List of University of Texas at Austin alumni
The following is a list of people associated with The University of Texas at Austin.
Alumni
Athletics
- Cedric Benson — NFL running back
- Earl Campbell — NFL Hall of Fame running back
- Roger Clemens — MLB pitcher
- Dennis Cook — former MLB pitcher
- Ben Crenshaw — professional golfer
- Bob Estes — professional golfer
- T. J. Ford — NBA point guard
- Chris Mihm — NBA center
- Ron Gardenhire — Minnesota Twins manager
- Casey Hampton — NFL nose tackle
- Priest Holmes — NFL running back
- Tom Kite — professional golfer
- Tom Landry — former NFL head coach
- Cat Osterman — softball player
- Spike Owen — former MLB shortstop
- Huston Street — MLB pitcher
- Ricky Williams — NFL running back
- Vince Young — future NFL quarterback
Arts and entertainment
- Wes Anderson — filmmaker
- Steve Barton — actor
- Berkeley Breathed — cartoonist, creator of Bloom County
- J. M. Coetzee — Nobel Laureate for Literature
- Barbara Conrad — Metropolitan Opera mezzo-soprano and civil rights activist
- Madison Cooper — novelist
- Roy Crane — cartoonist, creator of Wash Tubbs and Buz Sawyer
- Farrah Fawcett — actress
- Kinky Friedman — author, candidate for Governor of Texas
- Richard Garriott — creator of the video game series, Ultima
- Peri Gilpin — actress, most notably on Frasier
- Marcia Gay Harden — Oscar-winning actress
- Janis Joplin — musician
- Tim McCanlies — filmmaker
- Matthew McConaughey — actor
- Jayne Mansfield — actress and sex symbol
- Fess Parker — actor, portrayed Davy Crockett and Daniel Boone
- Sharon Kay Penman — American author of fiction
- Robert Rodríguez — Mexican American filmmaker
- Thomas Schlamme — television producer
- Harvey Schmidt — writer of musical theatre
- Michelle Shocked — musician
- Bruce Sterling — science fiction author
- Eli Wallach — method actor, the "Ugly" from The Good, the Bad and the Ugly
- Chris Ware — cartoonist
- Owen Wilson — actor
- Renée Zellweger — Oscar-winning actress
Business
- William Frank Buckley, Sr. — oilman and father of conservative William F. Buckley, Jr.
- Thomas Cruikshank — former chairman and CEO of Halliburton Company
- Michael Dell — founder of the computer company Dell, Inc.
- David Geffen — record executive
- Tom Hicks — owner of the Dallas Stars and the Texas Rangers
- William R. Johnson — president, CEO and chairman of H. J. Heinz
- John T. Jones — former publisher and chairman of the Houston Chronicle
- Gary C. Kelly — CEO of Southwest Airlines
- Red McCombs — co-founder of Clear Channel Communications
- Robert McGehee — CEO of Progress Energy, a Fortune 1000 company
- William C. Nowlin — co-founder of National Instruments
- Thomas Ryan — CEO of Service Corporation International, a Fortune 1000 company
- Tex Schramm — former Dallas Cowboys general manager and Pro Football Hall of Fame member
- Roy Spence — co-founder of the nationally famous advertising agency GSD&M
- James Truchard — electrical engineer, co-founder, president, and chairman of the board of National Instruments
- John Wilder — CEO of TXU, a Fortune 1000 company
- Angus G. Wynne, Jr. — founder of Six Flags
- Bedford Wynne — co-founder of the Dallas Cowboys
Education
- Robert A. Brown — chemical engineer, Provost of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology
- Alan Lomax — musicologist and folklorist, son of John Avery Lomax
- John Avery Lomax — pioneering musicologist and folklorist
- James C. Moeser — organist, chancellor of the University of North Carolina
- Américo Paredes — folklorist
- Walter Prescott Webb — historian and author of the Handbook of Texas
Journalism
- Paul Begala — Crossfire co-host and former advisor for Bill Clinton
- Gail Caldwell — Pulitzer Prize winner and chief book critic at The Boston Globe
- Catherine Crier — television news anchor
- Walter Cronkite — WWII war correspondent and CBS News anchor
- Willie Morris — former Harper's Magazine editor and noted author
- Bill Moyers — author, journalist, and press secretary for Lyndon B. Johnson
- Betty Nguyen — CNN anchor
- Stephanie Trong — journalist, Jane Executive Editor
Newsmakers
Law and government
- Ben Barnes — former Texas Speaker of the House (1965-1969) and Lieutenant Governor (1969-1973)
- Dan Bartlett — White House communications director for George W. Bush
- William J. Bennett — President Reagan's chairman of the National Endowment for the Humanities (1981-1985), Secretary of Education (1985-1988), and President Bush's "drug czar" (1989-1990)
- Lloyd Bentsen — U.S. Representative (1948-1955), U.S. Senator (1970-1992) and Secretary of the Treasury during the Clinton Administration
- Steven Best, professor of philosophy and spokesperson for the Animal Liberation Front.
- Dolph Briscoe — former Governor of Texas
- Jeb Bush — Governor (1999-present) of Florida
- Jenna Bush — daughter of President George W. Bush
- Laura Bush — First Lady
- Liz Carpenter — press secretary for Lady Bird Johnson
- Mostafa Chamran — Iranian Minister of Defense
- Ramsey Clark — former U.S. Attorney General
- Tom C. Clark — former U.S. Attorney General and U.S. Supreme Court Justice
- Henry Cuellar — member of the U.S. House
- Maria de Lourdes Dieck-Assad — Mexican Ambassador to the European Union
- Lloyd Doggett — member of the U.S. House
- Donald Evans — former U.S. Secretary of Commerce under George W. Bush
- Tommy Franks — former Commander-in-Chief of U.S. Central Command
- Mike Godwin — first staff lawyer for the Electronic Frontier Foundation, now legal director of Public Knowledge
- Charlie Gonzalez — member of the U.S. House
- Lloyd Hand — former Chief of Protocol under Lyndon B. Johnson
- Jeb Hensarling — member of the U.S. House
- Rubén E. Hinojosa — member of the U.S. House
- Jefferson D. Howell — director of the Johnson Space Center in Houston
- Kay Bailey Hutchison — current U.S. Senator from Texas
- Admiral Bobby Inman — former director of the National Security Agency
- Joe Jamail — trial lawyer
- Lady Bird Johnson — former First Lady
- V.O. Key, Jr. — political scientist, studied elections and voting behavior
- Scott McClellan — White House Press Secretary for George W. Bush
- Dan Moody — lawyer, former Governor of Texas, and opponent of the Ku Klux Klan
- Bill Owens — Governor of Colorado
- J.J. "Jake" Pickle — former member of the U.S. House, for whom UT's J.J. Pickle Research Campus in northwest Austin is named
- Sam Rayburn — former Speaker of the House
- Ann Richards — former Governor of Texas
- Woodall Rodgers — former mayor of Dallas
- Sheik Abdallah Tariki — co-founder of OPEC
- Fernando Belaúnde Terry — former president of Peru
- Lt. Gen. Ernest O. Thompson — longest-serving member of the Texas Railroad Commission
- Jim Turner — member of the U.S. House
- Joseph M. Watt — Chief Justice, Oklahoma Supreme Court
- Pamela Willeford — U.S. ambassador to Switzerland and Liechtenstein
- Ralph Yarborough — U.S. Senator from Texas (1957-1971)
Science and technology
- James P. Allison — immunological researcher and member of the National Academy of Science
- Alan Bean — astronaut, lunar module pilot on Apollo 12
- Robert S. Boyer — computer scientist, co-inventor of the Boyer-Moore string search algorithm
- Robert L. Crippen — pilot of STS-1, inaugural space shuttle Columbia
- R.H. Bing — mathematician
- Leonard Eugene Dickson — mathematician
- F. Burton Jones — mathematician
- Robert Lee Moore — mathematician
- Mary Ellen Rudin — mathematician
- Beatrice Tinsley — astronomer
- Stephen S. Vogt — astronomer, developed the technique of "Doppler imaging"
- Spencer Wells — geneticist and anthropologist
Faculty
Business
- Frank W. McBee — mechanical engineer, co-founder of Tracor, Inc.
Architecture
- Charles Willard Moore — architect
Economics
- Scott Freeman — economist
- James K. Galbraith — economist
Education
- J. Frank Dobie — American folklorist, writer, and columnist
Law and government
- Barbara Jordan — the first black woman from a Southern state to serve in the U.S. House
- James K. Galbraith — head of the University of Texas Inequality Project at the LBJ school.
Philosophy
- Tara Smith — professor of philosophy
- Robert Kane — professor of philosophy
Science and technology
- Willis Adcock — chemist, professor of electrical engineering, grew silicon boules for construction of the first silicon transistor at Texas Instruments
- Edith Clarke — power engineer, developed the method of symmetrical components, first female professor of electrical engineering at The University of Texas at Austin
- Bryce DeWitt — physicist, co-developed Wheeler-DeWitt equation ("wave function of the Universe")
- John B. Goodenough — materials scientist whose research led to the first lithium ion battery
- G.B. Halsted — mathematician
- William H. Jefferys — astronomer
- Hans Mark — aerospace engineer, former Deputy Administrator at NASA and Secretary of the Air Force
- J Strother Moore — computer scientist, co-inventor of the Boyer-Moore string search algorithm
- Hermann Joseph Muller — geneticist, Nobel Laureate in Physiology or Medicine
- Yale Patt, inventor of the WOS module, the first complex logic gate implemented on a single piece of silicon
- Ilya Prigogine — physicist and chemist, Nobel Laureate in Chemistry
- Jonathan Sessler — chemist, pioneering work on expanded porphyrins
- Roy Schwitters — physicist, former director of the now-defunct Superconducting Super Collider
- John Tate — mathematician, Wolf Prize in Mathematics
- Karen Uhlenbeck — mathematician, National Medal of Science
- Harry Vandiver — mathematician
- Steven Weinberg — Nobel Laureate in Physics
- John A. Wheeler — physicist, Wolf Prize in Physics, coined the term 'black hole'
Presidents
- Larry Faulkner — former President of The University of Texas at Austin
- William C. Powers — lawyer, President of The University of Texas at Austin
Others
- Herb Kelleher — founder of Southwest Airlines, former chairman of the McCombs School of Business advisory committee
- Jeff Kodosky — co-founder of National Instruments, serves on the University of Texas College of Science Advisory Council, developed UTeach
- George W. Littlefield — former Confederate officer, banker, cattleman, and regent of The University of Texas at Austin