List of Bowdoin College people

Here follows a list of notable people associated with Bowdoin College in Brunswick, Maine. This list includes alumni, faculty, and honorary degree recipients.

Distinguished Graduates

Arts & Letters

Nathaniel Hawthorne, class of 1825

• Seba Smith 1818, humorist, creator of the fictional character Major Jack Downing
• Jacob Abbott, 1820, academic and author of 180 books, primarily children's books
• Henry Wadsworth Longfellow 1825, world-renowned poet; professor at Bowdoin (1829-31) and Harvard University (1831-54); memorialized in the Poets' Corner at Westminster Abbey; namesake, along with Hawthorne, of Bowdoin's main library
• Nathaniel Hawthorne 1825, author, most notably of The Scarlet Letter (1850) and The House of the Seven Gables (1851); namesake, along with Longfellow, of Bowdoin's main library
• John Stevens Cabot Abbott 1825, biographer, most notably of Napoleon Bonaparte (1855)
• John Brown Russwurm 1826, third black college graduate in the United States; founder of Freedom's Journal, America's first black newspaper (1827); governor of Maryland County in Liberia (1836-41)
• Charles Beecher 1834, author, minister, and abolitionist; brother of the author Harriet Beecher Stowe, the minister Henry Ward Beecher, and educator Catharine Beecher
• Robert P.T. Coffin 1915, Rhodes Scholar, winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry (1936), and Bowdoin professor (1934-55)
• Phillips Lord 192?, radio personality, writer and actor
• Hodding Carter 1927, progressive journalist and winner of the Pulitzer Prize (1946)
• John Gould 1931, novelist, humorist, and columnist
• Francis Russell 1933, historian, best known for his work on Warren Harding
• James Bassett 1934, journalist and author, most notably of the best-selling novel In Harm's Way (1962)
• Gary Merrill 1937, actor, most notably in All About Eve (1950)
• H. Richard Hornberger 1945, doctor and author, most notably of M*A*S*H (1968)
• Geoffrey Canada 1974, author and activist
• Stephen Hannock 1974, American landscape painter
• Kevin Bubriski 1975, documentary photographer
• Douglas Kennedy 1976, novelist
• Abelardo Morell 1977, photographer
• Marcus Giamatti 1984, actor
• Brad Anderson 1986, filmmaker, most notably of Next Stop Wonderland (1998) and The Machinist (2004)
• Taylor Mali 1987, slam poet
• Paul Adelstein 1991, actor, best known for his roles in Prison Break (2005-07) and Private Practice (2007-present)
• Paul "DJ Spooky" Miller 1992, trip-hop musician, turntablist and producer
• Brian Farnham 1993, editor-in-chief of Time Out New York
• Meredith Hall 1993, best-selling author, most notably of Without a Map (2007)
• Hayes MacArthur 1999, actor, comedian and fiancé of actress Ali Larter
• Kelley Kerney 2002, author of Born Again (novel) (2006)

Government

Note: individuals who belong in multiple sections appear in the most relevant section.

14th President of the United States, Franklin Pierce, class of 1824

Presidents

• Franklin Pierce 1824, congressman (1833-37) and senator (1837-42) from New Hampshire; 14th President of the United States (1853-57); namesake of Franklin Pierce College in New Hampshire

U.S. Governors

• John Fairfield 1826, congressman (1835-38) and senator (1843-47) from Maine; governor of Maine (1839-43)
• Alonzo Garcelon 1836, co-founder of Bates College (1855), Civil War general, Maine governor (1879-80)
• John Andrew 1837, Massachusetts governor (1861-66) responsible for the formation of the 54th Massachusetts during the Civil War
• La Fayette Grover 1846, Oregon governor (1871-77); congressman (1859) and senator (1877-83) from Oregon
• Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain 1852, Bowdoin College professor (1855-62), Civil War hero, Medal of Honor recipient, Maine governor (1867-71), and president of Bowdoin College (1871-83); a large statute of Chamberlain now stands at the entrance to the College
• Wilmot Brookings 1855, first provisional governor of the Dakota Territory; namesake of the city and county of Brookings, both in South Dakota
• Percival Proctor Baxter 1898, governor of Maine and namesake of Baxter State Park
• Horrace Hildreth 1925, Maine governor (1944-48), US Ambassador to Pakistan (1953-57), and president of Bucknell University (1957-67)

U.S. Senators

• George Evans 1815, congressman (1829-41) and senator (1841-47) from Maine
• James Bell 1822, senator from New Hampshire (1855-57)
• James Ware Bradbury 1825, senator from Maine (1847-53)
• Alpheus Felch 1827, Michigan governor (1846-47), senator from Michigan (1847-1853), professor of law at the University of Michigan, and namesake of Felch Township in Michigan
• John Hale 1827, congressman (1843-45) and senator (1847-53) from New Hampshire; ran against Franklin Pierce 1824 as the Free Soil Party candidate for President (1852)
• William Frye 1850, congressman (1871-81) and senator (1881-1911) from Maine; played a role in the founding of Bates College (1855)
• Paris Gibson 1851, senator from Montana (1901-05)

Former Senate Majority Leader, George Mitchell, class of 1954

• William D. Washburn 1854, congressman (1879-85) and senator (1889-95) from Minnesota
• Charles Fletcher Johnson 1879, senator from Maine (1911-1917)
• Wallace White 1899, congressman (1916-31) and senator (1931-49) from Maine; Senate Minority Leader (1944-47); Senate Majority Leader (1947-49)
• Ralph Owen Brewster 1909, Maine governor (1925-29); congressman (1935-41) and senator (1941-53) from Maine
• Paul Douglas 1913, professor of economics at the University of Chicago (1920-42) and senator from Illinois (1949-67)
• George Mitchell 1954, senator from Maine (1982-95); Senate Majority Leader (1989-95); chairman of the Walt Disney Corporation (2004-present); winner of the Presidential Medal of Freedom (1999); Chancellor of Queen's University, Belfast *
• Bill Cohen 1962, congressman (1972-78) and senator (1978-97) from Maine; Secretary of Defense under President Clinton (1997-2001)

U.S. Representatives

• Jonathan Cilley 1825, congressman from Maine (1837-38) whose death in an 1838 duel with a Kentucky congressman prompted outrage and a congressional ban on the practice *
• John Appleton 1834, US Minister to Bolivia (1848-49), congressman from Maine (1851-53), Assistant US Secretary of State (1857-60), and US Ambassador to Russia (1860-61)
• Samuel Fessenden 1834, congressman from Maine (1861-63)
• Lorenzo De Medici Sweat 1837, congressman from Maine (1863-65)
• T.A.D. Fessenden 1845, congressman from Maine (1862-63)
• Isaac Newton Evans 1851, doctor and congressman from Pennsylvania (1877-79, 1883-87)
• Thomas Brackett Reed 1860, congressman from Maine (1877-99); Speaker of the House (1889-91, 1895-99)
• Joseph L. Fisher 1935, congressman from Virginia (1975-81)
• Thomas H. Allen 1967, Rhodes Scholar, mayor of Portland, Maine (1991-1992), congressman from Maine (1997-present) *

8th Chief Justice of the United States Supreme Court, Melville Fuller, class of 1853

• Tom Andrews 1976, congressman from Maine (1991-1995)

U.S. Cabinet Secretaries and other political and military figures

• William Fessenden 1823, congressman (1841-43) and senator (1854-64, 1865-69) from New Hampshire; Secretary of the Treasury under President Abraham Lincoln (1864-65)
• Horatio Bridge 1825, commodore in the US Navy; chief of the Naval Bureau of Provisions & Clothing (1854-1869)
• Hugh McCulloch 1827, Secretary of the Treasury under Presidents Abraham Lincoln (1865), Andrew Johnson (1865-69) and Chester A. Arthur (1884-85)
• Sumner Increase Kimball 1855, organizer (1878) and superintendent (1878-1916) of the U.S. Life-Saving Service, precursor to the U.S. Coast Guard
• Ellis Spear 1858, Civil War general, U.S. Commissioner of Patents
• Sumner Pike 1913, member of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (1940-1946) and member of the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission (1946-1951)
• Everett P. Pope 1941, Medal of Honor recipient during World War II
• Thomas Pickering 1953, US Ambassador to Jordan (1974-78), Nigeria (1981-83), El Salvador (1983-85), Israel (1985-88), the United Nations (1989-92), India (1992-93), and Russia (1993-96); recipient of thirteen honorary degrees
• Christopher Hill 1974, US Ambassador to Macedonia (1996-99), Poland (2000-2004), and South Korea (2004-2005); Undersecretary of State and chief US negotiator with North Korea (2005-Present)
• Lawrence Lindsey 1976, professor of economics at Harvard, and economic adviser to President George W. Bush (2001-2002)
• Stephen Laffey 1984, mayor of Cranston, R.I. (2002-present); candidate for U.S. Senate (2006)

U.S. Supreme Court Justices and other legal figures

• Melville Weston Fuller 1853, 8th Chief Justice of the United States (1888-1910)
• Harold Hitz Burton 1909, senator from Ohio (1941-45); associate justice of the U.S. Supreme Court (1945-1958)
• Fred Fisher 1942, Boston attorney and figure in the Army-McCarthy hearings.
• Dennis J. Hutchinson 1969, Rhodes Scholar, law clerk to US Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas, professor of law at the University of Chicago, and biographer of Justice Byron White (1998)
• Christopher Wolf 1976, attorney for Joseph Wilson and Valerie Plame

Science & Medicine

• William Smyth 1822, professor of mathematics and philosophy at Bowdoin; author of popular textbooks on algebra, trigonometry, geometry and calculus (1833-59)
• Augustus Stinchfield 1868, co-founder of the Mayo Clinic
• Francis Robbins Upton, mathematician and inventor; long-time associate of Thomas Edison; first student ever to receive a graduate degree from Princeton (1877)*
• George Edwin Lord, doctor killed at the Battle of Little Big Horn in 1876
• Edwin Hall 1875, physicist, discoverer of the Hall effect, used worldwide in sensors and has led more recently to the quantum Hall effect, the international standard defining the ohm in electrical resistance.
• Robert Peary 1877, Naval officer and leader of the first expedition to reach the North Pole (1909)
• Donald MacMillan 1898, member of the Peary expedition and pioneering Arctic explorer *
• Alfred Kinsey 1916, sex researcher, author of the controversial Kinsey Reports (1948, 1953), professor at Indiana University (1920-56), and founder of the Institute for Sex Research (1947) *
• John Ripley Forbes 1938, conservationist and philanthropist of nature museums
• Dan Hanley 1939, U.S. Olympic doctor and pioneer of drug-testing programs

Athletics

• Fred Tootell 1923, Olympic gold medalist in the hammer throw (1924)
• George Mitchell 1954, Senate Majority Leader (1989-95) who, in 2007, released the Mitchell Report (baseball) concerning steroid abuses in Major League Baseball
• Fred Ahern 1974, NHL hockey player
• Joan Benoit Samuelson 1979, world record holder and winner of the Boston (1979, 1983), Olympic (1984) and Chicago (1985) marathons
• Sean Starke 2003, professional ice hockey player

Business

• Thomas Hyde 1861, Medal of Honor recipient and founder of Bath Iron Works (1884)
• Everett P. Pope 1941, Medal of Honor recipient, bank president, and longtime member (1977-87) and chairman of the college's Board of Trustees (1985-87)
• Charles Ireland, Jr. 1942, president of CBS (1971-72)
• Charles Thomas Ireland, Jr. Captain US Marines WWII, Pres Allegheny Corp, Sec'y NY Central RR, VP ITT, New England Tennis Champion, Father to Claire (deceased), Ann, Stepfather to Alan Ireland (Gardner) and Stephen Gardner
• Bernard Osher, 1948, billionaire auctioneer of Butterfield & Butterfield and philanthropist
• Peter Buck 1952, billionaire co-founder of the Subway sandwich chain (1965) and physicist
• Leon Gorman 1956, president (1967-2001) and chairman (2001-present) of L. L. Bean
• Kenneth Chenault 1973, president (1997-2001) and CEO (2001-present) of American Express; the first African-American CEO of a Fortune 500 company
• Stanley Druckenmiller 1975, billionaire financier and philanthropist; former business associate of George Soros
• Richard Salsman 1981, economist, author and lecturer
• Reed Hastings 1983, founder (1997) and CEO (1997-present) of Netflix

Academia

• Nathan Lord 1809, president of Dartmouth College (1828-63) *
• Alpheus Packard, Sr. 1819, professor (1824-65) and acting president (1882-84) of Bowdoin College
• Calvin Ellis Stowe 1824, professor of religion at the Andover Theological Seminary, Dartmouth College and Bowdoin College; husband and literary agent of Harriet Beecher Stowe
• William C. Larrabee 1828, president of DePauw University (1848-1849)
• Samuel Harris 1833, president of Bowdoin College (1867-71) and Dwight Professor of Systematic Theology at Yale Divinity School (1871-95)
• Cyrus Hamlin 1834, co-founder of Robert College in Istanbul (1860); president of Middlebury College (1880-85)
• Henry Boynton Smith 1834, theologian and professor at Amherst College (1847-50) and the Union Theological Seminary (1850-74)
• Ezra Abbot 1840, influential biblical scholar and professor at the Harvard Divinity School (1872-84)
• George Frederick Magoun 1841, first president of Iowa College, now Grinnell College (1865-1885)
• Charles Carroll Everett 1850, theologian and philosopher; professor at (1869-78), and dean of (1878-1900), the Harvard Divinity School
• Oliver Otis Howard 1850, Civil War general, commissioner of the Freedmen's Bureau (1865-72), and founder and president of Howard University (1869-74)
• William Alfred Packard 1851, classical scholar and professor at Princeton University
• Kenneth Sills 1901, president of Bowdoin College (1918-52)
• Boyd Bartlett 1917, military officer and notable physics professor at the United States Military Academy
• Robert Albion 1918, author and professor at Princeton University (1922-47) and at Harvard University (1948-65).
• Asa S. Knowles 1930, President of the University of Toledo and Northeastern University, and namesake of the building which houses the Northeastern School of Law
• Lawrence Lee Pelletier 1936, president of Allegheny College, and namesake of the school's library
• Roger Howell, Jr. 1958, Rhodes Scholar and president of Bowdoin College (1969-78)
• Richard E. Morgan 1959, distinguished professor of Government at Bowdoin College (1969-present)
• Bruce E. Cain 1970, Rhodes Scholar and Heller Professor of Political Science at UC Berkeley (1989-present)
• Barry Mills 1972, president of Bowdoin College (2001-present) *
• Meredith Jung-En Woo 1980, professor at Northwestern University (1989-2000) and the University of Michigan (2001-present); expert on Korean politics

Fictional Alumni

• Hawkeye Pierce- the protagonist of H. Richard Hornberger's novel, M*A*S*H (1968), he attended a school based on Bowdoin; He was played by Donald Sutherland in the Academy Award-winning film version (1970) and by Alan Alda in the long-running TV series (1972-83)
• Dr. Wilbur Larch- the pro-choice doctor who raises, Homer Wells, the protagonist of John Irving's novel, The Cider House Rules (1985); Michael Caine won an Academy Award when he portrayed him in the film version (1999)
• Forney Hull- the main love interest of the lead character in Billie Letts' novel, Where the Heart Is (1995); he was played by James Frain in the film version (2000)

Honorary Degree Recipients

• Jefferson Davis LL.D. 1859, senator from Mississippi (1847-53, 1857-61), Secretary of War under President Franklin Pierce (1853-1857), and president of the Confederate States of America (1861-65); namesake of Bowdoin's award for excellence in government and constitutional law *
• Robert Frost Litt.D. 1926, Pulitzer Prize-winning poet and professor at Amherst College (1916-38)
• Harlan Fiske Stone LL.D. 1944, Attorney General under President Calvin Coolidge (1924-25); Associate (1925-41) and Chief (1941-46) Justice of the Supreme Court
• N.C. Wyeth A.M. 1945, American artist and illustrator
• Margaret Chase Smith LL.D. 1952, representative (1940-49) and senator (1949-73) from Maine
• Edmund Muskie LL.D. 1957, Maine governor (1954-58); senator from Maine (1958-1980); Secretary of State under President Jimmy Carter (1980-81)
• Edward Brooke LL.D. 1969, senator from Massachusetts (1967-79)
• Andrew Wyeth D.F.A. 1970, American artist
• E. Frederic Morrow LL.D. 1970, first black US presidential aide; former Bowdoin undergraduate (1926-30)
• Olympia Snowe LL.D. 1983, representative (1979-94) and senator (1994-present) from Maine
• George H. W. Bush LL.D. 1982, 43rd Vice President (1981-89) and 41st President of the United States (1989-1993)
• Maya Angelou, Litt.D. 1987, Pulitzer Prize-winning poet and author
• Ken Burns L.H.D. 1991, director of documentaries on the American Civil War (1990), baseball (1994) and jazz (2001)
• Cornel West L.H.D. 1999, celebrity professor at Yale, Harvard and Princeton *
• Paul Simon LL.D. 2001, congressman (1975-85) and senator (1985-97) from Illinois
• Shulamit Ran 2004, Pulitzer Prize-winning composer
• Torsten N. Wiesel 2004. Nobel Prize winner in medicine

Notable Faculty Members and Trustees (Non-Graduates)

• John Chandler (1762-1841), congressman and senator from Maine, trustee
• William King (1768-1862), Maine governor, trustee
• Jesse Appleton (1772-1819), president of Bowdoin and father of first lady Jane Pierce
• Parker Cleaveland (1780-1858), professor (50 years plus), scientist, "Father of American Mineralogy"
• Andrews Norton (1786-1853), theologian, visiting faculty member
• Amos Nourse (1794-1877), senator from Maine, professor of obstetrics
• James Bradbury (1802-1901), senator from Maine, trustee
• Roswell Dwight Hitchcock (1817-1887), professor of natural and revealed religion
• Charles Abiathar White (1826-1910), professor of natural history
• George Trumbull Ladd (1842-1921), professor of philosophy
• Roy Ridley (1890-1969), writer and poet, visiting faculty member
• Adam Walsh (football coach) (1901-1985), NFL Coach of the Year for the Cleveland Rams
• Rex Warner (1905-1986), English classicist, visiting faculty member
• Louis Coxe (1918-1993), poet and author, longtime professor of English
• Elliott Schwartz (1936-present), notable composer and Robert K. Beckwith Professor of Music Emiritus
• Angus King (1944-present), Maine governor, adjunct faculty member
• Richard Ford (1944-present), Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist of Independence Day
• Paul Franco (19??-present), professor of political philosophy