This list of Cornell University alumni includes notable graduates, non-graduate former students, and current students of Cornell University, an Ivy League university located in Ithaca, New York, in the field of natural sciences and related subjects.

For other disciplines, see: List of Cornell University alumni.

Alumni Mathematics, statistics and operations research

John B. Bell (M.S. 1977, Ph.D. 1979) – mathematician and the head of the Center for Computational Sciences and Engineering at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory; recipient of the Sidney Fernbach Award (2005) and SIAM/ACM prize (2003), member of the National Academy of Sciences (2012) and fellow of SIAM (2009) James O. Berger (Ph.D. 1974) – statistician, professor of statistics at Duke University and director of the Statistical and Applied Mathematical Sciences Institute since 2002; fellow of the American Statistical Association and member of the National Academy of Sciences (2002); recipient of the Guggenheim Fellowship, the COPSS Presidents' Award (1985) and the R. A. Fisher Lectureship Robert E. Bixby (Ph.D. 1972) – Noah Harding Professor Emeritus of Computational and Applied Mathematics at Rice University; member of the National Academy of Engineering (1997) Maury D. Bramson (Ph.D. 1977 mathematics) – mathematician at University of Minnesota; member of the National Academy of Sciences (2017) Lawrence D. Brown (Ph.D. 1964; professor) – statistician, Miers Busch Professor of Statistics at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania; member of National Academy of Sciences (1990) and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences; president of Institute of Mathematical Statistics (1992–1993) T. Tony Cai (Ph.D. 1996) – statistician; Dorothy Silberberg Professor at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania; fellow of Institute of Mathematical Statistics (2006); recipient of COPSS Presidents' Award (2008) George F. Carrier (M.A. 1939, Ph.D. 1944) – mathematician, known for the modeling of fluid mechanics, Combustion, and Tsunamis, T. Jefferson Coolidge Professor of Applied Mathematics Emeritus at Harvard University, recipient of the National Medal of Science (1990), Otto Laporte Award (1976), Theodore von Karman Medal (1977), Timoshenko Medal (1978), Fluid Dynamics Prize (APS) (1984); member of the National Academy of Sciences (1967) and of the National Academy of Engineering (1974) Lauren M. Childs (M.S. 2007, Ph.D. 2010) – mathematician, expert on modeling disease spread Chia-Kun Chu (M.M.E. 1950) – applied mathematician, Fu Foundation Professor Emeritus of Applied Mathematics at Columbia University Julian Cole (B.S. engineering) – applied mathematician who was on faculty at Caltech, UCLA and RPI and served as department chair at UCLA; member of the National Academy of Sciences (1976) and of the National Academy of Engineering (1976); fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and of the American Physical Society Gérard Cornuéjols (Ph.D. 1978) – IBM University Professor of Operations Research at the Carnegie Mellon University and former editor-in-chief of Mathematics of Operations Research; recipient of Frederick W. Lanchester Prize (1977), the Fulkerson Prize (2000), the George B. Dantzig Prize (2009) and the John von Neumann Theory Prize (2011), member of the National Academy of Engineering (2016) Elbert Frank Cox (Ph.D. 1925 mathematics) – first black person in the world to receive a Ph.D. in mathematics; professor and department head at Howard University Brenda L. Dietrich (Ph.D. 1986) – member of the National Academy of Engineering (2014); IBM Fellow and fellow of the Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences (INFORMS) Benson Farb (B.A.) – mathematician at the University of Chicago, fellow of the American Mathematical Society (2012) William F. Friedman (B.S. 1914 genetics) – cryptologist, member of the Military Intelligence Hall of Fame Stephen Gelbart (B.A. 1967, professor) – American-Israeli mathematician; Nicki and J. Ira Harris Professorship at the Weizmann Institute of Science, president of the Israel Mathematical Union (1994–1996), fellow of the American Mathematical Society (2013) Robert Ghrist (M.A. 1994, Ph.D. 1995) – mathematician known for his work on topological methods in applied mathematics; the Andrea Mitchell Penn Integrating Knowledge Professor at the University of Pennsylvania (2008–) Donald Goldfarb (B.Ch.E. 1963) – Alexander and Hermine Avanessians Professor of Industrial Engineering and Operations Research at Columbia University (1982–); John von Neumann Theory Prize recipient (2017) Roger Horn (B.A. 1963) – co-developed the Bateman-Horn conjecture and wrote the standard-issue Matrix Analysis textbook with Charles Royal Johnson Alston Scott Householder (M.A. 1927) – mathematician and inventor of the Householder transformation and of Householder's method; president of the Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics (SIAM) and of the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) Iain M. Johnstone (Ph.D. 1981) – statistician, Stanford University Statistics Professor and president of the Institute of Mathematical Statistics, recipient of the Guy Medal (silver 2010, bronze 1995) and COPSS Presidents' Award (1995), member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the National Academy of Sciences (2005) Harry Kesten (Ph.D. 1958) – mathematician best known for his work in probability, most notably on random walks and percolation theory; recipient of the Brouwer Medal (1981), the George Pólya Prize (1994) and the Steele Prize (2001), member of the National Academy of Sciences (1983) and of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences and fellow of the American Mathematical Society Nancy Kopell (A.B. 1960) – studies dynamics of the nervous system; MacArthur Fellow (1990), Guggenheim Fellowship (1984); member of the National Academy of Sciences (1996) and fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences Jon Lee (B.A. 1981, Ph.D. 1986) – mathematician and operations researcher, the G. Lawton and Louise G. Johnson Professor of Engineering at the University of Michigan Lee Lorch (B.A. 1935) – mathematician, contributed to fields of summability theory and Fourier analysis; early civil rights activist William L. Maxwell (B.M.E. 1957, Ph.D. 1961) – Andrew Schultz Jr. Professor Emeritus of Industrial Engineering at Cornell University; member of the National Academy of Engineering (1998) and fellow of the Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences (2002) Colm Mulcahy (Ph.D. 1985) – mathematician, columnist and book author; serves on the Advisory Council of the Museum of Mathematics in New York City; vice-president of Gathering 4 Gardner Henry Louis Rietz (Ph.D. 1902) – mathematician, actuarial scientist, and statistician who served as the president of the Institute of Mathematical Statistics and of the Mathematical Association of America Gerald Sacks (Ph.D. 1961, assistant and associate professor 1962–67) – mathematical logician; holds a joint appointment at Harvard University as a professor of Mathematical Logic and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology as a professor emeritus; known for his contributions in recursion theory Neil Sloane (Ph.D. 1967) – mathematician; creator and maintainer of the On-Line Encyclopedia of Integer Sequences; AT&T Fellow (1998), IEEE Fellow, American Mathematical Society Fellow; member of the National Academy of Engineering; recipient of Lester R. Ford Award (1978), the Chauvenet Prize (1979), the IEEE Richard W. Hamming Medal (2005), the Mathematical Association of America's David P. Robbins award (2008) Anna Lavinia Van Benschoten (B.S. 1894, PhD 1908) – mathematician and professor at Wells College Robert J. Vanderbei (Ph.D. 1981 applied mathematics) – mathematician and Professor of Operations Research and Financial Engineering at Princeton University; fellow of the American Mathematical Society (2013) Cornelia Strong (B.A. 1903) – mathematician, astronomer, and professor at the Woman's College of the University of North Carolina Samuel S. Wagstaff, Jr. (Ph.D. 1970) – mathematician and computer scientist known for the Wagstaff prime; professor of computer science and mathematics at Purdue University Grace Wahba (B.A. 1956) – statistician at the University of Wisconsin–Madison; member of the National Academy of Sciences (2000), fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the American Statistical Association, and the Institute of Mathematical Statistics Ward Whitt (Ph.D. 1969 operations research) – Wai T. Chang Professor of IEOR at Columbia University; was on the faculty of Stanford University and Yale University; member of the National Academy of Engineering, recipient of John von Neumann Theory Prize (2001) and Frederick W. Lanchester Prize (2003) Norbert Wiener (graduate study 1910–1911, transferred) – mathematician; founder of the study of cybernetics; recipient of Bôcher Memorial Prize (1933) and National Medal of Science (1963) John Wesley Young (A.M. 1901, Ph.D. 1904) – professor, head (1911–1919) and chair (1923–1925) of the Mathematics Department at Dartmouth College, president of the Mathematical Association of America (1929–1930); known for axioms of projective geometry and the Veblen–Young theorem

Physics

Richard L. Abrams (B.Eng., Ph.D. applied physics) – chief scientist of Hughes Research Laboratories; president of The Optical Society (1990) Andreas J. Albrecht (B.A. 1979) – distinguished professor and chair of the Physics Department at the University of California, Davis; fellow of the American Physical Society, of the Institute of Physics (UK), and of the American Association for the Advancement of Science Thomas Appelquist (Ph.D. 1968) – theoretical particle physicist at Yale University; recipient of the Sakurai Prize (1997), fellow of American Academy of Arts and Sciences and of the American Physical Society David Awschalom (Ph.D. 1982) – condensed matter experimental physicist known for his work in spintronics in semiconductors; Liew Family Professor in Molecular Engineering at the University of Chicago; member of the National Academy of Sciences (2007) and the National Academy of Engineering; fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences; recipient of Oliver E. Buckley Condensed Matter Prize (2005) and Agilent Europhysics Prize by the European Physical Society (2005) William A. Bardeen (A.B. 1962) – theoretical physicist at Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory; recipient of the Sakurai Prize (1996), fellow of the American Physical Society (1984) and of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (1998), member of the National Academy of Sciences (1999) Samuel Jackson Barnett (Ph.D. 1898) – physicist, known for Barnett effect in electromagnetism; professor of physics and department chairman at University of California at Los Angeles; repeated nominee of the Nobel Prize in Physics; fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences Gordon Baym (B.A. 1956) – professor emeritus at University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign; fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and member of the National Academy of Sciences (1982), recipient of the Hans A. Bethe Prize (2002) and Lars Onsager Prize (2008) Malcolm Beasley (B.E.P. 1962, Ph.D. 1968) – physicist and president of the American Physical Society (2014); fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and member of the National Academy of Sciences (1993); dean of the Stanford University School of Humanities and Sciences (1998–2001) Carl M. Bender (B.A. 1964) – Wilfred R. and Ann Lee Konneker Distinguished Professor of Physics at Washington University in St. Louis; fellow of the American Physical Society