- Richard Smalley
Richard Errett Smalley was the "Gene and Norman Hackerman Professor of Chemistry" and a Professor of Physics and Astronomy at Rice University, in Houston, Texas. He was awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1996 for the discovery of a new form of carbon, buckminsterfullerene ("buckyballs") (with Robert Curl, also a professor of chemistry at Rice, and Harold Kroto, a professor at the University of Sussex).
- Ken Kennedy
American computer scientist Ken Kennedy (August 12,1945 - February 7,2007) was a professor at Rice University, and the founding chairman of Rice's Computer Science Department. Kennedy directed the construction of several substantial software systems for programming parallel computers, including an automatic vectorizer for Fortran 77, an integrated scientific programming environment, compilers for Fortran 90 and High Performance Fortran, …
- William Marsh Rice
William Marsh Rice (March 14, 1816 - September 23, 1900) was born in Springfield, Massachusetts. He made his fortune in Texas by trading cotton, and investing in land and railroads. He left the bulk of his estate to the founding of a free institute of higher learning in Houston, Texas. Opening 1912 as "William Marsh Rice Institute for the Advancement of Literature, Art, and Science", it is known today as Rice University.
- Naomi Halas
Naomi Halas is the Stanley C. Moore professor in Electrical and Computer Engineering and professor in Chemistry at Rice University. Her current work focuses on nanoshells which her nanophotonics group is developing at Rice University. In 1987, she was part of a team that developed a "dark pulse" soliton while working for IBM.
- James Tour
James Tour is a synthetic organic chemist, specializing in nanotechnology. He is well-known for his work in molecular electronics and molecular switching molecules. He has also been involved in other work, such as the creation of a nanocar and NanoKids, an interactive learning DVD to teach children fundamentals of chemistry and physics. Dr. Tour was also a founder of the Molecular Electronics Corporation. He holds joint appointments in the departments of chemistry, …
- David Leebron
Mr. David W. Leebron 07/2004 N/A CEO/Executive Director Experience David W. Leebron was appointed the seventh President of Rice University in 2004, where he is also Professor of Political Science. He grew up in Philadelphia and graduated summa cum laude from Harvard College in 1976. He attended Harvard Law School, and in his second year was elected President of the Harvard Law Review.
- Jack Dongarra
Jack Dongarra is a University Distinguished Professor of Computer Science in the Computer Science Department at the University of Tennessee. He holds the position of a Distinguished Research Staff member in the Computer Science and Mathematics Division at Oak Ridge National Laboratory , and is an Adjunct Professor in the Computer Science Department at Rice University.
- Morris Almond
Almond gained prominence on his junior year, when he improved from scoring 7.2 point per game, to 21.9. He led all Conference USA players in scoring that year. Almond flirted with entering the 2006 NBA Draft but decided to pursue his senior season at Rice.
- Robert Curl
Robert Floyd Curl, Jr. (born August 23, 1933) the son of a Methodist Minister is an emeritus professor of chemistry at Rice University. He was awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1996 for the discovery of fullerene (with the late Richard Smalley, also of Rice University, and Harold Kroto of the University of Sussex). Born in Alice, Texas, United States, Curl received a B.A. from Rice University in 1954 and a Ph.D. in chemistry from the University of California, …
- Norman Hackerman
Norman Hackerman was an American chemist, internationally known as an expert in metal corrosion, and a former president of both the University of Texas at Austin (1967 – 1970) and Rice University (1970 – 1985). Born in Baltimore, Maryland, he was the only son of Jacob and Ann Raffel Hackerman, immigrants from regions of the Russian Empire that later became Estonia and Latvia, respectively.
- Edward Djerejian
Edward P. Djerejian is a former US diplomat, currently Director of the James A. Baker III Institute for Public Policy at Rice University.
- Matthias Felleisen
Matthias Felleisen is a computer science professor and an author of German background. Felleisen is currently a Trustee Professor in the College of Computer and Information Science at Northeastern University in Boston, Massachusetts. In the past he has taught at Rice University. Felleisen's interests include design of programming tools, web programming, and software contracts for software applications.
- Douglas Brinkley
Douglas Brinkley (born December 14, 1960) is a prolific author and a professor of history at Tulane University, where he also serves as director of the Theodore Roosevelt Center for American Civilization. He is slated to join Rice University and the James Baker Institute on July 1, 2007. The late historian, Stephen E. Ambrose, once called Brinkley "the best of the new generation of American historians." During the early 1990s, …
- Harold Kroto
Professor Kroto is a distinguished scientist, humanist and designer born in Cambridgeshire to parents who moved to the UK from Germany in the late 1930s. His father was interned during World War II and he and his mother moved to Bolton in 1940. Professor Kroto's father was an engineer, who in 1955 established his own balloon-making factory.
- Todd Graham
Todd Graham (born December 5, 1964 in Mesquite, Texas) is the head football coach at the University of Tulsa. He was previously the head coach at Rice University in Houston, Texas.
- Wayne Graham
Wayne Graham (born April 6, 1936 in Yoakum, Texas) is a former major-league baseball player and the college baseball coach at Rice University in Houston, Texas.
- Richard A. Tapia
Richard A. Tapia (born March 25, 1939) is a renowned American mathematician and champion of under-represented minorities in the sciences. Tapia is currently the Maxfield and Oshman Professor of Engineering at Rice University in Houston, Texas. In recognition of his broad contributions, in 2005, Tapia was named "University Professor" at Rice University, the University's highest academic title.
- Earl Black
Earl Black (b. 1942) is a professor of Political Science at Rice University and a well-known expert on the politics of the Southern United States, particularly as they relate to race. He and his twin brother, Merle Black, a professor at Emory University, have written several books on the politics of the South and the United States as a whole. Earl Black earned a B.A. at the University of Texas at Austin in 1964 and his Ph.D. from Harvard University in 1968.
- John Doerr
L. John Doerr (born June 29, 1951 in St. Louis, Missouri) is a successful venture capitalist at Kleiner, Perkins, Caufield & Byers in Menlo Park, California, in the Silicon Valley. Doerr obtained a Bachelor of Science and master's degree in electrical engineering from Rice University and an MBA from Harvard University in 1976. Doerr joined Intel Corporation in 1974 just as the firm was developing the 8080 8-bit microprocessor.
- Lance Berkman
William Lance Berkman (born February 10, 1976 in Waco, Texas) is a Major League Baseball player for the Houston Astros. His official listed height is six feet, one inch, and his weight is 220 pounds (100 kg). Berkman is a switch-hitting outfielder/first baseman who throws left-handed. He is also known as "Big Puma" or "Fat Elvis" (although he has stated that he dislikes the latter)
- Paul Burka
Paul Burka joined the staff of TEXAS MONTHLY one year after the magazine's founding. A lifelong Texan, he was born in Galveston, graduated from Rice University with a B.A. in history, and received a J.D. from the University of Texas School of Law. Burka is a member of the State Bar of Texas and spent five years as an attorney with the Texas Legislature, where he served as counsel to the Senate Natural Resources Committee.
- Larry McMurtry
Larry McMurtry (born June 3, 1936 in Wichita Falls, Texas) is a novelist, screenwriter, and essayist. McMurtry is best known for his Pulitzer Prize-winning 1985 novel "Lonesome Dove", a sweeping historical epic that follows ex-Texas Rangers as they drive their cattle from the Rio Grande to a new home in the frontier of Montana. It was adapted into a hit television miniseries. Much of his other fiction is also set in the "old west" or contemporary Texas.
- Bev Harris
Bev Harris is an American activist and founder of Black Box Voting Inc., a national nonpartisan, nonprofit elections watchdog group opposed to voting machines. She helped popularized the term Black Box Voting, while authoring a book of that title. She first gained national prominence in 2002 when she discovered that Senator Hagel of Nebraska owned a large share of ES&S, a major voting machine manufacturer of the machines that counted the majority of votes in Nebraska.
- Bruce Mau
Bruce Mau (born October 25, 1959 in Sudbury, Ontario) is a Canadian designer. Mau is the creative director of Bruce Mau Design, and the founder of the Institute without Boundaries. Bruce Mau studied at the Ontario College of Art & Design in Toronto, but left prior to graduation in order to join the Fifty Fingers design group in 1980. He stayed there for two years, before crossing the ocean for a brief sojourn at Pentagram in the UK. Returning to Toronto a year later, …
- Ken Hatfield
Ken Hatfield is an American football head coach. His last position was at Rice University, where he compiled a 55-78-1 record before resigning on November 30, 2005, following a 1-10 season. A graduate of the University of Arkansas, where he starred at defensive back for the 1964 NCAA Division I-A national football championship team alongside such pro football luminaries as Jimmy Johnson and Jerry Jones, …
- Willis Wilson
Willis Thomas Wilson, Jr. (born March 22, 1960 in Indianapolis, Indiana) is a college basketball head coach, currently in his 15th season at Rice University. Similar to the nickname of basketball coaching legend John Wooden ("The Wizard of Westwood"), Willis is nicknamed "The Wizard of West U" ("West U" referring to West University Place, a city near Rice University).
- Joe Savery
Joseph Cain Savery (born November 4, 1985 in Houston, Texas) is a pitcher drafted by the Philadelphia Phillies. Savery was the Phillies' first-round draft pick out of Rice University in 2007 as the 19th overall pick.
- Lynn Harrell
Lynn Harrell (born January 30, 1944) is an American classical cellist. Harrell was born in New York of musician parents; his father was the distinguished baritone Mack Harrell and his mother, Marjorie Fulton, was a violinist. At the age of eight he decided to learn to play the cello. When Lynn was 12, his family moved to Dallas, Texas, where Lynn studied with Lev Aronson.
- David Bailiff
David Bailiff (born May 26, 1958 in San Antonio, Texas) is a college football coach, who is currently the head coach at Rice University in Houston, Texas. Bailiff played for three years as an offensive lineman and tight end for coach Jim Wacker at Southwest Texas State University in San Marcos, Texas. As a senior in 1980, he was team captain.
- Philip Humber
Philip Gregory Humber (born December 21, 1982 in Nacogdoches, Texas) is a minor-league baseball pitcher in the New York Mets organization. He was the Mets' first-round draft pick out of Rice University in 2004. The third overall pick in that draft, he received a $3.7 million signing bonus in January 2005 after a long holdout. He was drafted by the New York Yankees in the 29th round of the 2001 Major League Baseball Draft, but he did not sign.
- Jeff Niemann
Jeffrey Warren Niemann (born February 28, 1983 in Houston, Texas) is a starting pitcher who plays for the Tampa Bay Devil Rays organization. He is currently on the 40-man roster. Niemann was the Devil Rays' first-round draft pick out of Rice University in 2004 as the fourth overall pick. He signed a major-league contract in January 2005 worth $5.2 million.
- Wade Townsend
Wade Daniel Townsend (born February 22, 1983 in Austin, Texas) is a minor-league baseball pitcher in the Tampa Bay Devil Rays organization. He was the Devil Rays' first-round draft pick out of Rice University in 2005, signing for a $1.5 million bonus. Townsend was initially drafted by the Baltimore Orioles with the eighth pick of the 2004 draft but returned to Rice to finish his degree and was ruled ineligible to continue negotiation with the Orioles.
- Maurice Ewing
William Maurice "Doc" Ewing (May 12 1906 - May 4 1974) was an American geophysicist and oceanographer. Ewing has been described as a pioneering geophysicist who worked on the research of seismic reflection and refraction in ocean basins, ocean bottom photography, submarine sound transmission, deep sea coring of the ocean bottom, theory and observation of earthquake surface waves, fluidity of the earth's core, generation and propagation of microseisms, …
- Peggy Whitson
Peggy Annette Whitson (born 9 February 1960) is an American biochemistry researcher and a NASA astronaut. Her experience with NASA includes an extended stay aboard the International Space Station (ISS) as a member of Expedition 5, and she is scheduled to be commander of ISS Expedition 16. She will be the first woman to command an ISS Expedition. In addition, if the STS-120 mission, which will be commanded by female astronaut Pam Melroy, launches on schedule, …
- Jon Kimura Parker
Jon Kimura Parker is a Canadian pianist. He was born in Vancouver, Canada. He appeared with the Vancouver Youth Orchestra when he was five. He later studied at The Juilliard School of music under Adele Marcus. He's been the recipient of many international awards including being made an Officer of the Order of Canada in 1999. He has performed worldwide and has recorded works by Chopin, Tchaikovsky and Prokofiev.
- Scott Hochberg
Scott Hochberg (born 1953) is a member of the Texas House of Representatives representing District 137 in southwest Houston. The district includes Gulfton, Sharpstown, Briarmeadow, Shenandoah, Piney Point, and nearby communities.
- Paul Ellison
Paul Ellison (born October 17, 1941) is co-principal bass at the Aspen and Grand Teton Festivals, and is Professor of Double Bass at Rice University's Shepherd School of Music. Mr. Ellison enjoyed 23 years as principal bass of the Houston Symphony Orchestra, several years as principal double bass of the Santa Fe Opera, and seven years as chair of strings at the University of Southern California.
- Steve Jackson
Steve Jackson (born ~1953) is an American game designer. After working for many years at Metagaming designing such games as "Ogre" and "The Fantasy Trip", he left to found Steve Jackson Games (SJ Games) in the early 1980s. He designed many of the games published by SJ Games, such as "Car Wars", "GURPS", "Munchkin" and many others.
- Mark Embree
Mark Embree is professor of numerical analysis at the Computational and Applied Mathematics department in Rice University. His main research interests are Krylov subspace methods, non-normal operators and spectral perturbation theory, Toeplitz matrices, random matrices, and damped wave operators. Mark Embree was awarded Man of the Year and Outstanding Student in the College of Arts and Sciences at Virginia Tech in 1996. He is also a Rhodes Scholar (1996).
- Jeffrey J. Kripal
Jeffrey J. Kripal (Ph. D., University of Chicago 1993) is the J. Newton Rayzor Professor of Religious Studies and Chair of the Department of Religious Studies at Rice University, Houston, Texas, USA. He is the author of "Roads of Excess, Palaces of Wisdom: Eroticism and Reflexivity in the Study of Mysticism" (Chicago, 2001) and "Kali's Child: The Mystical and the Erotic in the Life and Teachings of Ramakrishna" (Chicago, 1995, 1998).