before her election, Robinson was a senator in Seanad Éireann between 1969 and 1989, and a councillor on Dublin Corporation from 1979 to 1983.

Though briefly affiliated with the Labour Party while a senator, she became the first independent candidate to win the presidency and the first not to have had the support of Fianna Fáil. Following her time as president, Robinson became the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights from 1997 to 2002.

She attended Mount Anville Secondary School in Dublin and studied law at Trinity College Dublin. As the Catholic Church’s ban on Catholics attending Trinity was still in place at the time of Bourke’s application, her parents had to first request permission from Archbishop McQuaid to allow her to attend. She was one of three women in her class in Trinity and graduated in 1967 with first-class honours. She furthered her studies at the King’s Inns and was called to the Irish Bar in 1967. She was awarded a fellowship to attend Harvard Law School, receiving an LL.M. in 1968.

12. Ellen Johnson Sirleaf

Ellen Johnson Sirleaf is a Liberian politician who served as the 24th president of Liberia from 2006 to 2018. Sirleaf was the first elected female head of state in Africa. Sirleaf was born in Monrovia to a Gola father and a Kru-German mother. She was educated at the College of West Africa.

She completed her education in the United States, where she studied at Madison Business College and Harvard University. She returned to Liberia to work in William Tolbert’s government as Deputy Minister of Finance from 1971 to 1974. Later, she worked again in the West, for the World Bank in the Caribbean and Latin America. In 1979, she received a cabinet appointment as Minister of Finance, serving until 1980.

13. John Roberts

John Glover Roberts Jr. is an American lawyer and jurist who has served as the 17th chief justice of the United States since 2005. Roberts has authored the majority opinion in several landmark cases, including National Federation of Independent Business v. Sebelius, Shelby County v. Holder, and Riley v. California. He has been described as having a conservative judicial philosophy but, above all, is an institutionalist.

Roberts grew up in northwestern Indiana and was educated in a series of Catholic schools. He studied history at Harvard University and then attended Harvard Law School, where he was managing editor of the Harvard Law Review. He served as a law clerk for Circuit Judge Henry Friendly and then-associate justice William Rehnquist before taking a position in the attorney general’s office during the Reagan Administration.

14. George W. Bush

George Walker Bush (born July 6, 1946) is an American retired politician who served as the 43rd president of the United States from 2001 to 2009. A member of the Republican Party, the Bush family, and son of the 41st president George H. W. Bush, he previously served as the 46th governor of Texas from 1995 to 2000. While in his twenties, Bush flew warplanes in the Texas Air National Guard.

Bush attended public schools in Midland. He then spent two years at The Kinkaid School, a college-preparatory school. He then attended high school at Phillips Academy, a boarding school in Andover, Massachusetts, where he played baseball and was the head cheerleader during his senior year.

From 1964 to 1968 he attended Yale University where he graduated with a Bachelor of Arts degree in history. In the fall of 1973, Bush entered Harvard Business School. He graduated in 1975 with an MBA degree. He is the only U.S. president to have earned an MBA. After graduating from Harvard Business School in 1975, he worked in the oil industry.

15. Chuck Schumer

Charles Ellis Schumer is an American politician serving as the senior United States senator from New York, a seat he has held since 1999, and as Senate Majority Leader since 2021. The dean of New York’s congressional delegation, Schumer is in his fifth Senate term and has been the leader of the Democratic caucus since 2017; he served as minority leader from 2017 to 2021.

Schumer attended Brooklyn public schools, scoring 1600 on the SAT and graduating as the valedictorian of James Madison High School in 1967. He attended Harvard College, where he originally majored in chemistry before switching to social studies after volunteering on Eugene McCarthy’s presidential campaign in 1968.

After graduating magna cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa in 1971, Schumer attended Harvard Law School, earning his Juris Doctor with honours in 1974. He passed the New York state bar in early 1975, but never practised law, choosing a career in politics instead.

16. Franklin D. Roosevelt

Franklin Delano Roosevelt alias FDR was an American politician and lawyer who served as the 32nd president of the United States from 1933 until he died in 1945. As the leader of the Democratic Party, he won a record four presidential elections and became a central figure in world events during the first half of the 20th century. Roosevelt directed the federal government during most of the Great Depression, implementing his New Deal domestic agenda in response to the worst economic crisis in U.S. history.

Like most of his Groton classmates, Roosevelt went to Harvard College. He was a member of the Alpha Delta Phi fraternity and the Fly Club and served as a school cheerleader. Roosevelt was relatively undistinguished as a student or athlete, but he became editor-in-chief of The Harvard Crimson daily newspaper, a position that required ambition, energy, and the ability to manage others.

17. Ben Bernanke

Ben Shalom Bernanke is an American economist who served as the 14th chairman of the Federal Reserve from 2006 to 2014. After leaving the Fed, he was appointed a distinguished fellow at the Brookings Institution. During his tenure as chairman, Bernanke oversaw the Federal Reserve’s response to the late-2000s financial crisis, for which he was named the 2009 Time Person of the Year.

Bernanke entered Harvard College in 1971, where he lived in Winthrop House, as did the future chief executive officer of Goldman Sachs, Lloyd Blankfein, and graduated Phi Beta Kappa with an A.B. degree, and later with an A.M. in economics summa cum laude in 1975. He received a PhD degree in economics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1979 after completing and defending his dissertation, Long-Term Commitments, Dynamic Optimization, and the Business Cycle.

18. Cass Sunstein

Cass Robert Sunstein is an American legal scholar known for his studies of constitutional law, administrative law, environmental law, law and behavioural economics. He is also The New York Times best-selling author of The World According to Star Wars (2016) and Nudge (2008). He was the Administrator of the White House Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs in the Obama administration from 2009 to 2012.

Sunstein attended Harvard College. He was a member of the varsity squash team and an editor of the Harvard Lampoon and graduated in 1975 with a Bachelor of Arts, magna cum laude. He then attended the Harvard Law School, where he became the executive editor of the Harvard Civil Rights-Civil Liberties Law Review and was a member of the winning team of the Ames Moot Court Competition. He graduated in 1978 with a Juris Doctor, magna cum laude.

19. Steven Pinker

Steven Arthur Pinker is a Canadian-American cognitive psychologist, psycholinguist, popular science author, and public intellectual. He is an advocate of evolutionary psychology and the computational theory of mind. Pinker is the Johnstone Family Professor of Psychology at Harvard University, and his academic specializations are visual cognition and developmental linguistics.

Pinker graduated from Dawson College in 1973. He graduated from McGill University in 1976 with a Bachelor of Arts in psychology, then did doctoral studies in experimental psychology at Harvard University under Stephen Kosslyn, receiving a PhD in 1979. He did research at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology for a year, then became a professor at Harvard and then at Stanford University.

20. Elena Kagan

Elena Kagan is an American lawyer who serves as an associate justice of the Supreme Court of the United States. She was nominated by President Barack Obama on May 10, 2010, and has served since August 7, 2010. Kagan is the fourth woman to become a member of the Court.

In 1983, at age 23, Kagan entered Harvard Law School. Her adjustment to Harvard’s atmosphere was rocky; she received the worst grades of her entire law school career in her first semester. Kagan went on to earn an A in 17 of the 21 courses she took at Harvard, and was a supervisory editor of the Harvard Law Review.

21. Ketanji Brown Jackson

Ketanji Onyika Brown is an American jurist who serves as an associate justice of the Supreme Court of the United States. Jackson was nominated to the Supreme Court by President Joe Biden on February 25, 2022. She was confirmed by the United States Senate on April 7, 2022, and sworn into office on June 30. She was previously a United States circuit judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit from 2021 to 2022.

Jackson then studied government at Harvard University, having applied to Harvard despite her high school guidance counsellor’s advice to set her sights lower. At Harvard, Jackson performed improv comedy and took classes in drama, and led protests against a student who displayed a Confederate flag from his dorm window.

Jackson graduated from Harvard in 1992 with an A.B. magna cum laude. Jackson worked as a staff reporter and researcher for Time magazine from 1992 to 1993, then attended Harvard Law School, where she was a supervising editor of the Harvard Law Review. She graduated in 1996 with a Juris Doctor, cum laude.

22. John Quincy Adams

John Quincy Adams was an American politician, diplomat, lawyer, and diarist who served as the sixth president of the United States, from 1825 to 1829. He previously served as the eighth United States Secretary of State from 1817 to 1825. During his long diplomatic and political career, Adams also served as an ambassador, and as a member of the United States Congress representing Massachusetts in both chambers.

Adams returned to the United States from Britain in 1785 and earned admission as a member of the junior class of Harvard College the following year. He joined Phi Beta Kappa and excelled academically, graduating second in his class in 1787. After graduating from Harvard, he studied law with Theophilus Parsons in Newburyport, Massachusetts, from 1787 to 1789.

23. Rashida Jones

Rashida Leah Jones is an American actress, writer, producer, and director. Jones appeared as Louisa Fenn on the Fox drama series Boston Public (2000–2002), as Karen Filippelli on the NBC comedy series The Office (2006–2009; 2011), and as Ann Perkins on the NBC comedy series Parks and Recreation (2009–2015).

Rashida attended Harvard University, where she lived in Currier House and Eliot House. She belonged to the Hasty Pudding Theatricals, Harvard Radcliffe Dramatic Club, Harvard-Radcliffe Opportunes, Black Students Association, and the Signet Society. She was initially interested in becoming a lawyer but changed her mind after becoming disillusioned by the O. J. Simpson murder trial. She studied religion and philosophy and graduated in 1997.

24. Matt Damon

Matthew Paige Damon is an American actor, film producer, and screenwriter.[3] Ranked among Forbes’ most bankable stars, the films in which he has appeared have collectively earned over $3.88 billion at the North American box office, making him one of the highest-grossing actors of all time. He has received various awards and nominations, including an Academy Award and two Golden Globe Awards, in addition to nominations for three British Academy Film Awards and seven Primetime Emmy Awards.

He attended Harvard University, where he was a resident of Lowell House and a member of the class of 1992, but left before receiving his degree to take a lead role in the film Geronimo: An American Legend. While at Harvard, Damon wrote an early treatment of the screenplay Good Will Hunting as an exercise for an English class, for which he later received an Academy Award. He was a member of The Delphic Club, one of Harvard’s select Final Clubs. He was awarded the Harvard Arts Medal in 2013.

25. Conan O’Brien

Conan Christopher O’Brien is an American television host, comedian, writer, and producer. He is best known for having hosted late-night talk shows for almost 28 years, beginning with Late Night with Conan O’Brien (1993–2009) and The Tonight Show with Conan O’Brien (2009–2010) on the NBC television network, and Conan (2010–2021) on the cable channel TBS.

After graduating as valedictorian in 1981, O’Brien entered Harvard University. He lived in Holworthy Hall during his first year with future businessman Luis Ubiñas and two other roommates, and in Mather House during his three upper-class years. He majored in History & Literature and graduated magna cum laude with a Bachelor of Arts degree in 1985.

26. Jeremy Lin

Jeremy Shu-How Lin, a Taiwanese-American basketball prodigy, currently plies his trade as a professional athlete for the Kaohsiung 17LIVE Steelers, a franchise of the P. League+ (PLG). Lin’s entrance into the NBA made him the first individual of Chinese or Taiwanese origin to have done so, rendering him one of the rare Asian Americans to have competed in the illustrious league. 

Jeremy Lin dispatched his curriculum vitae and a DVD compilation showcasing the highlights of his illustrious high school basketball endeavours to all the Ivy League institutions, in addition to the University of California, Berkeley and his coveted alma maters, Stanford University and the University of California, Los Angeles.

Although the Pac-10, now Pac-12, schools were interested in him, they were inclined towards a walk-on position instead of actively recruiting him or extending an athletic scholarship. The only two teams, Harvard and Brown, which pledged a place for him on their respective teams, were the Ivy League schools, which do not provide any form of sports scholarships. S, Lin chose to attend Harvard instead.

27. Fareed Zakaria

Fareed Rafiq Zakaria is an Indian-American journalist, political commentator, and author. He is the host of CNN’s Fareed Zakaria GPS and writes a weekly paid column for The Washington Post. He has been a columnist for Newsweek, editor of Newsweek International, and an editor at large of Time.

Zakaria attended the Cathedral and John Connon School in Mumbai. He graduated with a Bachelor of Arts from Yale University in 1986, where he was president of the Yale Political Union, editor in chief of the Yale Political Monthly, a member of the Scroll and Key society, and a member of the Party of the Right. He later gained a PhD in government from Harvard University in 1993, where he studied under Samuel P. Huntington and Stanley Hoffmann, as well as international relations theorist Robert Keohane.

28. Al Franken

Alan Stuart Franken is an American comedian, politician, and media personality who served as a United States senator from Minnesota from 2009 to 2018. He gained fame as a writer and performer on the television comedy show Saturday Night Live, where he worked from the 1970s until the 1990s. After decades as an entertainer, he became a prominent liberal political activist, hosting The Al Franken Show on Air America Radio.

Franken graduated from The Blake School in 1969, where he was a member of the wrestling team. He then attended Harvard College, where he majored in political science, graduating cum laude with a Bachelor of Arts in 1973. As a student, Franken wrote comedy and idolized comedians Dick Gregory and Lenny Bruce because they did acts about hypocrisy and corruption while making the audience laugh.

29. John Updike

John Hoyer Updike was an American novelist, poet, short-story writer, art critic, and literary critic. One of only four writers to win the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction more than once (the others being Booth Tarkington, William Faulkner, and Colson Whitehead), Updike published more than twenty novels, more than a dozen short-story collections, as well as poetry, art and literary criticism and children’s books during his career.

Updike graduated from Shillington High School as co-valedictorian and class president in 1950 and received a full scholarship to Harvard College, where he was the roommate of Christopher Lasch during their first year. At Harvard, he became well known among his classmates as a talented and prolific contributor to The Harvard Lampoon, of which he was president. He studied with dramatist Robert Chapman, the director of Harvard’s Loeb Drama Center. He graduated summa cum laude in 1954 with a degree in English and was elected to Phi Beta Kappa.

30. Bonnie Raitt

Bonnie Lynn Raitt is an American blues singer and guitarist. In 1971, Raitt released her self-titled debut album. Following this, she released a series of critically acclaimed roots-influenced albums that incorporated elements of blues, rock, folk, and country. She was also a frequent session player and collaborator with other artists, including Warren Zevon, Little Feat, Jackson Browne, The Pointer Sisters, John Prine and Leon Russell.

After graduating from Oakwood Friends School in Poughkeepsie, New York in 1967, Raitt entered Radcliffe College of Harvard University, majoring in Social Relations and African studies. During her second year of college, Raitt left school for a semester and moved to Philadelphia with Waterman and other local musicians.

31. Ted Kaczynski

Theodore John Kaczynski’s alias as the Unabomber is an American domestic terrorist and former mathematics professor. Between 1978 and 1995, Kaczynski killed three people and injured 23 others in a nationwide mail bombing campaign against people he believed to be advancing modern technology and the destruction of the environment.

In his second year at Harvard, Kaczynski participated in a study described by author Alston Chase as a “purposely brutalizing psychological experiment” led by Harvard psychologist Henry Murray. Kaczynski’s lawyers later attributed his hostility towards mind control techniques to his participation in Murray’s study. Nevertheless, he said he was quite confident that his experiences with Professor Murray had no significant effect on the course of his life.

32. Yo-Yo Ma

Yo-Yo Ma is an American cellist. Born and partially raised in Paris to Chinese parents and educated in New York City, he was a child prodigy, performing from the age of four and a half. He graduated from the Juilliard School and Harvard University and attended Columbia University and has performed as a soloist with orchestras around the world. He has recorded more than 90 albums and received 19 Grammy Awards.

Ma studied at The Juilliard School at age 19 with Leonard Rose and attended Columbia University, but dropped out. He later enrolled at Harvard College. Before entering Harvard, Ma played in the Marlboro Festival Orchestra under the direction of cellist and conductor Pablo Casals. Ma received his bachelor’s degree from Harvard in 1976, and in 1991 received an honorary doctorate from Harvard.

33. Darren Aronofsky

Darren Aronofsky is an American film director, producer, and screenwriter. His films are noted for their surreal, melodramatic, and often disturbing elements, frequently in the form of psychological fiction. Aronofsky studied film and social anthropology at Harvard University and was directed at the American Film Institute.

34. John Adams

John Adams was an American statesman, attorney, diplomat, writer, and Founding Father who served as the second president of the United States from 1797 to 1801. He was the first person to hold the office of vice president of the United States, serving from 1789 to 1797. Adams was a dedicated diarist and regularly corresponded with many important contemporaries, including his wife and adviser Abigail Adams as well as his friend and rival Thomas Jefferson.

At age sixteen, Adams entered Harvard College in 1751, studying under Joseph Mayhew. He decided to become a lawyer to further those ends. In 1756, Adams began reading law under James Putnam, a leading lawyer in Worcester. In 1758, he earned an A.M. from Harvard, and in 1759 was admitted to the bar.

35. W. E. B. Du Bois

William Edward Burghardt Du Bois was an American sociologist, socialist, historian, and Pan-Africanist civil rights activist. Born in Great Barrington, Massachusetts, Du Bois grew up in a relatively tolerant and integrated community. After completing graduate work at Friedrich Wilhelm University (in Berlin, Germany) and Harvard University, where he was the first African American to earn a doctorate, he became a professor of history, sociology, and economics at Atlanta University.

After receiving a bachelor’s degree from Fisk University, he attended Harvard College from 1888 to 1890, where he was strongly influenced by professor William James, prominent in American philosophy. Du Bois paid his way through three years at Harvard with money from summer jobs, an inheritance, scholarships, and loans from friends. In 1890, Harvard awarded Du Bois his second bachelor’s degree, cum laude, in history. In 1891, Du Bois received a scholarship to attend the sociology graduate school at Harvard.

36. Al Gore

Albert Arnold Gore Jr. is an American politician, businessman, and environmentalist who served as the 45th vice president of the United States from 1993 to 2001 under President Bill Clinton. Gore was the Democratic nominee for the 2000 presidential election, losing to George W. Bush in a very close race after a Florida recount.

After a successful application to the institution, Gore enrolled in Harvard College in 1965. He initially planned to major in English and write novels but later decided to major in government. On his second day on campus, he began campaigning for the freshman student government council and was elected its president.

37. T. S. Eliot

Thomas Stearns Eliot was a poet, essayist, publisher, playwright, literary critic and editor. He is considered one of the 20th century’s major poets, he is a central figure in English-language Modernist poetry.

In April 1905 was his oldest surviving poem in the manuscript, an untitled lyric, later revised and reprinted as “Song” in The Harvard Advocate, Harvard University’s student literary magazine. In 1916, he completed a doctoral dissertation for Harvard on “Knowledge and Experience in the Philosophy of F. H. Bradley”, but he failed to return for the viva voce exam.

38. Danielle Allen

Danielle Susan Allen is the James Bryant Conant University Professor at Harvard University. She is also the Director of the Edmond & Lily Safra Center for Ethics. Before joining the faculty at Harvard in 2015, Allen was UPS Foundation Professor at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey. Allen is the daughter of political scientist William B. Allen.

Allen graduated from Princeton University in 1993 with an A.B. in Classics. She earned summa cum laude honours and induction into Phi Beta Kappa. Allen completed a 178-page senior thesis, titled “The State of Judgment”, under the supervision of Andre Laks. As a Marshall Scholar, she studied at King’s College, Cambridge University, where she received an M.Phil. in classics in 1994 and a PhD in classics in 1996. Allen then pursued further graduate studies at Harvard University, earning an M.A. in government in 1998 and a PhD in government in 2001.

39. Paul Farmer

Paul Edward Farmer was an American medical anthropologist and physician. Farmer held an MD and PhD from Harvard University, where he was a University Professor and the chair of the Department of Global Health and Social Medicine at Harvard Medical School. He was the co-founder and chief strategist of Partners In Health (PIH), an international non-profit organization that since 1987 has provided direct healthcare services and undertaken research and advocacy activities on behalf of those who are sick and living in poverty.

After graduating from Duke, Farmer began volunteering at a hospital in Cange, Haiti. He then attended Harvard University, earning an MD and a PhD in medical anthropology in 1990, returning to Haiti multiple times during medical school to continue his work in Cange. He completed an internal medicine residency at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in 1993 and an infectious disease fellowship in 1996.

40. Rutherford B. Hayes

Rutherford Birchard Hayes was an American lawyer and politician who served as the 19th president of the United States from 1877 to 1881, after serving in the U.S. House of Representatives and as governor of Ohio. Before the American Civil War, Hayes was a lawyer and staunch abolitionist who defended refugee slaves in court proceedings. He served in the Union Army and the House of Representatives before assuming the presidency.

After briefly reading law in Columbus, Ohio, Hayes moved east to attend Harvard Law School in 1843. After graduating with an LL.B., he was admitted to the Ohio bar in 1845 and opened his own law office in Lower Sandusky (now Fremont). The business was slow at first, but he gradually attracted clients and also represented his uncle Sardis in real estate litigation.