List of University of Alberta people

This is a list of distinguished people affiliated with the University of Alberta.

Current faculty

• Ali A. Abdi – anthropologist and author; education and international development
• Jordan Abel – poet
• John Acorn – naturalist and science communicator
• William Anselmi – professor of Italian and Italian-Canadian literature and culture
• Florence Ashley – law professor, first openly transfeminine clerk of the Supreme Court of Canada
• Lorne Babiuk – immunologist and virologist
• Harold Barclay – anthropologist
• Howard Bashaw – composer
• Norman C. Beaulieu – electrical engineer
• Ted Bishop – English professor
• Stan Boutin – wildlife population ecologist
• Mark Boyce – wildlife population ecologist
• Ludwig N. Carbyn – wolf biologist
• D. Jean Clandinin – education researcher
• Kerry Courneya – kinesiologist
• Philip J. Currie – palaeontologist
• Patricia Demers – English professor
• Jaroslaw Drelich – chemical engineer
• Marilyn Dumont – poet
• Janet A. W. Elliott – distinguished professor, faculty of engineering
• Andrew Gow – historian of medieval and early modern Europe
• Jonathan Locke Hart – author, literary scholar and historian
• Peter Hide – sculptor
• John-Paul Himka – historian of Eastern Europe
• Greg Hollingshead – novelist and professor of English
• Michael Houghton – Nobel laureate, co-discoverer of hepatitis C
• Tasha Hubbard – filmmaker and scholar of Indigenous studies
• Peter L. Hurd – biologist
• Karim Jamal – business professor
• Stephen A. Kent – sociologist
• Conor Kerr – novelist and poet
• Jacobus Kloppers – organist
• Natalie Kononenko – folklorist
• Andrew Leach – energy economist
• Mark A. Lewis – mathematical ecologist and the Canada Research Chair in Mathematical Biology at the Centre for Mathematical Biology
• Michael Lounsbury – associate dean of Research, Thornton A. Graham Chair and professor of strategic management, organizations and sociology
• Chloë Lum and Yannick Desranleau – visual artists and former members of the band AIDS Wolf
• Austin Mardon – adjunct professor, recipient of Order of Canada
• Jacob Masliyah – pioneer researcher in oil-sands extraction, recipient of Order of Canada
• Takahiko Masuda – psychologist
• Iman Mersal – poet, professor of Arabic literature and Middle Eastern and African studies
• Robert Moody – mathematician, co-inventor of Kac–Moody algebra
• Adam Morton – philosopher and member of the Royal Society of Canada
• Don Page – theoretical cosmologist
• Raj Pannu – sociologist, former head of the Alberta New Democratic Party
• Graham Pearson – geologist
• Mike Percy – economist
• Leonard Ratzlaff – professor of choral music
• Jia Rongqing – mathematician
• Arturo Sanchez-Azofeifa – director of the university's Center for Earth Observation Sciences
• Jonathan Schaeffer – computer scientist and the Canada Research Chair in Artificial Intelligence
• James Shapiro – professor of surgery, medicine and surgical oncology; director of the Clinical Islet Transplant Program; leader of the team that developed the Edmonton protocol
• Arya Mitra Sharma – Alberta Health Services endowed Chair in Obesity Research and Management
• Toby Spribille – lichenologist
• Richard S. Sutton – computer scientist and Turing Award winner
• Frank Sysyn – historian of Eastern Europe
• Kim TallBear – professor of native studies
• Darren Tanke – palaeontologist
• Ban Tsui – professor of anesthesiology and pain medicine
• D. Lorne Tyrrell – infectious disease physician
• Allan Warrack – Department of Marketing, Business Economics and Law in the Faculty of Business; also serves as associate dean of the Master of Public Management Program and vice-president of Administration
• Lana Whiskeyjack – artist and scholar of gender, sexuality, and Indigenous identity
• Rudy Wiebe – novelist, two-time Governor General's Award-winner
• Douglas Wiens – statistician
• David S. Wishart – computational biologist
• Toshifumi Yokota – medical geneticist
• Osmar R. Zaiane – computer scientist
• Vaclav Zizler – mathematician

Past faculty

• Ibrahim M. Abu-Rabi‘ – Islamic scholar
• Jane Alexander – Anglican bishop
• Violet Archer – composer and performer
• Margaret-Ann Armour – chemist, supporter of women in science and engineering, member of the Order of Canada
• Margaret Atwood – author of The Handmaid's Tale and many other novels, poetry collections, and works of criticism; two-time Booker Prize winner
• George Ball – entomologist
• Henry Beissel – poet and playwright
• C. Fred Bentley – soil scientist
• Stanford Blade – agronomist
• Edward D. Blodgett – author and researcher in comparative literature, religion and film/media
• Russell Brown – professor of law, justice of the Supreme Court of Canada
• Donald Cameron – academic administrator and member of the Senate of Canada
• Clive Carruthers – classicist
• Karl Clark – chemist and oil sands researcher
• Jagannath Prasad Das – educational psychologist; member of the Order of Canada
• James DeFelice – theatre professor
• John B. Dossetor – professor emeritus of medicine and bioethics
• Pierre Flor-Henry – psychologist
• Robert Folinsbee – geologist
• Malcolm Forsyth – composer; Juno Award winner and member of the Order of Canada
• John Gamon – plant physiologist and Earth observation scientist, developer of the Photochemical Reflectance Index
• Victor Golla – linguist and anthropologist
• Thomas B. Greenfield – scholar of educational administration
• Allan Gregg – pollster and political advisor
• Ronald Hamowy – libertarian intellectual
• W. G. Hardy – classicist, writer, ice hockey administrator, member of the Order of Canada
• H. A. Hargreaves – science fiction writer
• Walter Edgar Harris – analytical chemist
• Douglas Haynes – abstract artist
• Myer Horowitz – early childhood education scholar, president of the University of Alberta
• Werner Israel – professor of physics and leader in the theory of black holes; Fellow of the Royal Society and Royal Society of Canada
• George Ivany – president of the University of Saskatchewan
• Martin Joos – linguist
• William Alexander Robb Kerr – president of the University of Alberta
• Mors Kochanski – bushcraft and wilderness survival pioneer
• Henry Kreisel – novelist and essayist
• Karol Józef Krótki – demographer who helped establish the Population Research Laboratory, Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada
• Gérard Vincent La Forest – dean of law (1968–1970), past justice of the Supreme Court of Canada
• Raymond U. Lemieux – chemistry pioneer, winner of the Wolf Prize in Chemistry (1999) and the Albert Einstein World Award of Science (1992)
• Francis John Lewis – botanist
• Andy Liu – mathematician
• Dorothy Livesay – poet, two-time winner of Governor General's Award
• John M. MacEachran – psychologist, proponent of eugenics
• Walter Mackenzie – surgeon
• Barry J. Mailloux – computer scientist
• Eli Mandel – poet, winner of a Governor General's Award
• Anne McLellan – law professor, former deputy prime minister of Canada and holder of multiple other Cabinet positions
• Carlo Montemagno – bionanotechnologist, winner of the Feynman Prize in Nanotechnology
• Norbert Morgenstern – geotechnical engineer
• Leo Moser – geometer and discrete mathematician
• Angus Munn – soldier and anesthesiologist
• Joseph S. Nelson – ichthyologist
• Hope A. Olson – library scientist
• John Orrell – theatre historian who advised the reconstruction of Shakespeare's Globe
• Jim Parr – metallurgist, broadcaster, and composer
• Solomiia Pavlychko – literary critic
• Graham Peacock – abstract painter
• Anatol Roshko – physicist, one of only three people alive to have a dimensionless number (Roshko number) named after them
• George A. Rothrock – European historian
• David Schindler – limnologist, winner of the Volvo Environment Prize and the Tyler Prize for Environmental Achievement
• Stephen Scobie – poet
• Gail Sidonie Sobat – writer and educator
• Ian Stirling – Arctic ecologist
• Mathukumalli V. Subbarao – number theorist
• David Suzuki – zoologist, environmental activist, and science communicator
• Morris Swadesh – pioneer of lexicostatistics and creator of the Swadesh list
• Yasushi Takahashi – physicist, co-discoverer of the Ward–Takahashi identity
• Henry Marshall Tory – first president of the University of Alberta, founder of three universities, the Alberta Research Council and National Research Council of Canada
• Thomas Thundat – Canada Excellence Research Chair in Oilsands Molecular Engineering
• Nicole Tomczak-Jaegermann – mathematician
• Hiroomi Umezawa – physicist
• Maury Van Vliet – physical education scholar
• Ludwig von Bertalanffy – theoretical biologist who helped establish the Advanced Center for Theoretical Psychology, originator of General Systems Theory and creator of the Von Bertalanffy function
• Ella May Walker – visual artist and writer
• Sheila Watson – novelist, author of The Double Hook
• Wilfred Watson – poet and dramatist
• Thaddeus E. Weckowicz – psychologist
• John Alexander Weir – first dean of Law
• Daniel Woolf – historian
• Norman Yates – painter

Alumni

Academics

• Dominique Abrioux – president of Athabasca University (1995–2005)
• Charlene Bearhead – first educational lead at the National Centre for Truth and Reconciliation at the University of Manitoba
• Sir John Bell – Regius Chair of Medicine, University of Oxford
• Andrew Brook – Chancellor's Professor of Philosophy and Cognitive Science at Carleton University
• Tania Bubela – professor and dean in the Faculty of Health Sciences at Simon Fraser University
• Franco Romano Calaresu (1931–1996) – professor of neurophysiology, University of Western Ontario
• James Collip – biochemistry professor, played key role in discovery of insulin
• Jim Cummins – professor and author, Ontario Institute for Studies in Education
• Bernadette Louise Dean – principal of Kinnaird College, Pakistan
• J. Alan George – computer scientist
• Su Guaning – president of Nanyang Technological University
• Aja Huang – Google Deep Mind; with David Silver, a main researcher of AlphaGo
• Joy Johnson – vice-president, Research, Simon Fraser University
• Charles Lee – cytogeneticist
• Raymond U. Lemieux – chemistry pioneer, winner of the Wolf Prize in Chemistry (1999) and the Albert Einstein World Award of Science (1992)
• Jacqueline P. Leighton – educational psychologist, academic and author
• Tak Wah Mak – molecular biologist
• Joseph B. Martin – dean of Harvard Medical School
• Ravi S. Menon – Canadian-American biophysicist and professor The University of Western Ontario
• Martin P. Mintchev – bioengineering academic and inventor
• Piers Nash – cancer research professor at the University of Chicago and founder of Sympatic
• Jordan B. Peterson – media commentator, clinical psychologist, and former professor at the University of Toronto
• Joseph Pivato – writer and researcher in ethnic minority writing in Canada; professor, Athabasca University, Edmonton
• Noris Salazar Allen – Panamanian bryologist
• Prafullachandra Vishnu Sane – plant physiologist
• David Silver – principal research scientist at Google Deep Mind; with Aja Huang, a main researcher of AlphaGo
• Janice Stein – international relations researcher
• Wallace Sterling – past president of Stanford University
• Richard E. Taylor – high-energy physicist, winner of the 1990 Nobel Prize in Physics
• Zoe Todd – anthropologist and Indigenous scholar
• Satish K. Tripathi – president of University at Buffalo
• Bas van Fraassen – philosopher of science, developer of constructive empiricism
• Kristopher Wells – scholar of gender and sexuality at MacEwan University and senator

Authors

• Jordan Abel
• Daniel Arnold
• Todd Babiak
• Billy-Ray Belcourt
• Gary Botting
• Norma Dunning
• Caterina Edwards
• Edmundo Farolan
• Katherine Govier
• Karen Graham – dietitian
• Medina Hahn
• Emma Hooper
• Myrna Kostash
• Arthur Kroeger
• Robert Kroetsch
• Steve Lillebuen
• Suzette Mayr
• Wendy McGrath
• W. O. Mitchell
• Premee Mohamed
• Marie Moser
• Mieko Ouchi
• Kit Pearson
• Marguerite-A. Primeau
• Pierrette Requier
• Emily Riddle
• Candace Savage
• Lesley-Anne Scorgie
• Vivek Shraya
• Timothy Taylor
• Vern Thiessen
• Brian Tracy
• Aritha Van Herk
• Matthew James Weigel
• Rudy Wiebe

Judges

• Adam Germain – justice of the Court of King’s Bench of Alberta (retired), member of the Legislative Assembly of Alberta (retired)
• Joe Kryczka – past justice of the Court of King’s Bench of Alberta, president of the Canadian Amateur Hockey Association
• Ronald Martland – past justice of the Supreme Court of Canada
• Beverley McLachlin – chief justice of Canada
• Henry Grattan Nolan – past justice of the Supreme Court of Canada
• William Stevenson – past justice of the Supreme Court of Canada
• Allan Wachowich – past chief justice of the Court of Queen's Bench of Alberta (retired)
• Edward R. Wachowich – past chief judge of the Provincial Court of Alberta (deceased 2012)

Politicians

• Rona Ambrose – minister of Intergovernmental Affairs
• Pat Binns – former premier of Prince Edward Island
• Joe Clark – former prime minister of Canada
• Charles Dent – former cabinet minister of the Northwest Territories
• David Emerson – Minister of International Trade
• David Hancock – former premier of Alberta and minister of Education of Alberta
• Lou Hyndman – former Alberta cabinet minister
• Don Iveson – former Mayor of Edmonton
• Matt Jeneroux – member of Parliament for Edmonton Riverbend, former MLA
• Andrew Knack – mayor of Edmonton
• J. Wilton Littlechild – former member of Parliament
• Peter Lougheed – former premier of Alberta
• Preston Manning – former leader of the Reform Party of Canada, and founder of two Canadian political parties
• Greg McLean – member of Parliament for Calgary Centre
• Heather McPherson – member of Parliament for Edmonton Strathcona
• Roland Michener – former governor general
• Grant Notley – former member of the Legislative Assembly of Alberta and leader of the Alberta NDP
• Rachel Notley – former premier of Alberta
• Chantal Petitclerc – wheelchair racer and Canadian senator for Quebec
• Jim Prentice – former premier of Alberta and minister of Environment
• Jan Reimer – first female mayor of Edmonton
• R.J. Simpson – premier of the Northwest Territories
• Ed Stelmach – former premier of Alberta (attended, did not graduate)
• Jane Sterk – former leader of the Green Party of British Columbia
• Claudette Tardif – Canadian senator for Alberta, deputy leader of the opposition in the Senate of Canada
• Muriel Stanley Venne (1937–2024) – Canadian Métis community leader and Indigenous rights activist

Other notable alumni

• Greg Abel – CEO of Berkshire Hathaway
• Harry Ainlay – educational administrator, three-term mayor of Edmonton, namesake of Harry Ainlay High School
• Doris Anderson – editor and rights activist
• Anil Arora – former chief statistician of Canada
• Peggy Baker – dancer and choreographer
• Allan Gordon Bell – composer
• Nereo Bolzon – football player
• Rachelle Brown – curler
• Ron Butlin – ice hockey executive
• Clarence Campbell – former National Hockey League president
• Neil Campbell – discovered gold in Yellowknife
• Lorne Cardinal – actor
• Juan Chioran – voice and stage actor at the Stratford Festival
• Joel H. Cohen – Canadian-Jewish comedy writer for The Simpsons
• Ted Corday – soap opera creator (Days of Our Lives)
• Ernest Côté – soldier, diplomat and civil servant
• Joanne Courtney – curler
• Jim Coutts – political advisor
• Chris Craddock – actor, playwright, and filmmaker
• John Demco – internet pioneer
• Clare Drake – ice hockey coach in CIS history, inducted to the Hockey Hall of Fame in 2017
• Nicole Dunsdon – the last person to win the Miss Canada competition before it was cancelled
• Bernard Ebbers – Worldcom co-founder and CEO; briefly attended the university
• William Epstein –- international expert on disarmament who worked at the United Nations
• Tim Feehan – songwriter
• Dana Ferguson – curler
• Nathan Fillion – actor
• Andrew French – abstract sculptor
• Jay Gilday – singer-songwriter
• Allan Gilliland – composer
• Patrick Gilmore – actor
• Lisa Gilroy – comedian
• Randy Gregg – former National Hockey League player and medical researcher
• Paul Gross – actor
• Ted Harrison – painter and illustrator
• Ivan Head – former policy adviser of Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau
• Violet King Henry – first black woman lawyer in Canada
• Rachel Homan – World Champion curler
• Casey Hudson – video game producer, known for directing the Mass Effect trilogy and Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic
• Roger Hui – co-creator of J programming language
• Adam Johnson – orchestra conductor
• Daryl Katz – billionaire entrepreneur, owner of the Rexall Pharmacy chain and the Edmonton Oilers
• Lewis Kay – scientist
• Marc Kennedy – curler
• Cindy Kenny-Gilday – Sahtu environmentalist and activist for Indigenous rights in Canada
• Lylian Klimek – sculptor
• Eric Allan Kramer – character actor, most notable in the role of Bob Duncan in Good Luck Charlie
• Joseph Kubanek – American psychiatrist
• Melina Laboucan-Massimo – climate justice and Indigenous rights advocate
• Mick Lizmore – curler, head coach of Canada's National Wheelchair Curling Program
• Melissa Lotholz – bobsledder
• Thomas Rockwell Mackie – medical physicist, inventor of tomotherapy
• Ken Macklin – sculptor
• Glenna Matoush – visual artist
• Conor McNally – documentary filmmaker
• Kelsey Mitchell – Olympic gold model track cyclist and bobsledder
• Shelley Moore – special education expert
• Ray Muzyka – BioWare co-founder
• Sidney Richard Carlyle Nelson – Canadian air marshal for the RAF
• Tom Radford – documentary filmmaker
• Jan Randall – composer and musician
• Daniel K. Riskin – evolutionary biologist and co-host of Daily Planet
• Joseph H. Shoctor – real estate developer, co-founder of the Citadel Theatre
• George Stanley – designer of the Canadian flag
• Robert Steadward – former International Paralympic Committee president
• Olawale Sulaiman – neurosurgeon, philanthropist and academic
• Esther Tailfeathers – physician and Indigenous health expert
• William Thorsell – editor, The Globe and Mail; director, the Royal Ontario Museum
• Malorie Urbanovitch – fashion designer
• Jean Wallbridge – architect
• Lorne Warneke – psychiatrist and LGBTQ+ advocate
• Anne Wheeler – film director
• Dayo Wong Tze-Hwa (黃子華) – Hong Kong comedian, actor, singer-songwriter and screenwriter; pioneered Cantonese stand up comedy
• Suzie Wong (蘇施黃) – Hong Kong disk jockey and television cooking program host
• Greg Zeschuk – BioWare co-founder
• Jason Zuback – golfer; five-time world long drive champion

Rhodes Scholars

The University of Alberta has produced 76 Rhodes Scholars, including the following:

• Roland Michener (1919) – 20th governor general of Canada
• George Stanley (1929) – designer of the Canadian flag
• Arthur Kroeger (1956) – academic, federal deputy minister and chancellor of Carleton University
• Billy-Ray Belcourt (2016) – first First Nations Rhodes Scholar, poet and winner of the Griffin Poetry Prize

Honorary degree recipients

See also: List of University of Alberta honorary degree recipients

• His Highness the Aga Khan – spiritual leader of the Ismaili Muslims
• Douglas Cardinal – architect
• Victor Cavendish – former governor general of Canada
• Charles III
• Jean Chrétien – former prime minister of Canada
• John Diefenbaker – former prime minister of Canada
• King Edward VIII
• Randy Gregg – former National Hockey League and Olympic hockey player, physician and philanthropist
• Wayne Gretzky – former National Hockey League player
• Horace Harvey – second chief justice of Alberta; chairman of the University of Alberta Board of Governors
• Frederick Haultain – first and only premier of Canada's North-West Territories
• Lois Hole – former lieutenant governor of Alberta
• Ernest Manning – former premier of Alberta
• Don Mazankowski – former deputy prime minister of Canada
• Walter Murray – first president of the University of Saskatchewan
• Alexander Rutherford – first premier of Alberta
• Arthur Sifton – former premier of Alberta
• Manmohan Singh – former prime minister of India
• Donald Smith – 1st Baron Strathcona and Mount Royal
• Donna Strickland – Nobel Prize in Physics winner
• Harry Strom – former premier of Alberta
• Mother Teresa – missionary
• Pierre Trudeau – former prime minister of Canada
• Desmond Tutu – former archbishop of Cape Town and current chair of the Global Elders
• Max Ward – pioneering aviator