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This is a list of people associated with Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, including Presidents, Alumni, Professors, and Researchers.
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[edit] Presidents of Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute
| Name |
Years |
Previous Position |
| • Rev. Dr. Samuel Blatchford |
(1824–1828) |
Pastor of the Lansingburgh and Waterford Church. |
| • John Chester |
(1828–1829) |
Pastor of the Second Presbyterian Church in Albany. |
| • Eliphalet Nott |
(1829–1845) |
Pastor of a Presbyterian Church in Albany. |
| • Nathan S.S. Beman |
(1845–1865) |
Pastor of the First Presbyterian Church in Albany. |
| • John F. Winslow |
(1865–1868) |
Businessman and iron manufacturer. |
| • Thomas C. Brinsmade |
1868 |
Troy physician. |
| • James Forsyth |
(1868–1886) |
Attorney and Banker. |
| • William Gurley, 1839 |
(1886–1887) (acting) |
Businessman, co-founder of Gurley Precision Instruments |
| • Albert E. Powers |
(1887–1888) (acting) |
Banker |
| • John H. Peck |
(1888–1901) |
Attorney and judge. |
| • Palmer C. Ricketts |
(1901–1934) |
Professor of rational and technical mechanics and academic director of RPI. |
| • William O. Hotchkiss |
(1935–1943) |
President of the Houghton School of Mines. |
| • Livingston W. Houston, 1913 |
(1943–1958) |
President and board chairman of the Ludlow Valve Manufacturing Co. and treasurer of RPI. |
| • Richard G. Folsom |
(1958–1971) |
Director of the Engineering Research Institute at the University of Michigan. |
| • Richard J. Grosh |
(1971–1976) |
Dean of the School of Engineering at Purdue University. |
| • George M. Low, 1948 |
(1976–1984) |
Deputy administrator of NASA. |
| • Daniel Berg |
(1984–1985)(acting) (1985–1987) |
Vice-President and Provost of RPI. |
| • Stanley I. Landgraf,1987 |
(1988–1988)(acting) |
President of Capital Region Technology Development Council |
| • Roland W. Schmitt |
(1988–1993) |
Senior vice president for science and technology for General Electric Co. |
| • R. Byron Pipes |
(1993–1998) |
Provost and professor of engineering at the University of Delaware. |
| • Cornelius J. Barton, 1958 |
(1998–1999)(acting) |
CEO of Dorr-Oliver Incorporated, a chemical engineering firm |
| • Shirley Ann Jackson |
(1999– |
Chairman of the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission |
For a list of the highest elected student leaders at RPI see List of RPI Grand Marshals.
[edit] Notable alumni
[edit] Business
- Marshall Brain, founder of HowStuffWorks.com
- Gary Burrell, founder of Garmin
- James Crowe, (1972), co-founder and current CEO of Level 3 Communications [1]
- Nicholas M. Donofrio, (1967), director of research at IBM, trustee.
- J. Erik Jonsson (1922), co-founder and former president of Texas Instruments Incorporated, and mayor of Dallas.
- Joseph Gerber (1947), founder of Gerber Scientific.[2]
- William Gurley, (1839), and Lewis E. Gurley, brothers and founders of Gurley Precision Instruments
- George Knapp, (1876),industrialist, founder of the Union Carbide Company.
- William Mow, (1959) Founded apparel maker Bugle Boy in 1977.
- Curtis Priem, (1982) NVIDIA co-founder, architect of first PC Video Processor, and many that followed, trustee.
- Sheldon Roberts,(1948), member of the Traitorous Eight that created Silicon Valley; co-founder of Fairchild Semiconductor and Amelco.
- John Rigas, co-founder of Adelphia Communications.
- Paul Severino, (1969), founder and CEO of Wellfleet Communications. The Severino Center at the Lally school is named for him.
- Sean O’Sullivan, (1985), along with four other RPI students founded MapInfo on the RPI campus.
- Bert Sutherland, manager of Sun Microsystems laboratories.
- Robert O. Swanson, (1958), retired executive vice president and director of Mobil Oil Corporation.
- William H. Wiley(1866), Civil War artillery commander, co-founder of publisher John Wiley and Sons, and US State Representative.
- Edward Zander, CEO of Motorola.
[edit] Humanities, arts, and social sciences
- David Cheever, artist and architect
- Charles Amos Cummings, architect and historian
- Bobby Farrelly, famous director, writer and producer of such films as "Shallow Hal" and "There's Something About Mary"
- James Flaherty, actor and stand up comedian.
- Fitzedward Hall, (1901), American Orientalist
- Ned Herrmann, creator of the Herrmann Brain Dominance Instrument
- Jennifer & Kevin McCoy, artists who both graduated from RPI.
- Mary Pride,(1974), Christian author
- Jennifer Seng, artist of the comic strip The Boondocks.
- Samuel Wells Williams, 19th-century linguist
[edit] Invention & Engineering
- Truman H. Aldrich (1869), civil engineer, also briefly a US State Representative
- George S. Ansell: President of the Colorado School of Mines
- Garnet Baltimore (1881), engineer and Garnet D. Baltimore Lecture Series honoree.
- Leffert L. Buck,(1968), civil engineer and a pioneer in the use of steel arch bridge structures, including the Williamsburg Bridge in NYC.
- Milton Brumer (1923), chief engineer for the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge and George Washington Bridges in NYC. [3]
- Alexander Cassatt,(1859), civil engineer and railroad executive.
- Dr. Allen B. Dumont (1924), perfected the cathode ray tube and is considered the "father of modern TV"
- George W. G. Ferris (1881), inventor of the Ferris Wheel
- Lois Graham (1946), first woman in the U.S. to earn a Ph.D. in mechanical engineering, and the first woman fellow of the American Society of Heating, Refrigerating and Air-Conditioning Engineers
- Frederick Grinnell (1855), inventor of the fire sprinkler.
- Walter Lincoln Hawkins,(1931), African American inventor of plastic telephone wire.
- Beatrice Hicks, (1965), co-founder of Society of Women Engineers.
- Marcian Hoff (1958), the "father of the microprocessor"
- Walter E. Irving (1896), founded in 1902 what was to become the Irving Subway Grating Co. He invented the “Streamline Splice" technology to create steel floors.
- Howard P. Isermann (1942), developed the ultraviolet absorber that became the most effective and leading sunscreen in the world.
- J. Christopher Jaffe (1949), leader in architectural acoustic design. Taught acoustics at the Juilliard School, City University of New York, and Rensselaer.
- Theodore Judah (1837) visionary of the transcontinental railroad.
- William Metcalf, (1858) Steel manufacturing pioneer.
- Keith D. Millis (1938), metallurgical engineer and inventor of ductile iron.
- Emil H. Praeger, (1915), designer of Shea and Dodger Stadiums, Tappan Zee Bridge,Arecibo Telescope, and even a renovation of the White House
- Daniel Reed, (2003) software engineer at Google, also created popular chat program naim.
- Washington Roebling (1857), chief engineer of the Brooklyn Bridge.
- James Salisbury, (1844), physician and inventor of the Salisbury Steak.
- Raymond Tomlinson(1963), inventor of the electronic mail (email) system.
- Alan M. Voorhees (1947), city planner and traffic forecaster. Also a former Rensselaer trustee and principal supporter for Rensselaer's Voorhees Computing Center.
- John Alexander Low Waddell,(1871), civil engineer and prolific bridge builder.
[edit] Politics and public service
- George R. Dennis, was a United States Senator from Maryland
- Thomas Farrell (1912), Deputy Commanding General of the Manhattan Project
- Nariman Farvardin, Dean of Engineering at the University of Maryland
- Lincoln D. Faurer,(1964), director of the National Security Agency and chief, Central Security Service from 1981 to 1985.
- Arthur J. Gajarsa, Federal judge, trustee.
- Thomas J. Haas, current president of Grand Valley State University.
- George Low, manager of NASA for the Apollo 11 project. Low was president of RPI from 1976 to 1984. The Low Center for Industrial Innovation on campus is named after him.
- John Olver, (1958), Massachusetts State Representative (D), since 1991.
- Ely S. Parker, Civil War Statesman, author of Appomattox Courthouse agreement.
- Mark Shepard, (1994), Vermont State Senator
- Clement Hall Sinnickson, US State Representative
- Peter G. Ten Eyck, New York State Representative
- Tony Tether, (1964), director of DARPA as of 2001
- Arthur E. Williams, US Army Chief of Engineers
- Devolson Wood, (1857) Helped organize the American Society for Engineering Education and held its first presidency.
- Dave Volonino, (1979), a Chief of Staff for the US Navy.
- Ronald J. Zlatoper,(1963), Chief of Naval Personnel, Battle Group Commander in Desert Storm and Desert Shield, and former Military Assistant to the Secretary of Defense. Trustee.
[edit] Science and technology
- Don L. Anderson (1955), famous geophysiscist
- Ronald Collé,(1972), nuclear physicist at NIST.
- Mark Jason Dominus, Perl programmer, founder of Kibology (Kibo was also a graduate)
- Ebenezer Emmons (1826), Geologist, author of Natural History of New York (1848) and American Geology
- Asa Fitch (1827), entomologist.
- Claire M. Fraser,(1977), President and Director of The Institute for Genomic Research.
- Jeffrey M. Friedman, discovered lepitin, a key hormone in the area of human obesity.
- Michael James Gaffey, planetary scientist
- Ivar Giaever,(1964), shared the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1973 for discoveries on tunneling phenomena in Semiconductors. Currently an Institute Professor of Science
- Morton Gurtin,(1955), mathematical physicist.
- James Hall (1832), American Geologist and paleontologist
- Jon Hall, (1947), Executive Director of Linux International
- Eben N. Horsford (1838), "father of food science" and author, most famous for discovering baking powder.
- Douglass Houghton (1829), Michigan’s first state geologist. Discovered deposits of salt, copper, and iron. A Michigan city, county, and lake honor his name.
- Robert Kennicutt,(1973), astronomer
- Richard Klein, astronomer
- James "Kibo" Parry, satirist, Usenet personality, and typeface designer.
- David Korn, (1965), computer programmer who created the Korn Shell, a popular UNIX shell.
- Richard Mastracchio, (1987) NASA Astronaut, flew on STS-106 Atlantis (September 8-20, 2000).
- Pat Munday,(1981), Environmentalist
- Gabriel Oyibo, Mathematician
- Robert Resnick,(1949), Author of well-read physics textbooks and famous physics educator.
- Henry Augustus Rowland (1870), first president of the American Physical Society and Johns Hopkins University's first physics professor.
- Robert C. Seacord, well known computer security specialist and author
- Kip Siegel (1948), Physicist
- Peter Schwartz, Futurist
- John L. Swigert Jr. (1965), an Air Force fighter pilot and test pilot, earned a master’s degree in aerospace science from Rensselaer’s Hartford campus in 1965 and in 1966 was selected by NASA in its 5th astronaut class. Member of Apollo 13. Recipient of Presidential Medal of Freedom,1970. State Representative for Colorado,1982.
- Dennis Tito, American millionaire and the first space tourist to pay for his own ticket.
- Chris Wysopal (Weld Pond) (1987), member of the hacker think tank L0pht Heavy Industries, pioneer in software vulnerability research.
[edit] Sports
- Myles Brand (1964),president of the NCAA (National Collegiate Athletic Association).
- Erin Crocker (2003), female NASCAR driver.
- Joé Juneau, (1991) 14-year NHL veteran, top scorer at the 1992 Winter Olympics while playing for the Canadian Olympic hockey team.
- Neil Little, NHL player for Philadelphia Flyers, and Canadian player.
- Matt Murley, NHL player for the Colorado Avalanche.
- Adam Oates, NHL player from 1985 to 2004, 6th on the NHL's all-time assists list.
- Brian Pothier, NHL player for the Washington Capitals
- Darren Puppa, Played for 15 seasons in the NHL.
- Brad Tapper, Canadian Hockey player.
[edit] Professors and researchers
[edit] Current
[edit] Recent commencement speakers
- 2006 - Wesley Clark, former NATO commander
- 2005 - Hillary Rodham Clinton, Senator from New York, First Lady
- 2004 - Robert Metcalfe, inventor of Ethernet and 3Com founder
- 2003 - Ben Carson, neurosurgeon
- 2002 - Dennis Tito, space tourist
- 2001 - Bill Cosby, entertainer
- 2000 - Rodney E. Slater, U.S. Secretary of Transportation 1997–2001
- 1999 - Bill Nye, "The Science Guy"
- 1994 - William Mow, Founder of Bugle Boy
- 1992 - Tom Clancy, author, Co-founder of Red Storm Entertainment
[edit] External links & References
