List of University of Nebraska–Lincoln people

This page lists notable alumni and faculty of the University of Nebraska–Lincoln.

This is a dynamic list and may never be able to satisfy particular standards for completeness. You can help by adding missing items with reliable sources.

Alumni

Nobel laureates

• George Wells Beadle (1926, MS 1927) - Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine ( 1958) for the "discovery that genes act by regulating definite chemical events"; served on the faculty of the California Institute of Technology, Harvard, and Stanford University; president of the University of Chicago.
• Alan Heeger (BS 1956, honorary doctorate 1999) - Nobel Prize for Chemistry (2000 ) for the "discovery and development of conductive polymers."
• Donald Cram (1942) - Nobel Prize for Chemistry (1987) for the "development and use of molecules with structure-specific interactions of high selectivity."

Pulitzer Prize

• Ted Kooser (MA 1968) - An American poet who was the thirteenth Poet Laureate of the United States, serving two terms from 2004 to 2006. He teaches as a Visiting Professor in the English department of the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. On August 12, 2004, he was named Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry by the Librarian of Congress to serve a term from October 2004 through May 2005. In April 2005, Ted Kooser was appointed to serve a second term as Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry. During that same week Kooser received the 2005 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry for his book "Delights and Shadows" (2004).
• Karen Blessen (1973) - first graphic artist to win a Pulitzer Prize (in explanatory journalism) for a 1989 a special section, created with two colleagues, for the Dallas Morning News called "Anatomy of An Air Crash"
• Willa Cather (1895) - Pulitzer Prize in 1923 for her wartime novel, One of Ours
• Marjie Lundstrom (1978) - Pulitzer Prize in 1991 as a national reporter for the Gannett News service, for which she wrote a series on child-abuse deaths.
• Harvey Newbranch (1896) - Pulitzer Prize for a 1919 editorial condemning the lynching of a African American man by a racist mob; editor of the Omaha World-Herald for 56 years
• James Risser (1959) - Pulitzer Prize in 1976 for exposing corruption in the U.S. grain exporting industry and another Pulitzer Prize in 1979 for a series of articles showing the destructive impact of modern agriculture on the environment (both as Washington D.C. bureau chief for the Des Moines Register)
• John J. Pershing (JD 1893) - 1932 Pulitzer Prize in history for his memoir; the only person to be promoted in his own lifetime to the highest rank ever held in the United States Army—General of the Armies (George Washington was granted this posthumously); led the American Expeditionary Force in World War I and was regarded as a mentor by the generation of American generals who led the United States Army in Europe during World War II, including George C. Marshall, Dwight D. Eisenhower, Omar Bradley and George S. Patton.

Academia

• Edith Abbott(1901) - first woman dean of a graduate school in an American university and the dean of the first school of social work in the nation; led the University of Chicago School of Social Service Administration and probed the problems of women in industry, child labor, police brutality and immigration legislation.
• Hartley Burr Alexander (1897) - professor of philosophy at the University of Nebraska; conducted the first study of ritual, symbolism and philosophy of the native peoples of the Americas between 1908 and 1929; wrote symbolism and inscriptions in the Nebraska State Capitol
• Alvin Johnson (1897, MA 1898) - economist and educator, faculty member of the University of Nebraska from 1906-08; charter editor of New Republic magazine; in 1919, founded the New School for Social Research in New York City, a school dedicated to researching immediate social problems; in the late 1930s he led a movement to bring European artists and academics to the United States to escape the Nazis, and developed a "University in Exile."
• Gene Budig (1962, MA 1963, EdD 1967) - former commissioner of Major League Baseball's American League; served 13 years as chancellor of the University of Kansas (1980-1994); president of West Virginia University (1977-1980); president of Illinois State University (1973-1977); faculty member and administrator of the University of Nebraska
• Harold 'Doc' Edgerton (1925) - member of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology faculty for 50 years, pioneer in high-speed photographic and stroboscopic techniques and his contributions to underwater exploration through design of watertight cameras; took the first photographs of the atomic bomb.
• Roscoe Pound (1888, MA 1889, PhD 1897) - faculty member of University of Nebraska-Lincoln from 1892 to 1903; dean of the Harvard Law School; devised the "theory of social interests" which influenced several New Deal programs.

Art and entertainment

• Johnny Carson (1949) - host of the Tonight Show for more than 30 years (1958, 1962-1992); winner of 7 Emmy Awards; recipient of the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1992; recipient of the Kennedy Center Honors Lifetime Achievement Award in 1993.
• Aaron Douglas (1922) - "the father of African-American art" and leader of the Harlem Renaissance
• Barbara Hendricks (1969) - singer in opera, recital, jazz and popular music; Goodwill Ambassador for the United Nations High Commission for Refugees.
• Weldon Kees (1935) - poet, abstract expressionist painter, jazz pianist, composer, photographer and filmmaker; exhibited his works along with other abstract expressionists including Hans Hofmann and Willem de Kooning.
• Chad Myers (1985) - Weather anchor and severe weather expert for CNN Worldwide based in the network's world headquarters in Atlanta

Business

• Warren Buffett (1950) - billionaire and current wealthiest man in the world today (continuously listed among Forbes 400 starting in 1979); chairman of the board of Berkshire Hathaway
• Vinod Gupta (MS 1969, MBA 1971) - founder, Chief Executive Officer (CEO) and Chairman of infoGROUP (previously known as infoUSA).
• Ted Hustead (1929) - businessman and pharmacist, known for Wall Drug

Government and public policy

• Grace Abbott (1906) - director of the Immigrants Protective League of Hull House in Chicago; chief of the United States Children's Bureau, where she administered the first federal child labor law and the Maternity and Infancy Act; early 20th century feminist
• John R. Brown (1930) - federal judge who played a major role in desegregation cases that transformed the South from 1955 to 1979; wrote the 1962 order that James Meredith be enrolled in the all-white University of Mississippi.
• Jesse Stearns Buscher (1929) - a member of the White House Press Corps for more than 40 years; first woman member of the Veterans of Foreign Wars,
• Harry H. Culver (1901) - founder of Culver City, California
• Maynard Nichols (1925) - captain in the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, chief engineer and overseer of 125,000 Chinese farm workers for the construction (entirely by hand, without any heavy equipment) of an air base at Kiunglai in China, which Chinese Nationalist leader Chiang Kai-Shek described as the "largest construction job in China since the Great Wall."
• Debra Powell (1985) - became one of the nation's youngest mayors when she was elected to the post in her hometown of East St. Louis in April, 1999; fifth on the UNL all-time scoring list in basketball, once held the school scoring record; All-American in track.
• James Lee Rankin (1928, LLB 1930) - U.S. Solicitor General; general counsel to the Warren Commission which investigated the assassination of President John F. Kennedy; argued the government's case for desegregation in Brown v. Board of Education.
• Theodore (Ted) Sorensen (1949, JD 1951) - special counsel and speechwriter to President John F. Kennedy; named as University of Nebraska-Lincoln's Centennial Alumnus by the National Association of State Universities and Land Grant Colleges
• Karlis A. Ulmanis (1909) - first prime minister of the Republic of Latvia in 1918 and the last pre-World War II Latvian president in 1936; helped write the Latvian Declaration of Independence.

Literature

• Mary Pipher (PhD 1977) - author, expert on culture and mental health; author of Reviving Ophelia: Saving the Selves of Adolescent Girls, which was a best seller for over three years ; author of the New York Times best seller The Shelter of Each Other: Rebuilding Our Families to Enrich Our Lives
• Mari Sandoz - a biographer, novelist, and historian whose work usually drew on the life of the Great Plains. She became well known for non-fiction works such Old Jules (1935) and Crazy Horse (1942).
• Jim Thompson (attended 1929-1931) - wrote 29 books between 1942 and 1973, including books adapted to film such as The Getaway (produced twice) and The Grifters
• Lowry C. Wimberly (1916, MA 1920, PhD 1925) - founder and first editor of the university's literary journal, Prairie Schooner, his students (known as "Wimberly's boys") included writer/naturalist Loren Eiseley, novelist Mari Sandoz, folklorist Ben Botkin and poet/artist Weldon Kees.

Science and technology

• Bion J. Arnold (1897) - "Father of the third rail"; inventor of the plan for electrification of New York's Grand Central Terminal; winner of the Washington Award in 1929.
• Henry M. Beachell (1930) - rice breeder; developed IR8, a rice breed credited with improving the diets of billions of people at the International Rice Research Institute in Los Banos, Philippines; he was co-winner of the 1996 World Food Prize for contributions to the "Green Revolution"; awarded the 1987 Japan Prize of the Science and Technology Foundation of Japan.
• Frederic Clements (1894, MA 1896, PhD 1898) - ecologist of the first half of the 20th century; with his wife, Edith Schwartz Clements (1898, PhD 1906)m collaborated on numerous scientific books.
• Gladys Rowena Henry Dick (1900)- microbiologist and physician; co-discoverer of the antitoxin for scarlet fever; founder of the first professional organization for the adoption of children in the United States.
• Loren Eiseley(1933)- literary naturalist
• Gene V Glass (1962) - Statistician; social scientist. Originator of the statistical technique Meta-analysis.
• Donald Othmer (1928) - inventor with over 150 U.S. and foreign patents; namesake of the laboratory device known as the "Othmer Still" used to make precise determinations of vapor-liquid equilibrium data; co-editor of the Kirk-Othmer Encyclopedia of Chemical Technology.
• Joseph McVicker Hunt (1929, MA 1930) - developmental psychologist; author of the 1961 landmark argument against the concept of fixed intelligence; instrumental in launching the Head Start program.
• Leta Stetter Hollingworth (1906) - first woman to scientifically research and challenge the "armchair dogmas" which alleged the inferiority of women; established the first school for "fast learners" - Speyer School in New York City; wrote the first major text on adolescent psychology and educating the gifted.
• A.A. Luebs (1915) - pioneered the field of air conditioning and is known for developing the procedure used for measuring winter temperatures that meteorologists call "degree days".
• William A. Mueller (1922) - produced the sound technology for early motion pictures, and helped pioneer the first talking picture, The Jazz Singer
• Charles Purcell (1906) - civil engineer; an early pioneer of the interstate highway system; chief designer and engineer of the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge.
• Khem Shahani (1923 - 2001) - microbiologist who conducted pioneer research on probiotics; he discovered in 1959 the DDS-1 strain of Lactobacillus acidophilus
• Gerry Thomas (1948) - invented the three-compartment aluminum tray first marketed by his Omaha employer, C.A. Swanson & Sons, in 1954 as the TV dinner.
• Thomas J. Edwards (1971) - Revolutionized process of Vapor-Liquid Equilibria in Multicomponent Aqueous Solutions of Volatile Electrolytes.

Sports

• Berlin Guy Chamberlin (1916) - won four championships as an NFL head coach; inducted into the Professional Football Hall of Fame in 1965.
• George Flippin (1895) - the first black student athlete at Nebraska and one of only five in the United States at the time; also filed Nebraska's first civil rights lawsuit - against a York café where he was refused service.
• Barron Miles, defensive back for the BC Lions in the CFL
• Louise Pound (1892, MA 1895) - first woman elected to the Nebraska Sports Hall of Fame; in 1955 she became the first woman president of the Modern Language Association ; sister of Roscoe Pound.
• Priscilla Lopes-Schliep (2006) - winner of the bronze medal for Women's 100m Hurdles in the Beijing Olympics in 2008; she became the first Canadian to win a medal in 12 years.

Faculty

• Charles Bessey - botanist; namesake of the Bessey system
• Rachel A. Lloyd- first woman in the world to become a chemistry professor, hired as the second chemistry professor at the University of Nebraska in 1887; first woman to earn a Ph.D. in chemistry (University of Zurich, 1886), and the first woman to publish a research article in Organic Chemistry; with Hudson Nicholson, chair and only member of the chemistry faculty when it was founded in 1882, she carried out the first research program in chemistry west of the Mississippi.
• Karl Shapiro - Pulitzer Prize-winning poet; served as poet laureate at the Library of Congress; taught in the English Department at the university from 1956 to 1966; served as editor of the Prairie Schooner.