- Joe Tiller
Joe Tiller (b. December 7, 1942 in Toledo, Ohio) has been the head football coach at Purdue University since 1997. Before coming to Purdue, Tiller was the head coach for the University of Wyoming football program. A Montana State University graduate, where he was a member of Delta Sigma Phi fraternity, and native of Toledo, Ohio, Tiller is known mostly for a spread offense or West Coast offense system first devised by Jack Elway.
- Martin C. Jischke
Dr. Martin C. Jischke (JIS-key), born 1941, is a prominent American higher-education administrator and advocate, and was the tenth president of Purdue University. Dr. Jischke has served as chairman and board member of the National Association of State Universities and Land-Grant Colleges, and as a board member of the American Council on Education, National Merit Scholarship Corporation, and the Kellogg Commission on the Future of State and Land-Grant Universities.
- Amelia Earhart
Amelia Mary Earhart was a noted American aviation pioneer and women's rights advocate. Earhart was the first woman to receive the Distinguished Flying Cross, which she was awarded as the first woman to fly solo across the Atlantic. She set many other records, wrote best-selling books about her flying experiences and was instrumental in the formation of The Ninety-Nines, a women's pilots' organization.
- Bart Peterson
Barton R. Peterson (born June 15, 1958 to parents Howard and Lori) has been mayor of the U.S city of Indianapolis, Indiana, since 2000. A Democrat, he defeated Sue Anne Gilroy 52 percent to 41 percent in 1999 to become Indianapolis' first Democratic mayor since 1967. He was re-elected in 2003 with 63 percent of the vote. He announced his intention to run for re-election on February 22, 2007.
- Gene Keady
Gene Keady (born May 21 1936, in Larned, Kansas, United States) is a former basketball coach. He is most notable for being the head basketball coach at Purdue University for 25 years, from 1980-2005.
- Gene Spafford
Eugene H. Spafford (born 1956) (known colloquially as "Spaf") is a professor of computer science at Purdue University and a leading computer security expert.
- Matt Painter
Matt Painter, (born August 27, 1970 in Muncie, Indiana) is the men's basketball head coach at Purdue University.
- Ryan Newman
Ryan Joseph Newman (born December 8, 1977 in South Bend, Indiana) is a driver in the NASCAR NEXTEL Cup Series. He drives the #12 Alltel, Mobil Oil Dodge Charger for Penske Racing. Newman, along with the late Alan Kulwicki, is one of the few NASCAR racers with a college degree, graduating from Purdue University in 2001 with a B. S. in vehicle structure engineering (Kulwicki's degree was in mechanical engineering). In 2002, he was the Raybestos Rookie of the Year.
- Steven C. Beering
- Pete Dye
Pete Dye (born December 29 1925 in Urbana, Ohio) is a golf course designer and a member of a famous family of course designers. Dye has degrees from Rollins College, Stetson University, and Purdue University. He is married to fellow designer and former amateur champion Alice Dye since 1950. Dye is considered to be one of the most influential course architects in the world.
- France A. Córdova
France Anne Córdova is the 11th President of Purdue University.. Córdova graduated from Stanford University with a bachelor's degree in English and received her Ph.D from California Institute of Technology in astrophysics. She was the youngest person and the first woman to hold the position of NASA Chief Scientist. She was the recipient of the NASA Distinguished Service Medal, the agency's highest honor.
- Gus Grissom
Virgil Ivan "Gus" Grissom was a United States Air Force pilot and a NASA astronaut. A native of Mitchell, Indiana, he was the second American to fly in space and the first person to fly in space twice. He was killed during a training exercise for the Apollo One mission on January 27, 1967, at Launch Complex 34 at Cape Kennedy, along with fellow astronauts Ed White and Roger Chaffee.
- Brad Miller
Bradley Alan Miller (born April 12 1976) is an American professional basketball player, currently starting at center for the Sacramento Kings. He is also a member of the USA national basketball team. Miller was selected two times for the NBA All-Star Game: he is notable for being one of the only three players ever to be in an NBA All-Star Game without having been drafted (John Starks and Ben Wallace are the others). Miller was born in Fort Wayne, Indiana.
- Stanley Coulter
Stanley Coulter (June 2, 1853-June 26, 1943) was an American biologist, brother of J. M. Coulter, born at Ningpo, China, and educated at Hanover College. In 1887 he was appointed professor of biology at Purdue. His publications include more than 125 pamphlets on nature study, scientific researches, sketches, and also "Flora of Indiana" (1899), and "A Key to the Genera of the Native Forest Trees and Shrubs of Indiana" (1907).
- Michael Rossmann
Michael G. Rossmann (born 1930) is a German-American physicist, microbiologist, and Hanley Distinguished Professor of Biological Sciences at Purdue University who led a team of researchers to be the first to map the structure of a human common cold virus to an atomic level. He also discovered the Rossmann fold protein motif.
- Arden L. Bement Jr.
Dr. Arden L. Bement, Jr. (born May 22, 1932 in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania) is an American engineer and scientist, and is currently Director of the National Science Foundation (NSF). Dr. Bement was confirmed as NSF Director on November 24, 2004, after having served as Acting Director since February 22 of that year. He joined NSF from the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), where he had been Director since December 7, 2001.
- George Ade
George Ade was born in Kentland, Indiana, and graduated from Purdue University in 1887, where he displayed interest in the literary field. He did journalistic work in Lafayette, Indiana, until 1890, when he moved to Chicago and started work on the Chicago Daily News (later renamed The Chicago News Record , then The Chicago Record ). He was a prolific writer and often collaborated with college classmate John T. McCutcheon , the renowned cartoonist.
- John Charles
John Charles (born May 9, 1944) is a former American football cornerback and safety who played eight seasons in the National Football League. Previously he played college football in Purdue University, where he was an All-American in 1966.
- Herbert C. Brown
Herbert Charles Brown (May 22, 1912 - December 19, 2004) was a chemist who won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1979 (along with Georg Wittig) for his work with organoboranes. Brown was born Herbert Brovarnik in London to Ukrainian Jewish immigrants. He moved to the United States at a young age and was educated at the University of Chicago, earning a B.S. and Ph.D. in 1936 and 1938, respectively.
- Brian Bosma
Brian C. Bosma (born October 31, 1957) is an American politician. He has been a Republican member of the Indiana House of Representatives since 1986, and served as Indiana Speaker of the House during the 2005 and 2006 sessions. Bosma was born in Beech Grove, Indiana. He attended Purdue University, where he received a Bachelor of Science in Engineering in 1981 and was a member of Beta Sigma Psi fraternity. He received his Juris Doctor from Indiana University in 1984.
- Ian Murdock
Ian Murdock is the founder of the Debian GNU/Linux distribution and the commercial Linux distributor Progeny. He currently works for Sun Microsystems "head[ing] up operating system platform strategy" ; previously he served as the Chief Technology Officer of the Linux Foundation and is chair of the Linux Standard Base, the Linux platform interoperability standard. He lives in Indiana, USA. He wrote the Debian Manifesto in 1993 while a student at Purdue University, …
- Brian Lamb
Brian Patrick Lamb (born October 9, 1941) helped found the C-SPAN television network in 1979, and has been its chief executive officer since its founding. He hosts "Washington Journal" once a week, and hosted the C-SPAN show "Booknotes" from 1989 to 2004. Lamb now hosts a weekly one-hour program called "Q&A" in which he interviews people from a wide range of backgrounds, such as journalists, teachers, politicians, authors, and technology innovators.
- Orville Redenbacher
Orville Redenbacher (July 16, 1907 - September 19, 1995) was an American businessman most often associated with the brand of popping corn that bears his name. Born in Brazil, Indiana, Orville graduated from Brazil High School in 1924 and was in the top 5% of his class. He attended Purdue University, joining Alpha Gamma Rho fraternity and graduating with a degree in agronomy. He spent most of his life in the agriculture industry, …
- Birch Bayh
Birch Evans Bayh II (born January 22, 1928) was a U.S. Senator from Indiana between 1963 and 1981. He was a candidate for the Democratic nomination for president in the 1976 election but lost to Jimmy Carter. He is the father of former Indiana governor and current U.S. Senator Evan Bayh. Bayh was born in Terre Haute, Indiana, to Leah Ward Hollingsworth and Birch Evans Bayh, Sr. After serving in the United States Army, …
- Katie Gearlds
Katie Gearlds (born October 26, 1984) is a basketball player currently attending Purdue University. She earned the Big Ten Tournament Most Outstanding Player Honors for 2007 after Purdue defeated Penn State in the Big Ten championship. She also won both the woman's and overall State Farm College Three Point Championships on March 29th, 2007, defeating male competitor Aaron Brooks 17 baskets to 16. On April 4, 2007, …
- Janet Afary
Janet Afary is an Iranian author, feminist activist and researcher in history, political sciences and women studies. Her research field includes politics of contemporary Iran and gender and sexuality in modern Iran. She is known for her writings and research on the Persian Constitutional Revolution. Afary is an associate professor of Middle East Studies & Women's Studies at Purdue University.
- Eugene Cernan
Eugene Andrew Cernan (born March 14, 1934) is a former American astronaut of Czech and Slovak ancestry. He has been into space three times: as co-pilot of Gemini 9A in June 1966; as lunar module pilot of Apollo 10 in May 1969; and as commander of Apollo 17 in December 1972. In that final lunar landing mission, Cernan became "the last man on the moon" since he was the last to re-enter the Apollo Lunar Module during its third and final extra-vehicular activity (EVA).
- Vernon L. Smith
Professor Vernon L. Smith pioneered the field of experimental economics nearly 50 years ago. He was awarded the Nobel Prize for Economics in 2002 for his contributions to the economic sciences. Before 1956, when Dr. Smith completed his first experiment, economic theory assumed markets are efficient only with a large number of buyers and sellers. Experimental methods were the first to test such theories.
- Booth Tarkington
Newton Booth Tarkington was an American novelist and dramatist best known for his Pulitzer Prize-winning novels "The Magnificent Ambersons" and "Alice Adams". Booth Tarkington was born in Indianapolis, the son of John S. Tarkington and Elizabeth Booth Tarkington. He was named after his maternal uncle Newton Booth, then the governor of California. He first attended Purdue University but graduated from Princeton University in 1893.
- Anthony Spencer
Anthony Spencer (born January 23, 1984 in Fort Wayne, Indiana) is a linebacker for the Dallas Cowboys. He attended Purdue University.
- David Sanders
David Sanders was the Democratic candidate for U.S. Congress in Indiana's 4th congressional district. He ran against Steve Buyer in 2004 and in 2006, losing both times. An Associate Professor in the Department of Biological Sciences at Purdue University, his expertise concerns gene therapy, cancer research, biodefense, and pandemic influenza.
- Dan Farmer
Dan Farmer (born April 5, 1962) is a computer security researcher. In a summer course in 1989, in order to graduate from Purdue University he started the development of the COPS program for identifying security issues on Unix systems under Gene Spafford, first releasing it after leaving Purdue in late 1989. In 1995, he and Wietse Venema created Security Administrator Tool for Analyzing Networks (SATAN), one of the earliest network based vulnerability scanners.
- David Teague
David Teague is an American collegiate basketball player at Purdue University in West Lafayette, Indiana. He was born on June 4, 1983 in Indianapolis, Indiana.
- Joe Barton
Joseph Linus "Joe" Barton (born September 15, 1949) is a Republican politician, representing (map) in the U.S. House of Representatives since 1985
- Arthur G. Hansen
Arthur G. Hansen (born February 28, 1925) is a philanthropist and former chancellor of several American universities.
- Kory Sheets
Kory Gerren Sheets (born March 31, 1985) is the starting running back for the Purdue University Boilermakers college football team as a junior.
- Matt Light
Matthew Charles Light (born June 23, 1978 in Greenville, Ohio) is an American football offensive lineman for the New England Patriots of the National Football League. He was selected with the 48th pick overall in the second round of the 2001 NFL Draft out of Purdue University. Arguably his most impressive game came in Super Bowl XXXIX, when he held heralded defensive end Jevon Kearse to just two tackles.
- David E. Nichols
David E. Nichols (born December 23, 1944) is an American pharmacologist and medicinal chemist. A professor at Purdue University, Nichols has worked in the field of psychoactive drugs since 1969. While still a graduate student, he patented the method that is used to make the optical isomers of hallucinogenic amphetamines. His contributions include the synthesis and reporting of escaline and the coining of the term entactogen.
- David Wolf
David Alexander Wolf (born 23 August 1956) is an American astronaut and a veteran of four space shuttle missions and an extended stay aboard the Mir space station. Born and raised in Indianapolis, Indiana, where he graduated from North Central High School, Wolf earned a degree in electrical engineering from Purdue University and, in 1982, a medical degree from Indiana University. He subsequently trained as a flight surgeon with the United States Air Force.
- Bill Foster
Bill Foster was the head men's basketball coach at Rutgers University, University of Utah, Duke University, University of South Carolina, and Northwestern University. Currently he is the vice president of the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame. Foster has been inducted into the Rutgers Basketball Hall of Fame and became the first coach ever in NCAA history to guide four different teams to 20-win seasons (Rutgers, Utah, Duke, and South Carolina).