List of Massachusetts Institute of Technology alumni


This list of Massachusetts Institute of Technology alumni includes students who studied as undergraduates or graduate students at MIT's School of Engineering; School of Science; MIT Sloan School of Management; School of Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences; School of Architecture and Planning; or Whitaker College of Health Sciences. Since there are more than 120,000 alumni, this listing cannot be comprehensive. Instead, this article summarizes some of the more notable MIT alumni, with some indication of the reasons they are notable in the world at large. All MIT degrees are earned through academic achievement, in that MIT has never awarded honorary degrees in any form.
The MIT Alumni Association defines eligibility for membership as follows:

The following persons are Alumni/ae Members of the Association:
All persons who have received a degree from the Institute; and
All persons who have been registered as students in a degree-granting program at the Institute for at least one full term in any undergraduate class which has already graduated; or for at least two full terms as graduate students.

As a celebration of the new MIT building dedicated to nanotechnology laboratories in 2018, a special silicon wafer was designed and fabricated with an image of the Great Dome. This One.MIT image is composed of more than 270,000 individual names, comprising all the students, faculty, and staff at MIT during the years 1861–2018. A special website was set up to document the creation of a large wall display in the building, and to facilitate the location of individual names in the image.

Politics and public service

United States

International

Architecture and design

Computers and Internet

, the MIT Office of the Provost says that 76 Nobel awardees had or currently have a formal connection to MIT. Of this group, 29 have earned MIT degrees.
NameDegreeDegree yearAward yearAwardCitationNotes
George AkerlofPhD19662001Economics"for their analyses of markets with asymmetric information"
Sid AltmanSB19601989Chemistry"for their discovery of catalytic properties of RNA"
Kofi AnnanSM19722001Peace"for their work for a better organized and more peaceful world"
Robert AumannSM19522005Economics"for having enhanced our understanding of conflict and cooperation through game-theory analysis"
Elias James CoreySB, PhD1948, 19511990Chemistry"for his development of the theory and methodology of organic synthesis"
Eric CornellPhD19902001Physics"for the achievement of Bose-Einstein condensation in dilute gases of alkali atoms, and for early fundamental studies of the properties of the condensates"
Peter DiamondPhD19632010Economics"for analysis of markets with search frictions"
Richard FeynmanSB19391965Physics"for their fundamental work in quantum electrodynamics, with deep-ploughing consequences for the physics of elementary particles"
Andrew Z. FirePhD19832006Medicine/Physiology"for their discovery of RNA interference – gene silencing by double-stranded RNA"
Murray Gell-MannPhD19511969Physics"for his contributions and discoveries concerning the classification of elementary particles and their interactions"
Leland H. HartwellPhD19642001Medicine/Physiology"for their discoveries of key regulators of the cell cycle"
H. Robert HorvitzSB19682002Medicine/Physiology"for their discoveries concerning 'genetic regulation of organ development and programmed cell death'"
Henry W. KendallSB, PhD1948, 19511990Physics"for their pioneering investigations concerning deep inelastic scattering of electrons on protons and bound neutrons, which have been of essential importance for the development of the quark model in particle physics"
Lawrence KleinPhD19441980Economics"for the creation of econometric models and the application to the analysis of economic fluctuations and economic policies"
Paul KrugmanPhD19772009Economics"for developing new trade theory and"
Robert B. LaughlinPhD19791998Physics"for their discovery of a new form of quantum fluid with fractionally charged excitations"
Robert C. MertonPhD19701997Economics"for a new method to determine the value of derivatives"
Robert S. MullikenSB19171966Chemistry"for his fundamental work concerning chemical bonds and the electronic structure of molecules by the molecular orbital method"
Robert MundellPhD19561999Economics"for his analysis of monetary and fiscal policy under different exchange rate regimes and his analysis of optimum currency areas"
Charles PedersenSM19271987Chemistry"for their development and use of molecules with structure-specific interactions of high selectivity"
William D. PhillipsPhD19761997Physics"for development of methods to cool and trap atoms with laser light"
Burton RichterSB, PhD1952, 19561976Physics"for their pioneering work in the discovery of a heavy elementary particle of a new kind"
Adam RiessSB19922011Physics"for the discovery of the accelerating expansion of the Universe through observations of distant supernovae"
John Robert SchriefferSB19531972Physics"for their jointly developed theory of superconductivity, usually called the BCS-theory"
William ShockleyPhD19361956Physics"for their researches on semiconductors and their discovery of the transistor effect"
George F. SmootSB, PhD1966, 19702006Physics"for their discovery of the blackbody form and anisotropy of the cosmic microwave background radiation"
Joseph StiglitzPhD19662001Economics"for their analyses of markets with asymmetric information"
Carl E. WiemanSB19732001Physics"for the achievement of Bose-Einstein condensation in dilute gases of alkali atoms, and for early fundamental studies of the properties of the condensates"
Robert Burns WoodwardSB19361965Chemistry"for his outstanding achievements in the art of organic synthesis"
William D. NordhausPhD19672018Economics"for integrating climate change into long-run macroeconomic analysis"

Astronaut alumni