- Herbie Hancock
Herbert Jeffrey Hancock (born April 12 1940 in Chicago, Illinois) is an Academy Award and multiple Grammy Award-winning jazz pianist and composer. Hancock is one of jazz music's most important and influential pianists and composers. He embraced elements of rock, funk, and soul while adopting freer stylistic elements from jazz. As part of Miles Davis's "second great quintet", Hancock helped redefine the role of a jazz rhythm section, …
- Russell K. Osgood
Russell Osgood is the Twelfth President of Grinnell College (1998-present) and Professor of history and political science. He is a legal scholar and holds a B.A. and J.D. from Yale University. As of 2003, Russell Osgood is the highest paid liberal arts college president in America (source); according to the Des Moines Register, he earned $509,130 in the fiscal year ending June 30, 2004.
- Robert Noyce
Robert Noyce, Ph.D. (December 12, 1927 - June 3, 1990), nicknamed "the Mayor of Silicon Valley", co-founded Fairchild Semiconductor in 1957 and Intel in 1968. He is also credited (along with Jack Kilby) with the invention of the integrated circuit or microchip although Kilby's invention was 6 months earlier. Noyce was born in Burlington, Iowa.
- Harry Hopkins
Harry Lloyd Hopkins (August 17 1890 - January 29 1946) was one of Franklin Delano Roosevelt's closest advisers. He was one of the architects of the New Deal, especially the relief programs of the Works Progress Administration (WPA), which he directed and built into the largest employer in the country. In World War II he was Roosevelt's chief diplomatic advisor and troubleshooter and was a key policy maker in the $50 billion Lend Lease program that sent aid to the allies.
- John Garang
John Garang de Mabior was the vice president of Sudan and former leader of the rebel Sudan People's Liberation Army.
- Gary Cooper
Gary Cooper was a two-time Academy Award-winning American film actor of English heritage. His career spanned from the 1920s until the year of his death, and saw him make one hundred films. He was renowned for his quiet, understated acting style and his stoic, individualistic, emotionally restrained, but at times intense screen persona, which was particularly well suited for the many Westerns he made. Cooper received five Oscar nominations for Best Actor, winning twice.
- Edward Hirsch
Edward Hirsch (born January 20, 1950) an American poet and academic who wrote a best seller about reading poetry. He is the president of the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation in New York City.
- Mary Sue Coleman
Mary Sue Coleman (born October 2, 1943 in Kentucky) is the current president of the University of Michigan, having served since 2002. Coleman previously was president of the University of Iowa. She is a member of the National Academy of Sciences' Institute of Medicine, and a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. She received her Bachelor of Arts degree in chemistry from Grinnell College, …
- Peter Coyote
Peter Coyote (born October 10, 1941) is an American actor and author who has appeared in over 70 films and has narrated many documentaries and audio books. His voice work includes narrating the opening ceremony of the 2002 Winter Olympics. He has also served as an announcer during Oscar telecasts. He is the cofounder, with Emmett Grogan, of the San Francisco Diggers and a veteran of the San Francisco Mime Troupe.
- Josiah Bushnell Grinnell
Josiah Bushnell Grinnell (born December 22, 1821; died March 31, 1891) was a U.S. Congressman from Iowa, ordained Presbyterian clergyman, founder of Grinnell, Iowa and benefactor of Grinnell College. J.B. Grinnell was born in New Haven, Vermont in 1821. Grinnell studied the Classics and graduated from Auburn Theological Seminary in 1847. He held pastorates in Washington, DC and New York City before moving to Iowa.
- Benjamin Barber
Benjamin R. Barber (b. August 2, 1939) is the Gershon and Carol Kekst Professor of Civil Society and Distinguished University Professor at the University of Maryland, College Park School of Public Policy, as well as president and director of the international NGO CivWorld, and its annual Interdependence Day event, and distinguished senior fellow at Demos. Barber is perhaps best known for his 1996 bestseller, "Jihad vs. McWorld".
- Tom Cole
Thomas Jeffery Cole (born April 28, 1949) is a politician from the state of Oklahoma, currently representing Oklahoma's 4th Congressional District (map) in the U.S. House of Representatives. Cole, the chairman of the National Republican Congressional Committee (NRCC), is the fourth-ranking Republican leader in the House. He also serves on the Armed Services Committee and the Natural Resources Committee, and is a Deputy Minority Whip.
- Thomas Cech
Thomas Robert Cech (December 8, 1947 in Chicago) is a Nobel Laureate in chemistry. He grew up in Iowa City, Iowa. In 1966, he entered Grinnell College where he obtained a B.A. in 1970. In 1975, Cech completed his Ph.D. in Chemistry at the University of California, Berkeley and in the same year, he entered the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge where he engaged in postdoctoral research.
- Emily Bergl
Emily Bergl (born on April 25, 1975, in Milton Keynes, England) is an English-American actress. She moved to Chicago with her family when she was a child and attended Glenbrook South High School and Grinnell College, where she was the lead in several school productions. She graduated Phi Beta Kappa in 1997 with a B.A. in English and Theater. Bergl played the lead role in the film, "The Rage: Carrie 2". Much of her acting also takes place on television.
- Amy Clampitt
Amy Clampitt (1920 - 1994) was an American poet and author.
- Walter Koenig
Walter Marvin Koenig (born September 14, 1936) is an American actor, writer, teacher and director, known for his roles as Chekov in "Star Trek", and as Bester on the series "Babylon 5".
- Grant O. Gale
Grant Oscar Gale (1903-1998) was a professor of physics at Grinnell College in Grinnell, Iowa. In 1928 Grant O. Gale came to the college as an instructor in physics, and eventually became Professor of Physics. Until his death in 1998 he collected science equipment which had become obsolete and maintained a series of exhibits which now form the core of Grinnell's Physics Historical Museum. One of Professor Gale's most noted students was Robert Noyce, …
- Joseph Frazier Wall
Joseph Frazier Wall (July 10 1920, Des Moines, Iowa - October 9 1995) was an American historian and professor of history at Grinnell College. His biography of Andrew Carnegie won the Bancroft Prize in 1971, and he was later nominated for the Pulitzer Prize for his biography on the Du Pont family.
- Susan J. Ferguson
Susan J. Ferguson is an Associate Professor of sociology at Grinnell College. She received her B.A. in Spanish and political science from Colorado State University in 1984, as well as her 1988 M.A. in sociology; she received her Ph.D. in sociology in 1993 from the University of Massachusetts - Amherst. She specialises in the areas of sociology of the family, Asian women, medical sociology, women's health, feminism and teaching.
- James Norman Hall
James Norman Hall was an American author best known for the novel "Mutiny on the Bounty".
- Hallie Flanagan
Hallie Flanagan (27 August, 1889-23 July, 1969) was an American theatrical producer and director, playwright, author and director of the Federal Theatre Project, a part of the Works Progress Administration. Born Hallie Ferguson in Redfield, South Dakota, Flanagan was raised in Grinnell, Iowa. After attending Grinnell College, she enrolled in George Pierce Baker's influential 47 Workshop class at Harvard University.
- David Maxwell
David Maxwell (b. 1944, New York City) is the president of Drake University in Des Moines, Iowa. He is the 12th president of Drake and stepped into the role on May 15, 1999.
- Gary Giddins
Gary Giddins (Born March 21, 1948) critic, author, director, best known for his longtime work with The Village Voice. Born in Brooklyn, and raised on Long Island, Giddins graduated from Grinnell College, Iowa, in 1970. After some freelance work as a music and film critic, in 1974 he started writing his column "Weather Bird" for the Village Voice, which he ended in December 2003.
- George A. Wilson
George Allison Wilson (April 1, 1884 - September 8, 1953) was a United States Senator and Governor of Iowa. Born on a farm near Menlo, Iowa, he attended the rural schools, and Grinnell College; he later graduated from the law school of the State University of Iowa at Iowa City in 1907, and was admitted to the bar the same year, commencing practice in Des Moines. He was assistant county attorney of Polk County, …
- Morgan Taylor
Frederick Morgan Taylor (April 17, 1903 - February 16, 1975) was an American hurdler, winner of three Olympic medals. Morgan Taylor, from Sioux City, Iowa, competed in both track and field and football at Grinnell College. At the American trials for the 1924 Summer Olympics, he broke the world record in the 400 m hurdles on two occasions, making him a favourite for the Olympic gold. In Paris, he broke his World Record again, with a margin of 1.4 seconds to win the gold.
- Charles A. Rawson
Charles Augustus Rawson was a United States Senator from Iowa. Born in Des Moines, he attended the public schools and Grinnell College. He engaged in banking and the insurance business and also in the manufacture of clay products, and was a member of the board of trustees of Grinnell. He was State chairman of the war work council of the Young Men's Christian Association and served overseas with that organization during the First World War.
- Marshall Poe
Marshall Tillbrook Poe (born December 29, 1961) is an American historian and the author of many works on early modern Russia (Muscovy). He is also the founder and editor of MemoryArchive, a universal wiki-type archive of contemporary memoirs. Poe graduated from Wichita (Kansas) Southeast High School in 1980. He earned a Bachelor of Arts degree at Grinnell College in 1984 and his Ph.D. in history at the University of California, Berkeley in 1992.
- Joseph Welch
Joseph Nye Welch (October 22, 1890 - October 6, 1960) was the head attorney for the United States Army while it was under investigation by Joseph McCarthy's Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations for Communist activities. This investigation (known as the "Army-McCarthy Hearings") was underway when television was first becoming a common household product in the United States. It was the first time many people got a first-hand view of McCarthy.
- Kevin Cannon
Kevin Cannon is an American cartoonist and illustrator. His first published work was "Johnny Cavalier", published by Grinnell College Press, which included 100 pages of weekly strips that originally ran in the "Scarlet and Black". While attending Grinnell, Kevin was often asked if he was Zander Cannon's brother. This caused him to contact Zander at The Handicraft Guild in Minneapolis and began work as his assistant.
- Joseph Rosenfield
Joseph Frankel Rosenfield was an American lawyer, businessman and philanthropist. He graduated Grinnell College in 1925 and earned a J.D. from the University of Iowa in 1928. He began practicing law with a Des Moines law firm until 1947. Upon the death of his father Meyer Rosenfield in 1929, Rosenfield Younker's department store, which had merged with his family'd retail business, and retired in 1964 as president and chairman of the board.
- Thomas J. Watson Fellowship
The Thomas J. Watson Fellowship is a grant that enables graduating seniors to pursue a year of independent study outside the United States. The Fellowship Program was established by the children of Thomas J. Watson, the founder of IBM. The fellowship itself grants recipients money to spend one year traveling in pursuit of their projects. Recipients are forbidden from reentering the United States and their home country for one year.
- César Pelli
César Pelli is a noted architect known for designing some of the world's tallest buildings and other major urban landmarks. His firm has its headquarters and employs about 100 architects in New Haven, Connecticut. He is known for his extensive use of curved facades and metallic elements in his designs. Pelli emigrated to the United States in 1952 and became a naturalized U.S. citizen in 1964. After studying architecture at the Universidad Nacional de Tucumán, …
- George Moose
George Edward Moose (born June 23, 1944) was an American diplomat who served as Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs, Ambassador to the UN agencies in Geneva, and as Ambassador to the Republics of Benin and Senegal. He is primarily known for serving as Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs in the Clinton Administration during the genocide in Rwanda. George Moose was born in New York City in 1944 and was raised in Denver, Colorado.
- Paul Appleby
Paul Henson Appleby (September 13, 1891-1963) was an important theorist of public administration in democracies. According to his biographical sketch associated with his collected papers at the University at Albany, Appleby was born in Greene County, Missourito Andrew B. and Mary (Johnson) Appleby. He earned his A.B. from Grinnell College in 1913. He married Ruth Meyer on October 4, 1916. The couple had three children, Margaret Finley, Mary Ellen Sarbaugh, and L. Tom.
- Walter Netsch
Walter Netsch (1920-) is a German-American architect based in Chicago. He designed the United States Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs, Colorado, which was named a National Historic Landmark in 2004. He is most closely associated with the Brutalist style of architecture, as well as the firm of Skidmore, Owings, and Merrill. His signature aesthetic is known as Field Theory and is based on rotating squares into complex shapes.
- Alan Wheat
Alan Dupree Wheat (born October 16, 1951 in San Antonio, Texas) is an American politician from the state of Missouri.
- Zander Cannon
Alexander "Zander" Cannon (born November 1, 1972) is an American comics writer and artist. Cannon was born in Boston, Massachusetts. He graduated from Grinnell College in 1995 with a B.A. in English. His first professional comics work was "The Chainsaw Vigilante", a spin-off from "The Tick", from New England Comics Press. Beginning in the mid-1990s, he wrote and drew "The Replacement God", …
- Kenneth Adelman
Ken Adelman is an American diplomat. He was the deputy U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations for two-and a half years, working with Jeanne Kirkpatrick. He also served as the Director of the U.S. Arms Control & Disarmament Agency for nearly five years, during the Reagan administration. He was an advisor to President Ronald Reagan during the superpower summits between Reagan and Soviet General Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev.
- Scott Raecker
Scott Raecker is the Iowa State Representative from the 63rd District. He has served in the Iowa House of Representatives since 1999. He received his BA from Grinnell College. Raecker currently serves on several committees in the Iowa House - the Education committee; the Ethics committee; the State Government committee; and the Appropriations committee, where he is the ranking member.
- Sam Tanenhaus
Sam Tanenhaus (born October 31, 1955) is an American author, historian and biographer. Tanenhaus received his B.A. in English from Grinnell College in 1977 and a M.A. in English Literature from Yale University in 1978. Tanenhaus was an assistant editor at "The New York Times" from 1997 to 1999, and a contributing editor at "Vanity Fair" from 1999 until 2004. Since 2004, he has been the senior editor of "The New York Times Book Review".