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Graduate Schools /
Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute |
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| Table of Contents |
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Notable alumni |
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- Myles N. Brand (1964), served as chair of philosophy at the University of Illinois-Chicago, elevating the
department’s rank to among the top 10 in the nation. He then served as dean of arts and sciences at the University of
Arizona, provost and vice president for academic affairs at Ohio State University, and president of the University of Oregon
before gaining national recognition as president of Indiana University, 1994 to 2002. In 2003, Brand was named president of the
NCAA (National Collegiate Athletic Association).
- Edwin Bryant
Crocker (1833), was a western railroad pioneer. A lawyer who relocated to Sacramento
from the Midwest and named associate justice of the California State Supreme Court in 1863, Crocker became the legal counsel for
the Central Pacific Railroad Co. Responsibility for the railroad called upon his engineering education, legal experience,
political connections, and charming diplomacy. When his brother, Charles — one of the "Big Four" who built the western
portion of the transcontinental railroad — resigned, Crocker became a director, and by the 1870s was one of the railroad's
largest investors. Earlier in his career, Crocker had been an anti-slavery advocate; later in life he built an art collection
that became Sacramento's Crocker Art Museum.
- Dr. Allen B. Dumont (1924),
perfected the cathode ray tube and is considered the "father of
modern TV"
- Bobby Farrelly, famous director, writer and producer of such films
as "Shallow Hal" and "There's Something About Mary"
- George W. G. Ferris (1881), inventor of the Ferris Wheel
- Lois Graham (1946), one of the first two women to earn a degree at Rensselaer and did so in an accelerated
schedule brought on by World War II. She continued her studies at the Illinois Institute of Technology (IIT), where she embarked
on a lifetime of contributions to engineering education. Her career at IIT was one of establishing “firsts” for women
and breaking down barriers for women in the engineering profession. She was the first woman at IIT to earn advanced degrees in
mechanical engineering, the first woman in the U.S. to earn a Ph.D. in mechanical engineering, and the first woman to receive a
fellow award from the American Society of Heating, Refrigerating and Air-Conditioning Engineers, honoring her for contributions
as an educator in thermodynamics and cryogenics.
- Ivar Giaever (1964), shared the
Nobel Prize in 1973 for experimental discoveries regarding tunneling phenomena in semiconductors and superconductors,
respectively. Currently, Institute Professor of Science at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute.
- Frederick Grinnell
(1855), was a pioneer in fire safety. Inventor, engineer, and industrialist, Frederick
Grinnell was the creator of the first practical automatic fire sprinkler, which has made an enormous contribution to fire safety.
Earlier in his career, he was draftsman, construction engineer, and manager for various railroad manufacturers. He designed and
built more than 100 locomotives. In 1869 he purchased a controlling interest in a company that manufactured fire-extinguishing
apparatus. Grinnell licensed a sprinkler device patented by Henry S. Parmelee, then worked to improve the invention, and in 1881
patented the automatic sprinkler that bears his name. He continued to improve the device and in 1890 invented the glass disc
sprinkler, essentially the same as that in use today. He secured some 40 distinct patents for improvements on his sprinklers and
invented a dry pipe valve and automatic fire-alarm system as well. In 1892, Grinnell organized the General Fire Extinguisher Co.,
an amalgamation of several smaller companies, which became the foremost organization in its field of manufacture. Today the
Grinnell Fire Protection Co. is a part of Tyco International Ltd.
- Marcian Hoff (1958), the "father
of the microprocessor"
- Eben N. Horsford
(1838), has been called "the father of American food technology." Horsford was appointed
Rumford Professor and Lecturer on the Application of Science to the Useful Arts at Harvard in 1847. He taught chemistry and
conducted research at the Lawrence Scientific School at Harvard for 16 years, and published articles in major scientific
publications on such topics as phosphates, condensed milk, fermentation, and emergency rations. A generous supporter of higher
education for women, Horsford became president of the board of visitors of Wellesley College, and donated money for books,
scientific apparatus, and a pension fund to the college. He enjoyed remarkable success through his development of processes for
manufacturing baking powder and condensed milk. He is perhaps most remembered for discovering Baking Powder.
- Douglass Houghton (1829), appointed Michigan’s first state geologist at age 28. His efforts led to the discovery of deposits of
salt, copper, and iron in the state, with enormous impact on the state’s young economy. A city, a county, and a lake honor
his name in Michigan.
- Walter E. Irving
(1896), founded in 1902 what was to become the Irving Subway Grating Co., which perfected
open steel grating, first used for subway ventilating chambers. his open steel flooring has been used on bridge decks, catwalks,
loading platforms, railroad cars, and in thousands of other industrial applications. Each has dramatically improved safety. He
was honored by the armed forces during World War II for his creation of airfield mats, known as “magic carpets,”
which provided emergency landing fields quickly and could be easily camouflaged. He introduced the “Streamline
Splice,” which enabled open steel flooring to be laid in one piece no matter how large the area.
- Howard P. Isermann
(1942), developed the ultraviolet absorber that became the most effective and leading
sunscreen in the world.
- J. Christopher
Jaffe (1949), recognized internationally for his innovation and leadership in
architectural acoustic design. He has taught acoustics at the Juilliard School and City University of New York, as well as at
Rensselaer, where he is founder of the master’s program in architectural acoustics and over the last four decades he has
consulted on more than 250 performance halls.
- Erik Jonsson (1922), former president of Texas Instruments Incorporated. The Jonsson Engineering Center on campus
is named after him.
- Theodore Dehone
Judah (1837) was also known as "Crazy Judah" because of his single-minded passion for
driving a railroad through the Sierra Nevada mountains. His advocacy and enthusiasm for the project in California and in
Washington, D.C., made possible America's first transcontinental route. Judah, the transcontinental railroad visionary,
constructed the first railroad in California, helped organize the Central Pacific Railroad Co., surveyed routes across the Sierra
Nevada, and served as the railroad's agent in Washington, D.C.
- George Low, manager at National Aeronautics and Space Administration for the Apollo 11 project that put the first person on the moon. The Low Center for Industrial Innovation on campus is named after him.
- Adam Oates, NHL star from 1985 to 2004, 6th on the NHL's all-time assists
list.
- Robert Resnick (1992H), together with co-author David Halliday, revolutionized physics education with their now
famous textbook on general physics, still one of the most highly regarded texts in the field today. He is author or co-author of
seven physics textbooks, which appear in 15 editions and more than 47 languages. He was awarded the American Association of
Physics Teachers’ highest honor, the Oersted Medal, in 1975, and served as its president, 1986-90. A Distinguished Service
Citation issued in 1967 by the association said, "Few physicists have had greater or more direct influence on undergraduate
physics students than has Robert Resnick."
- Sheldon Roberts, member of the Traitorous Eight that created Silicon
Valley; co-founder of Fairchild Semiconductor and Amelco (now Teledyne).
- Washington Roebling (1857), the chief engineer of the Brooklyn Bridge
- Paul Severino, founder of
Wellfleet Communications, which merged with SynOptics Communications to become Bay Networks, now owned by Nortel
- John L. Swigert
Jr. (1965), an Air Force fighter pilot and engineering test pilot, earned a
master’s degree in aerospace science from Rensselaer’s Hartford campus in 1965 and in 1966 was selected by NASA in
its fifth astronaut class. Member of Apollo 13 along with Jim Lovell, and Fred Haise. "Jack" was presented the Presidential Medal
of Freedom in 1970. He was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives from Colorado in November 1982. The state of Colorado
placed a statue of Swigert in the Rotunda of the U.S. Capitol in 1997.
- Raymond Tomlinson (1963), invented network electronic mail and put the @ sign in e-mail. In
1971 he was an engineer for Bolt Beranek and Newman, which had won the contract to create ARPANET, a communication network that would allow scientists and researchers to share each other's computer
facilities. While investigating ways to use the network, he hit on the idea to merge an intra-machine message program with
another program developed for transferring files among the far-flung ARPANET
computers. What he did next secured his place in communications history: He chose the @ sign to connect the user name with the
destination address. Unforeseen at the beginning of ARPANET, Tomlinson's creation of
e-mail became the future Internet's most popular application. Ray Tomlinson received the George R. Stibitz Computer Pioneer Award
from the American Computer Museum in April 2000, almost 30 years after he wrote what has been called the "killer application" of
the Internet.
- Alan M. Voorhees
(1947), began his career as a planning engineer for Colorado Springs and became one of the
world's leading city planners and traffic forecasters. For the city of Baltimore, he undertook the first application of
mathematical models for forecasting traffic and published a landmark paper that has become the foundation for most traffic
forecasting techniques in use today. In 1961 he established his own consulting firm, which set up transportation and planning
studies for major cities in the United States, Canada, and England. He was the planner of most of the metro systems built in the
free world in the 1960s and 1970s, and creator of master plans for major cities and new communities around the world. Voorhees
received the first Harland Bartholomew Award of the American Society of Civil Engineers as the engineer who has contributed most
to urban planning, and was honored with the establishment of the Alan M. Voorhees Transportation Center at Rutgers University. He
is a former Rensselaer trustee and principal supporter for Rensselaer's Voorhees Computing Center.
- Sheldon Weinbaum,
noted Biomedical Engineer, Elected to Institute of Medicine, National Academy of Engineering, and National Academy of
Sciences.
- William H. Wiley
(1866), commanded two companies of artillery and was retired as brevet major "for gallant
and meritorious services" when his education was interrupted by the Civil War. After earning his civil engineering degree at
Rensselaer, he practiced engineering in the East and Midwest for nine years. In 1876 he entered the publishing business with his
father and brother, under the firm name of John Wiley & Sons. The family company had published works by Cooper, Emerson,
Melville, and Poe. Once in charge, Wiley phased out all publishing programs not concerned with science and technology, and
established the firm as America's premier publisher of scientific and technical books. By 1895 the company became a worldwide
organization, distributing American scientific knowledge around the globe, including the work of Rensselaer faculty. Wiley served
three terms in the U.S. Congress as a representative from New Jersey and was a national leader of Theta Xi for 60 years, having
been a founding member of the fraternity's alpha chapter at Rensselaer.
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| Interesting Fact |
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| The number of students who study the Russian language in U.S. colleges has dropped in half since the end of the Cold War. Chinese, on the other hand, has doubled. |
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