List of Phillips Exeter Academy people

The following is a list of notable faculty, trustees, and alumni of Phillips Exeter Academy, a preparatory school in Exeter, New Hampshire, founded in 1781.

Founder

 * John Phillips – founder of Phillips Exeter; president of board of trustees 1781–1795

Principals

 * Benjamin Abbot – principal 1788–1838
 * Gideon Lane Soule – principal 1838–1873
 * Albert C. Perkins – principal 1873–1883
 * Walter Quincy Scott – president of Ohio State University; principal 1884–1889
 * Charles Everett Fish – principal 1890–1895
 * Harlan P. Amen – principal 1895–1913
 * Lewis Perry – principal 1914–1946
 * William Saltonstall – principal 1946–1963
 * William Ernest Gillespie – Latin instructor 1939–1967, vice principal, dean of faculty, interim principal 1963–1964
 * Richard W. Day – principal 1964–1973
 * Stephen G. Kurtz – historian; principal 1974–1987
 * Kendra Stearns O'Donnell – painter; principal 1987–1997
 * Tyler Tingley – principal 1997–2009
 * Thomas Hassan – faculty 1989–present; principal 2009–2015
 * Lisa MacFarlane – principal 2015–2018
 * William Knox Rawson – interim principal 2018, principal 2019–present

Notable faculty members and trustees of Phillips Exeter Academy

 * John Pickering – federal judge, impeached for drunkenness; trustee 1781–1782
 * Paine Wingate – New Hampshire delegate to the Continental Congress; U.S. representative from New Hampshire; U.S. senator from New Hampshire; trustee 1787–1809
 * Nicholas Emery – judge on the Maine Supreme Judicial Court; assistant teacher 1797
 * Daniel Dana – president of Dartmouth College; instructor 1789–91; board of trustees 1809–1843
 * John Taylor Gilman – delegate to the Continental Congress; governor of New Hampshire; president of board of trustees 1795–1827
 * Ashur Ware – federal judge; instructor 1804–1805
 * Nathan Hale – editor and publisher; introduced regular editorial commentary; instructor 1805–1807
 * Alexander Hill Everett – diplomat and politician; assistant teacher 1807
 * Nathan Lord – president of Dartmouth College; faculty 1809–1812
 * Henry Ware Jr. – mentor to Ralph Waldo Emerson; instructor, 1812–1814
 * James Walker – president of Harvard University; faculty 1814–1815
 * William Bourne Oliver Peabody – minister and author; assistant instructor 1817
 * Ebenezer Adams – first professor of mathematics and natural philosophy
 * Nathaniel Appleton Haven – U.S. representative from New Hampshire; president of board of trustees 1828–1830
 * Jeremiah Smith – U.S. representative from New Hampshire; judge; governor of New Hampshire; president of board of trustees 1830–1842
 * Francis Bowen – philosopher, writer, and educationalist; faculty 1833–1835
 * Joseph Gibson Hoyt – chancellor of Washington University in St. Louis; faculty 1840–1858
 * Andrew Preston Peabody – Unitarian clergyman and author; board of trustees, 1843–1885
 * Amos Tuck – U.S. representative from New Hampshire; founder of the Republican Party; board of trustees 1853–1879
 * George A. Wentworth – author of textbooks on mathematics; faculty 1857–1892; board of trustees 1899–1906
 * Robert Franklin Pennell – scholar and classicist; faculty 1871–1882
 * Charles H. Bell – governor of New Hampshire; trustee 1879–1883
 * George Lyman Kittredge – faculty 1883–1887
 * T.A. Dwight Jones – faculty
 * H. Hamilton "Hammy" Bissell – director of scholarships
 * Robert H. Bates – mountaineer; faculty
 * Donald B. Cole – historian; faculty 1947–1988
 * Dandridge MacFarlan Cole – aerospace engineer, futurist, lecturer, and author; faculty 1949–1953, physics and astronomy
 * Winthrop Jordan – historian; faculty member in history department 1955–1960
 * Frederick Buechner – writer; theologian; Religion and English faculty and School Minister 1958–1967
 * Cabot Lyford – sculptor; faculty 1963–1986
 * Michael S. Greco – president of American Bar Association; faculty 1965–1968
 * George Crowe – ice hockey coach; faculty 1969–1975
 * David P. Robbins – mathematician; faculty 1972–1977
 * Dolores Kendrick – Poet Laureate of the District of Columbia; faculty 1972–1993
 * Dan Brown – New York Times bestselling author; faculty 1993
 * Michael Golay – historian; faculty 1999–present
 * Gwynneth Coogan – U.S. Olympian; faculty 2002–present
 * Todd Hearon – faculty 2003–present
 * Olutoyin Augustus – Nigerian hurdler; instructor in physical education 2011–2021
 * Thomas W. Simpson – faculty 2008–present
 * Willie Perdomo – current instructor in English

1780s

 * Benjamin Ives Gilman (c. 1783) – Ohio pioneer
 * George Sullivan (c. 1783) – U.S. representative from New Hampshire
 * Nathaniel Thayer (c. 1783) – Unitarian minister
 * Daniel Tilton (c. 1783) – one of the first three judges in Mississippi Territory, Supreme Court of Mississippi Territory
 * Josiah Bartlett Jr. (c. 1784) – U.S. representative from New Hampshire
 * Samuel Smith (c. 1784) – U.S. representative from New Hampshire
 * George B. Upham (c. 1785) – U.S. representative from New Hampshire
 * Daniel Meserve Durell (c. 1789) – U.S. representative from New Hampshire; member of Democratic-Republican Party

1790s

 * Dudley Leavitt (1790) – publisher, writer, teacher
 * David L. Morril (1790) – U.S. senator from New Hampshire, governor of New Hampshire
 * Nicholas Emery (c. 1791) – judge on the Maine Supreme Judicial Court
 * John Noyes (1791) – U.S. representative from Vermont
 * Lewis Cass (1792) – brigadier general; governor of Michigan Territory, U.S. Secretary of War; U.S. senator from Michigan; U.S. Secretary of State; Democratic candidate for president
 * William Ladd (1793) – pacifist, founder and first president of American Peace Society
 * Nathaniel Upham (1793) – U.S. representative from New Hampshire
 * Samuel Conner (1794) – U.S. representative from Massachusetts
 * John Adams Harper (c. 1794) – U.S. representative from New Hampshire
 * Edward Little (1794) – attorney, entrepreneur, philanthropist
 * Joseph Stevens Buckminster (1795) – Unitarian minister and promulgator of Higher Criticism
 * Daniel Webster (1796) – U.S. representative who represented New Hampshire and Massachusetts; U.S. senator from Massachusetts; U.S. Secretary of State; diplomat
 * Leverett Saltonstall I (1798) – U.S. representative from Massachusetts

1800s

 * Samuel Livermore (1800) – legal scholar
 * Richard Saltonstall Rogers (1800) – East Indies merchant, N. L. Rogers & Bros., Salem, Massachusetts
 * Abiel Chandler (1802) – merchant, philanthropist
 * Joseph Cogswell (1802) – educator, editor, library administrator
 * William Plumer Jr. (1802) – U.S. representative from New Hampshire
 * James Carr (1803) – U.S. representative from Massachusetts
 * John Perkins Cushing (1803) – China merchant, opium smuggler, philanthropist
 * Augustine Heard (c. 1803) – entrepreneur and businessman
 * Nicholas B. Doe (1804) – U.S. representative from New York State
 * Theodore Lyman (1804) – mayor of Boston, Massachusetts
 * Lucius Manlius Sargent (1804) – author, antiquarian, and temperance advocate
 * John Lauris Blake (1806) – minister and prolific author
 * Benjamin T. Pickman (1806) – president of the Massachusetts State Senate
 * Zachariah Allen (1807) – manufacturer and inventor
 * Joseph Blunt (1807) – author; editor; politician; New York County District Attorney
 * Edward Everett (1807) – U.S. representative from Massachusetts; U.S. senator from Massachusetts; governor of Massachusetts, ambassador to Great Britain; U.S. Secretary of State; president of Harvard University
 * Nathaniel Appleton Haven (1807) – U.S. representative from New Hampshire
 * Benjamin Kendrick Pierce (1807) – U.S. Army officer; brother of Franklin Pierce; son of Benjamin Pierce
 * James H. Duncan (1808) – U.S. representative from Massachusetts
 * James Freeman Dana (1809) – chemist; science author
 * Samuel Luther Dana (1809) – chemist; agricultural science specialist; science author
 * William Thorndike (1809) – president of the Massachusetts State Senate

1810s

 * John Sherburne Sleeper (1807) – sailor, ship master, novelist, journalist, politician
 * William Willis (1808) – mayor of Portland, Maine; railroad president
 * Thomas Bulfinch (1810) – author of Bulfinch's Mythology
 * John Adams Dix (1810) – U.S. Secretary of the Treasury; U.S. Senator from New York; governor of New York; U.S. Minister to France; Railroad President
 * Horace Hooker (1810) – Congregationalist minister; author
 * William Robinson (ca. 1810) – school founder
 * Jonathan P. Cushing (1811) – president of Hampden-Sydney College
 * George Bancroft (1811) – historian, Secretary of the Navy; founder of the United States Naval Academy; ambassador to the United Kingdom
 * John G. Palfrey (1811) – clergyman, U.S. representative from Massachusetts
 * Jared Sparks (1811) – president of Harvard University
 * Benjamin Ogle Tayloe – businessman
 * David Barker Jr. (1812) – U.S. representative from New Hampshire
 * Alpheus Spring Packard Sr. (1812) – professor; acting president of Bowdoin College
 * William Bourne Oliver Peabody (1812) – Unitarian minister, author
 * Charles Paine (1813) – governor of Vermont
 * Samuel Edmund Sewall (1813) — lawyer; politician; abolitionist; suffragist
 * James Wilson II (1813) – U.S. representative from New Hampshire
 * Andrew Leonard Emerson (1814) – first mayor of Portland, Maine
 * Gideon Lane Soule (1816) – principal of Phillips Exeter, 1838–1873
 * Nathaniel Gookin Upham (1816) – associate justice of the New Hampshire Supreme Court; railroad president; diplomat
 * George Lunt (1818) – politician, author, editor, poet
 * John Dennison Russ (1818) – physician; innovator in the education of the blind
 * Jonathan Chapman (1819) – mayor of Boston, Massachusetts
 * Thomas Wilson Dorr (1819) – governor of Rhode Island; leader of the eponymous Dorr Rebellion
 * Alfred L. Elwyn (1819) – humanitarian, author
 * Russell Sturgis (1819) – merchant, banker

1820s

 * John P. Hale (1820) – U.S. representative from New Hampshire; U.S. senator from New Hampshire; abolitionist; Free Soil candidate for U.S. president; ambassador to Spain
 * Franklin Pierce (1820) – U.S. representative from New Hampshire; U.S. senator from New Hampshire; 14th president of the United States
 * Alpheus Felch (1821) – U.S. senator from Michigan; governor of Michigan
 * Josiah S. Little (1821) – Speaker of the Maine House of Representatives
 * Ephraim Peabody (1821) – Unitarian minister; abolitionist
 * John Langdon Sibley (1821) – Librarian of Harvard University
 * Alfred W. Craven (1822) – civil engineer; founding member and president of the American Society of Civil Engineers
 * Thomas Tingey Craven (1822) – rear admiral, United States Navy
 * George Yeaton Sawyer (1822) - lawyer and politician, justice of the New Hampshire Supreme Court
 * Samuel Foster Haven (1823) – archeologist, anthropologist
 * Richard Hildreth (1823) – historian, political theorist
 * John Hodgdon (1823) – president of the Maine State Senate; mayor of Dubuque, Iowa
 * Forrest Shepherd (1823) – geologist
 * George Bradburn (1824) – politician and Unitarian minister in Massachusetts
 * Francis Ormand Jonathan Smith (c. 1824) – U.S. representative from Maine
 * Edward Henry Durell (1826) – mayor of New Orleans, federal judge
 * Henry Francis Harrington (1828) – editor of the Boston Herald
 * Theodore Howard McCaleb (1828) – federal judge; president of the University of Louisiana
 * Francis Bowen (1829) – philosopher, writer, educationalist
 * Benjamin Butler (1829) – Civil War general (Union); U.S. representative from Massachusetts; governor of Massachusetts
 * Edward Fox (1829) – federal judge
 * Timothy Roberts Young (1829) – U.S. representative from Illinois
 * Charles Turner Torrey (1829) – abolitionist; convicted of stealing slaves, died in prison
 * Jeffries Wyman (1829) – naturalist and anatomist
 * Morrill Wyman (1829) – physician and social reformer

1830s

 * Henry Gardner (1831) – governor of Massachusetts
 * Horace G. Hutchins (1831) – mayor of Charlestown, Massachusetts
 * William Henry Chandler (1832) – politician from Connecticut
 * Edmund Burke Whitman (1833) – quartermaster, U.S. Army; superintendent of National Cemeteries
 * Nathaniel B. Baker (1834) – governor of New Hampshire
 * Charles Jervis Gilman (1835) – U.S. representative from Maine
 * Fitz John Porter (1835) – Civil War general (Union)
 * John F. Potter (1835) – U.S. representative from Wisconsin
 * William B. Small (c. 1835) – U.S. representative from New Hampshire
 * Ezra Abbot (1836) – New Testament scholar
 * Amos Tappan Akerman (1836) – U.S. Attorney General, 1870–1872
 * Charles H. Bell (1837) – U.S. senator from New Hampshire, governor of New Hampshire
 * Augustus Lord Soule (1837) – associate justice of Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court
 * E. Carleton Sprague (1839) – lawyer, politician, chancellor of the University of Buffalo

1840s

 * James Camp Tappan (1840) – Civil War general (CSA), Speaker of the Arkansas House of Representatives
 * Henry W. Cleaveland (1841) – architect
 * Paul A. Chadbourne (1842) – president of University of Wisconsin, Williams College, and University of Massachusetts
 * James Cooley Fletcher (1842) – missionary, diplomat, author
 * Jonathan Homer Lane (1842) – astronomer
 * Elijah B. Stoddard (1843) – mayor of Worcester, Massachusetts
 * E. C. Banfield (1845) – U.S. representative from Massachusetts; Solicitor of the United States Treasury
 * Charles Cogswell Doe (1845) – Chief Justice of the New Hampshire Supreme Court
 * William Fessenden Allen (1846) – Privy Councillor to King of Hawaii; chairman of the advisory council of the Provisional Government of Hawaii; member of the executive council of the Republic of Hawaii
 * Curtis Coe Bean (1846) – delegate from the Territory of Arizona to the U.S. House of Representatives
 * George Francis Richardson (1846) – Massachusetts politician
 * William Dorsheimer (1847) – U.S. representative from New York; lieutenant governor of New York
 * Charles Franklin Dunbar (1847) – editor; political economist; dean of faculty, Harvard University; president of the American Economic Association
 * Richard Sylvester (1847) – journalist
 * William Robert Ware (1847) – architect, founder of architecture programs at MIT and Columbia University
 * Christopher Langdell (1848) – legal scholar, jurist and educator

1850s

 * Frederick Lothrop Ames (1851) – business magnate; art collector
 * Franklin Benjamin Sanborn (1851) – author, journalist, abolitionist
 * Uriah Smith (1851) – Seventh-day Adventist author and theologian
 * George Bates Nichols Tower (c. 1851) – civil and mechanical engineer; author
 * Benjamin Smith Lyman (1852) – mining engineer, surveyor, linguist
 * Benjamin F. Prescott (1852) – governor of New Hampshire
 * Charles Pomeroy Otis (1855) – educator; author
 * Wheelock G. Veazey (1855) – justice of the Vermont Supreme Court; Medal of Honor recipient (Civil War: Gettysburg)
 * George E. Adams (1856) – U.S. representative from Illinois
 * Marcellus Bailey (1856) – patent attorney; worked on the patents for the telephone
 * Frank W. Hackett (1857) – Assistant Secretary of the United States Navy
 * Edward Rowland Sill (1857) – poet
 * George W. Atherton (1858) – president of Pennsylvania State University
 * William Ripley Brown (1858) – U.S. representative from Kansas
 * Charles Ezra Greene (1858) – civil engineer; author; first dean of the University of Michigan College of Engineering
 * Edward Tuck (1858) – banker, diplomat, philanthropist
 * George S. Morison (1859) – leading bridge designer
 * Henry B. Lovering (1859) – U.S. representative from Massachusetts

1860s

 * Jeremiah Curtin (1860) – translator of Native American and Slavic languages; folklorist
 * William M.R. French (1860) – first director of the Art Institute of Chicago
 * Robert Todd Lincoln (1860) – son of President Abraham Lincoln; U.S. Secretary of War; U.S. Minister to the United Kingdom
 * James Greeley Flanders (1861) – Wisconsin politician
 * Marshall Snow (1861) – acting chancellor of Washington University in St. Louis
 * John White Chadwick (1862) – Unitarian minister and writer
 * Augustus Van Wyck (1862) – Supreme Court justice from Brooklyn, New York
 * John E. Leonard (1863) – U.S. representative from Louisiana
 * Elisha B. Maynard (1863) – mayor of Springfield, Massachusetts; associate justice of Massachusetts Superior Court
 * John Ames Mitchell (1863) – architect; writer; publisher, co-founder and president of Life magazine
 * George Thomas Tilden (1863) – architect
 * Wilmon W. Blackmar (1864) – Medal of Honor recipient (Civil War: Battle of Five Forks)
 * Charles Rufus Brown (1865) – Hebrew Bible scholar
 * Robert Hallowell Richards (1865) – mining engineer; metallurgist
 * Joseph Lyman Silsbee (1865) – architect
 * William Gardner Hale (1866) – classical scholar
 * Edward R. Bacon (1867) – railroad president; financier; art collector
 * John Hubbard (1867) – Real Admiral, U.S. Navy
 * Herbert H. D. Peirce (1867) – diplomat; Third Assistant Secretary of State; U.S. Ambassador to Norway; brother of C. S. Peirce
 * Herbert Baxter Adams (1868) – educator and historian
 * Winfield Scott Edgerly (1868) – brigadier general, U.S. Army
 * Robert Franklin Pennell (1868) – educator and scholar
 * Charlemagne Tower Jr. (1868) – U.S. Ambassador to Russia and Germany
 * Frank O. Briggs (1869) – U.S. senator from New Jersey

1870s

 * August Belmont Jr. (1870) – banker; owner and breeder of thoroughbreds, builder of Belmont Park racetrack
 * Erastus Brainerd (1870) – museum curator; newspaper editor; publicist for Seattle, Washington
 * Nathan Haskell Dole (1870) – author and translator
 * Ulysses S. Grant Jr. (c. 1870) – entrepreneur; son of President Ulysses S. Grant
 * Samuel L. Powers (1870) – U.S. representative from Massachusetts
 * Sylvester Primer (1870) – linguist and philologist
 * Albert D. Bosson (1871) – mayor of Chelsea, Massachusetts
 * Nelson Taylor Jr. (1871) – politician from Connecticut
 * Philip Hale (1872) – music critic
 * Oscar Richard Hundley (1872) – federal judge
 * Frank H. Pope (1872) – newspaper reporter; Massachusetts politician
 * George Edward Woodberry (1872) – poet and literary critic
 * Melville Bull (1873) – lieutenant governor of Rhode Island; U.S. representative from Rhode Island
 * Henry G. Danforth (1873) – U.S. representative from New York
 * Robert O. Harris (1873) – U.S. representative from Massachusetts
 * James Cameron Mackenzie (1873) – transformative headmaster of Lawrenceville School
 * George Arthur Plimpton (1873) – publisher and philanthropist
 * William Bancroft (1874) – businessman; brigadier general; mayor of Cambridge, Massachusetts
 * Benjamin Newhall Johnson (1874) – attorney, historian, owner of Breakheart Hill Forest
 * Ogden Mills (1874) – financier; owner of thoroughbreds; philanthropist
 * Guy Carleton Phinney (1874) – real estate developer
 * Frederick Winslow Taylor (1874) – efficiency innovator; management theorist and consultant; president of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers
 * Harlan P. Amen (1875) – principal of Phillips Exeter, 1895–1913
 * William De Witt Hyde (1875) – president of Bowdoin College
 * Henry Shute (1875) – author
 * William Morton Grinnell (1876) – lawyer; banker; diplomat; Third Assistant Secretary of State
 * Robert Winsor (1876) – financier, investment banker, and philanthropist
 * Timothy L. Woodruff (1876) – lieutenant governor of New York
 * H. H. Holmes (1877?) – serial killer
 * Charles MacVeagh (1877) – U.S. Ambassador to Japan
 * William W. Stickney (1877) – governor of Vermont
 * Willard S. Augsbury (1878) – businessman, banker, and politician from New York State
 * Sherman Hoar (1878) – U.S. representative from Massachusetts
 * Walter I. McCoy (1878) – U.S. representative from New Jersey
 * William Schaus (1878) – entomologist
 * Henry Grier Bryant (1879) – explorer, writer
 * S. Percy Hooker (1879) – politician from New York State
 * Moses King (1879) – editor and publisher of travel guidebooks
 * Francis S. Peabody (1879) – coal baron, ally of Adlai Stevenson

1880s

 * Joseph Adna Hill (1881) – statistician; devised the method of equal proportions
 * Thomas Parker Sanborn (1881) – poet; inspiration for the protagonist of Santayana's The Last Pilgrim
 * Charles Augustus Strong (1881) – philosopher and psychologist
 * William Woodward Baldwin (1882) – Third Assistant Secretary of State
 * Frank G. Higgins (1882) – football player, lawyer, politician, lieutenant governor of Montana
 * Edmund Wilson Sr. (1882) – Attorney General of New Jersey
 * Gordon Woodbury (1882) – U.S. Assistant Secretary of the Navy
 * Joseph H. Walker (1883) – Speaker of the Massachusetts House of Representatives
 * Larz Anderson (1884) – businessman, diplomat, U.S. Ambassador to Japan
 * Lindley Miller Garrison (1884) – U.S. Secretary of War
 * William Mann Irvine (1884) – academic, founding headmaster of Mercersburg Academy
 * Wallace Nutting (1884) – photographer
 * Bradley Palmer (1884) – attorney, businessman, philanthropist, part of American delegation to the Paris Peace Conference
 * John Scammon (1884) – president of the New Hampshire State Senate; associate justice of the New Hampshire Superior Court
 * James D. Denegre (1885) – Minnesota state senator and lawyer
 * William A. Chanler (1885) – explorer, soldier, U.S. representative from New York
 * Morton D. Hull (1885) – U.S. representative from Illinois
 * George Hunter (1885) – authority on decorative art
 * Walter W. Magee (1885) – U.S. representative from New York
 * Gifford Pinchot (1885) – first Chief Forester of the U.S. Forest Service; governor of Pennsylvania
 * George Rublee (1885) – diplomat, advisor to Woodrow Wilson
 * Amos Alonzo Stagg (1885) – All-American football player; won national championships as Football Coach at U. of Chicago; "grandfather of football"
 * Augustus Noble Hand (1886) – federal judge
 * Tim Shinnick (1886) – professional baseball player: second baseman for the Louisville Colonels
 * William Wurtenburg (1886) – played on two national championship football teams at Yale; football coach at Navy and Dartmouth; physician
 * Theodore Davis Boal (1887) – U.S. Army colonel; architect
 * Bob Huntington (1887) – U.S. Open Tennis Doubles champion (1891, 1892); architect
 * James Madison Morton Jr. (1887) – federal judge
 * George Higgins Moses (1887) – U.S. senator from New Hampshire, ambassador to Greece
 * Curtis Hidden Page (1887) – scholar, author, translator
 * William Rhode (1887) – All-American football player; won national championship as football coach at Yale
 * Frank Barbour (1888) – football player; football coach at the University of Michigan, businessman
 * John Cranston (1888) – All-American football player; football coach at Harvard University
 * Robert Boal Fort (1888) – Illinois politician
 * Thomas Lamont (1888) – partner and chairman of board of directors of J.P. Morgan & Co.
 * Lee McClung (1888) – All-American football player; Treasurer of the United States
 * Horace Tracy Pitkin (1888) – missionary beheaded during Boxer Rebellion
 * Frank St. John Sidway (1888) – New York State politician
 * Samuel Washington Weis (1888) – painter
 * Robert D. Farquhar (1889) – architect
 * Ogden H. Hammond (1889) – U.S. Ambassador to Spain
 * Booth Tarkington (1889) – Pulitzer Prize winner

1890s

 * Butler Ames (1890) – U.S. representative from Massachusetts
 * Carroll Bond (1890) – chief judge of the Supreme Court of the U.S. State of Maryland, the Court of Appeals
 * Henry M. Crane (1891) – automotive engineer and pioneer
 * George Lawrence Day (1890) – a.k.a. John Mapes Adams, Medal of Honor recipient (Boxer Rebellion)
 * Marshall Newell (1890) – All-American football player; football coach at Cornell University
 * Lewis Stevenson (1890) – son of Vice President Adlai Stevenson; Democratic Party leader; Illinois Secretary of State
 * William Boyce Thompson (1890) – mining engineer, financier, philanthropist
 * Julian Coolidge (1891) – mathematician; president of the Mathematical Association of America
 * Henry M. Crane (c. 1891) – pioneering automobile designer
 * Louis W. Hill (1891) – railroad magnate
 * John Howland (1891) – pediatrician
 * Henry McKee Minton (1891) – physician, co-founder of Sigma Pi Phi
 * Winfred Thaxter Denison (1892) – Secretary of the Interior of the Philippines
 * Daniel Gregory Mason (1892) – composer, music critic
 * Hiland Orlando Stickney (1892) – football coach at University of Wisconsin and Oregon State University
 * Charles Loring (1893) – Chief Justice of the Minnesota Supreme Court
 * William Belmont Parker (1893) – author and editor
 * Carl Frelinghuysen Gould (1894) – architect
 * Lawrence B. Hamlin (1895) – purveyor of Hamlin's Wizard Oil, fined for false advertising
 * George R. Stobbs (1895) – U.S. representative from Massachusetts
 * Charles R. Forbes (1896) – director of the Veterans' Bureau
 * Doc Powers (c. 1896) – professional baseball player
 * Walter Dearborn (1897) – experimental psychologist; specialist in reading education
 * William F. Donovan (1897) – athletic ringer; football coach at Harvard University
 * Burt Z. Kasson (1897) – politician from New York State
 * Roscoe Conkling Bruce (1898) – educator
 * Robert William Sawyer (1898) – journalist, conservationist
 * Samuel Davis Wilson (1898) – mayor of Philadelphia
 * Barry Faulkner (1899) – muralist
 * Robert Leavitt (1899) – Olympic gold medalist, 110m hurdles
 * Charles M. Olmsted (1899) – aeronautical engineer

1900s

 * Arthur Nash (1900) – architect
 * Myron E. Witham (1900) – All-American football player; football coach at Purdue and the University of Colorado
 * Swinburne Hale (1901) – civil rights attorney; a founder of the American Civil Liberties Union; poet
 * James Hogan (1901) – All-American football player
 * Walter Nelles (1901) – a founder of the American Civil Liberties Union
 * Foster Rockwell (1901) – All-American football player; football coach at Yale and Navy; won national championship coaching at Yale; hotelier
 * Ralph B. Strassburger (1901) – businessman, thoroughbred owner and breeder
 * Joseph Gilman (1902) – All-American football player, businessman
 * Samuel M. Harrington (1902) – brigadier general
 * J. W. Knibbs (1902) – football player; football coach at University of California, Berkeley
 * James Cooney (1903) – All-American football player
 * Sterling Dow (1903) – classical archaeologist and epigrapher
 * Nicholas V. V. Franchot II (1903) – businessman and New York State politician
 * Hugo W. Koehler (1903) – U.S. Navy commander; military attaché to Russia
 * Samuel Abraham Marx (1903) – architect and interior designer
 * Jay R. Benton (1904) – Massachusetts Attorney General
 * Edwin F. Harding (1904) – U.S. Army major general, commander of 32nd Infantry Division during WW II
 * Howard Jones (1904) – football coach; won national championships coaching Yale and USC
 * T. A. Dwight Jones (1904) – All-American football player; Yale football coach
 * Jim McCormick (1904) – All-American football player; football coach at Princeton
 * F. Harold Van Orman (1904) – lieutenant governor of Indiana
 * Harrie B. Chase (1905) – federal judge
 * Richard Grozier (1905) – owner, publisher, and editor of The Boston Post; responsible for exposing Charles Ponzi
 * Roger Sherman Hoar (1905) – lawyer, politician, science fiction author
 * William Rand (1905) – Olympic athlete (1908, 110m hurdles)
 * Thomas C. Coffin (1906) – U.S. representative from Idaho
 * Haniel Long (1906) – poet, novelist, publisher and academic
 * Henry Morgenthau Jr. (1906) – U.S. Secretary of Treasury under Franklin D. Roosevelt (did not graduate)
 * Andrew Tombes (1906) – comedian and character actor
 * Justin Woodward Harding (c. 1907) – federal judge; trial judge at Nuremberg
 * Ed Wheelan (1907) – cartoonist
 * Robert Benchley (1908) – author; member of original staff of The New Yorker; actor
 * Frank M. Dixon (c. 1908) – governor of Alabama; a founder of the States' Rights Party ("Dixiecrats")
 * Arthur Bluethenthal (1909) – All-American football player; decorated World War I pilot
 * Walter William Spencer Cook (c. 1909) – Spanish Medieval art historian and professor
 * John Paul Jones – Olympic runner and baseball player (1912); world record holder in the mile run

1910s

 * Wayne G. Borah (1910) – federal judge
 * J. Ira Courtney (1910) – Olympic sprinter and baseball player (1912)
 * Allen Dulles (1910) – U.S. Director of Central Intelligence
 * Rustin McIntosh (1910) – pediatrician
 * Edwin Charles Parsons (1910) – rear admiral of the United States Navy
 * Olin M. Jeffords (1911) – Chief Justice of the Vermont Supreme Court
 * Robert Nathan (1912) – novelist and poet
 * Phelps Putnam (1912) – poet
 * Donald Ogden Stewart (1912) – Academy Award-winning screenwriter, The Philadelphia Story
 * Harold Weston (1912) – modernist painter
 * William D. Byron (1913) – U.S. representative from Maryland
 * Harry Worthington (1913) – Olympic long jumper (1912)
 * John Amen (1914) – prosecutor of government corruption, head of the U.S. Interrogation Division at the Nuremberg Trials
 * Arthur Freed (1914) – film producer
 * Howard Hawks (1914) – film director
 * Joseph Frank Wehner (1914) – fighter pilot
 * Charles Bierer Wrightsman (c. 1914) – fine arts collector and philanthropist
 * Art Braman (1915) – NFL football player
 * Eddie Casey (1915) – All-American football player; head coach of the Washington Redskins
 * Richard F. Cleveland (1915) – son of President Grover Cleveland; civil servant
 * Lawrence Dennis (1915) – author and economist
 * Louis M. Loeb (1915) – president of the New York City Bar Association
 * Drew Pearson (1915) – newspaper reporter, author, columnist
 * Stephen Potter (1915) – first American naval aviator to shoot down a German seaplane
 * John Cowles Sr. (1917) – co-owner of the Cowles Media Company
 * Frederick Cunningham (1917) – Olympic fencer (1920)
 * Werner Janssen (1917) – conductor and composer
 * Donold Lourie (1917) – All-American football player; businessman; government official
 * Frederick James Woodbridge (1917) – architect
 * Robert B. Chiperfield (1918) – U.S. representative from Illinois
 * George H. Love (1918) – businessman; industrialist; coal baron; chairman of the board of Chrysler
 * Francis T. P. Plimpton (1918) – lawyer and diplomat
 * Norris Cotton (1919) – U.S. representative from New Hampshire; U.S. senator from New Hampshire
 * Haddie Gill (1919) – pitcher for Cincinnati Reds
 * David Granger (1919) – Olympic bobsledder (1928–silver medal)
 * Donald Oenslager (1919) – Tony Award-winning scenic designer
 * Phra Bisal Sukhumvit (1919) – Thai chief of Department of Highways, urban planner

1920s



 * James Tinkham Babb (1920) – librarian and book collector
 * Mark Brunswick (c. 1920) – composer
 * Corliss Lamont (1920) – humanist and civil libertarian
 * Jess Sweetser (1920) – amateur golfer
 * Herb Treat (1920) – All-American football player; player-coach of the Boston Bulldogs
 * C. Bradford Welles (1920) – classicist
 * James Greenway (1921) – ornithologist
 * Richard Luman (1921) – All-American football player; Speaker of the Wyoming House of Representatives
 * Laurence Stoddard (1921) – Olympic coxswain (1924–gold medal)
 * Weston Adams (c. 1922) – principal owner and president of the Boston Bruins
 * Montgomery Atwater (1922) – pioneer in avalanche research and forecasting; author
 * Robert Todd Lincoln Beckwith (1922) – great-grandson of Abraham Lincoln
 * Bayes Norton (1922) – Olympic sprint runner (1924)
 * Laurence Duggan (1923) – head of the South American desk at the United States Department of State; Soviet spy
 * Jarvis Hunt (c. 1923) – 79th president of Massachusetts Senate
 * Charles Edward Wyzanski Jr. (1923) – federal judge
 * John Chase (1924) – Olympic ice hockey player (1932–silver medal)
 * Howard Francis Corcoran (1924) – federal judge
 * Sidney Darlington (1924) – engineer and inventor; winner of the Presidential Medal of Freedom
 * John F. "Jack" Hasey (1924) – officer in the French Foreign Legion; C.I.A. officer; officer in the Légion d'honneur
 * Tracy Jaeckel (1924) – Olympic fencer (1932–bronze medal, 1936)
 * George E. Kimball (1924) – professor of quantum chemistry
 * John H. H. Phipps (1924) – businessman, conservationist, philanthropist, champion polo player
 * William Saltonstall (1924) – principal of Phillips Exeter, 1946–1963
 * Edmund Berkeley (1925) – computer scientist; author
 * John K. Fairbank (1925) – academic and historian of China
 * Lincoln Kirstein (1925) – writer; co-founder and general director of the New York City Ballet (did not graduate)
 * Dwight Macdonald (1925) – author and critic
 * Richard B. Sewall (1925) – Yale English professor; biographer
 * Kent Smith (c. 1925) – actor
 * Walworth Barbour (1926) – U.S. Ambassador to Israel
 * Walter A. Brown (1926) – original owner of the Boston Celtics, owner of the Boston Bruins
 * Richard W. Leopold (1926) – historian at Northwestern University
 * Red Rolfe (1927) – All-Star New York Yankee third baseman, manager of the Detroit Tigers
 * James Agee (1928) – author and critic
 * Morton Bartlett (1928) – sculptor and photographer
 * Jack R. Howard (1928) – broadcasting executive
 * Albert E. Kahn (1928) – blacklisted journalist and photographer
 * Tex McCrary (1928) – journalist, radio and television talk-show innovator, political "fixer"
 * Hart Day Leavitt (1928) – longtime English teacher, Phillips Academy, Andover, Massachusetts
 * Hickman Price (1928) – business executive; U.S. Assistant Secretary of Commerce
 * Paul Sweezy (1928) – economist and publisher
 * Whiting Willauer (1928) – U.S. Ambassador to Honduras and Costa Rica
 * Robert H. Bates (1929) – instructor in English, PEA; mountaineer
 * H. Hamilton "Hammy" Bissell (1929) – long-time director of scholarships at the academy; uncle of John Irving (1961)
 * Edwin Gillette (1929) – cameraman, inventor of animation technique
 * Sam Knox (c. 1929) – guard for the Detroit Lions
 * William Ernest Gillespie (1929) – interim principal of Phillips Exeter Academy
 * William Howard Stein (1929) – Nobel Prize winner in Chemistry, 1972
 * Henry Babcock Veatch (1929) – neo-Aristotelian philosopher

1930s

 * Joseph H. Burchenal (1930) – oncologist; winner of the Lasker Award
 * John A. M. Hinsman (1930) – president of the Vermont State Senate
 * Francis Spain (1930) – captain of the 1936 U.S. Olympic hockey team (bronze medal)
 * Eliot Butler Willauer (1930) – architect
 * Larry Bogart (1931) – critic of nuclear power
 * Macdonald Carey (1931) – film and television actor, winner of two Emmy Awards
 * John Crosby (1931) – newspaper columnist, media critic, suspense novelist
 * George Haskins (1931) – law professor at the University of Pennsylvania Law School
 * Richard S. Salant (1931) – president of CBS News
 * Sonny Tufts (1931) – film and television actor
 * Bruce H. Billings (1932) – physicist
 * Richard Pike Bissell (1932) – author and playwright, winner of Tony Award (The Pajama Game)
 * Germain Glidden (1932) – national squash champion, painter, muralist, cartoonist and founder of the National Art Museum of Sport
 * Milton Green (1932) – world record holder in the high hurdles; boycotted 1936 Olympics
 * John Toland (1932) – Pulitzer Prize-winning historian (The Rising Sun)
 * Adolph Coors III (1933) – businessman
 * Richard Dorson (1933) – "father of American folklore"
 * Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr. (1933) – historian
 * Charles E. Tuttle (1933) – publisher
 * Robert Livingston Allen (1934) – linguist, developer of Sector Analysis
 * Nathaniel Benchley (1934) – author, screenwriter
 * William H. Blanchard (1934) – four-star general, Vice Chief of Staff of the United States Air Force
 * Richard Walker Bolling (c. 1934) – U.S. representative from Missouri (did not graduate)
 * William Coors (c. 1934) – CEO, Coors Brewing Company
 * Gordon Kay (1934) – movie producer
 * Thomas P. Whitney (1934) – diplomat, author, translator, philanthropist
 * Robert W. Anderson (1935) – playwright
 * Elkan Blout (1935) – inventor; biochemist; awarded National Medal of Science
 * R. W. B. Lewis (1935) – literary scholar and critic
 * Tom Slick (c. 1935) – inventor and businessman
 * Joseph Coors (1935) – CEO, Coors Brewing Company
 * David D. Furman (1935) – New Jersey Attorney General, New Jersey Superior Court judge
 * Hugh Gregg (1935) – governor of New Hampshire, father of Senator Judd Gregg (1965)
 * David Hall (c. 1935) – recorded sound archivist
 * William Verity Jr. (c. 1935) – U.S. Secretary of Commerce
 * James T. Aubrey (c. 1936) – president of CBS and MGM
 * Alfred D. Chandler Jr. (1936) – business historian
 * Thomas Clinton (1936) – executive of Deutsche Bank, philanthropist, early advocate of the formation of the Presbyterian Church
 * Calvin Plimpton (1936) – physician, president of Amherst College
 * George M. Prince (c. 1936) – co-creator of synectics
 * Robert Samuel Salzer (1936) – Vice Admiral of the United States Navy
 * John Tyler Bonner (c. 1937) – biologist
 * Lee Parsons Gagliardi (1937) – federal judge
 * Nelson Gidding (1937) – screenwriter
 * Douglas Knight (1937) – president of Duke University
 * Alfred A. Knopf Jr. (1937) – co-founder of Atheneum Publishers
 * Daniel E. Koshland Jr. (1937) – biochemist; editor of Science
 * Charles Mergendahl (1937) – novelist, playwright, television scriptwriter
 * Robert H. B. Baldwin (1938) – Undersecretary of the Navy; chairman and president of Morgan Stanley
 * Lex Barker (1938) – actor
 * T. Clark Hull (1938) – lieutenant governor of Connecticut; Connecticut Supreme Court justice
 * Nicholas Katzenbach (1938) – U.S. Attorney General; vice-president of IBM; father of John Katzenbach (1968)
 * Alexander Saxton (c. 1938) – historian, novelist, and university professor
 * Arthur A. Seeligson Jr. (1938) – oilman, rancher, thoroughbred racehorse owner and breeder
 * Sloan Wilson (1938) – author (did not graduate)
 * Forman S. Acton (1939) – computer scientist
 * Alfred Atherton (1939) – U.S. Ambassador to Egypt
 * Ward Chamberlin (1939) – public broadcasting executive
 * John Holt (1939) – educational critic, activist, and author

1940s

 * George Christopher Archibald (1940) – British economist
 * William J. Conklin (c. 1940) – architect, archeologist; designer of United States Navy Memorial, co-designer of Reston, Virginia
 * Lloyd L. Duxbury (c. 1940) – Speaker of the Minnesota House of Representatives
 * Burke Marshall (1940) – U.S. Assistant Attorney General; head of the Civil Rights Division of the United States Department of Justice during the civil rights era
 * Bud Palmer (1940) – professional basketball player (NY Knicks); jump shot pioneer; sportscaster; New York City Commissioner of Public Events
 * Lloyd Shapley (1940) – winner of the 2012 Nobel Prize in Economics
 * Harold R. Tyler Jr. (1940) – federal judge
 * William C. Campbell (1941) – two-time president of the USGA; member of the World Golf Hall of Fame
 * Neil MacNeil (1941) – journalist
 * Anton Myrer (1941) – author of war novels
 * Robert B. Choate Jr. (1942) – businessman and political activist
 * Nathaniel Davis (1942) – career diplomat, U.S. Ambassador to Guatemala, Chile, and Switzerland
 * William Bell Dinsmoor Jr. (1942) – classical archaeologist and architectural historian
 * Thomas Ashley Graves Jr. (1942) – president of the College of William & Mary
 * Lloyd Stephen Riford Jr. (1942) – New York State politician
 * Bagley Wright (1942) – developer; investor; arts patron and fine art collector
 * John G. King (1943) – physicist
 * Roberts Bishop Owen (1943) – U.S. State Department legal advisor and diplomat
 * Robert B. Rheault (1943) – U.S. military officer; conspirator in the Green Beret Affair; inspiration for Apocalypse Now
 * Frederic M. Richards (1943) – biochemist and biophysicist
 * Julian Roosevelt (1943) – Olympic sailor (1948, 1952–gold medal, 1956, 1960, 1968, 1972)
 * Roger Sonnabend (1943) – hotelier and businessman
 * John Thomson (1943) – UK High Commissioner to India; UK Ambassador to the UN
 * Gore Vidal (1943) – author
 * Whitney Balliett (1944) – writer for The New Yorker
 * Willis Barnstone (1944) – poet, memoirist, translator
 * Robinson O. Everett (1944) – judge and law professor
 * Kenneth W. Ford (1944) – physicist
 * George Plimpton (1944) – author, editor, journalist, actor (expelled)
 * Henry N. Cobb (1944) – architect and founding partner of Pei Cobb Freed & Partners
 * John Glenn Beall Jr. (1945) – U.S. representative from Maryland; U.S. senator from Maryland
 * James P. Gordon (1945) – invented the Maser as a graduate student at Columbia University with Charles H. Townes (who was later awarded the Nobel Physics prize in 1964)
 * Fred Kingsbury (1945) – Olympic rower (1948–bronze medal)
 * John Knowles (1945) – author, A Separate Peace
 * James R. Lilley (1945) – U.S. Ambassador to China
 * William E. Schluter – New Jersey politician
 * Charles W. Bailey II (1946) – political reporter, newspaper editor, political novelist (Seven Days in May)
 * Theodore V. Buttrey Jr. (1946) – numismatist
 * Michael Forrestal (1946) – government aide, legal advisor
 * Will Holt (c. 1946) – singer, songwriter, librettist, lyricist
 * Ramsay MacMullen (1946) – professor of history at Yale University
 * Wallace Nutting (1946) – four-star general
 * F. D. Reeve (1946) – author, poet, translator, editor
 * Cervin Robinson (1946) – architectural photographer
 * Robert L. Belknap (c. 1947) – scholar of Russian literature and dean at Columbia University
 * John Cowles Jr. (1947) – newspaper editor and publisher; philanthropist
 * Bill Felstiner (1947) – socio-legal scholar
 * Donald Hall (1947) – poet; U.S. Poet Laureate, 2006–2007
 * Richard W. Murphy (1947) – diplomat; U.S. Ambassador to Mauritania, Syria, the Philippines, and Saudi Arabia
 * Glenn D. Paige (1947) – political scientist
 * John Pittenger (c. 1947) – lawyer and academic
 * Haviland Smith (1947) – C.I.A. station chief
 * Herbert P. Wilkins (1947) – Chief Justice of the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court
 * David Bevington (1948) – literary scholar
 * Douglas M. Head (1948) – Attorney General of Minnesota
 * Frederic B. Ingram (1948) – businessman
 * Alan Trustman (1948) – screenwriter (The Thomas Crown Affair, Bullitt, They Call Me Mr. Tibbs)
 * Don Whiston (1948) – Olympic ice hockey player (1952–silver medal)
 * Carlos Romero Barceló (1949) – governor of Puerto Rico, Resident Commissioner of Puerto Rico to the U.S. House of Representatives
 * Adair Dyer (1949) – attorney, passed the International Family Law through the Supreme Court
 * Bo Goldman (1949) – screenwriter (One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, Scent of a Woman), winner of two Academy Awards
 * Albert L. Hopkins (1949) – computer designer
 * Thomas P. Hoving (1949) – museum director, author, publisher (expelled; graduated from Hotchkiss School)
 * John Kerr (1949) – actor
 * James Smith (1949) – Olympic sport shooter (1956)

1950s

 * Bill Briggs (1950) – "father of extreme skiing;" member U.S. National Ski and Snowboard Hall of Fame
 * Tom Corcoran (1950) – Olympic alpine skier (1956, 1960); four-time U.S. national champion alpine skier
 * M. Scott Peck (c. 1951) – psychiatrist; author (did not graduate)
 * George Eman Vaillant (1951) – psychiatrist
 * Walter Darby Bannard (1952) – abstract painter and University of Miami professor
 * Robert Cowley (1952) – military historian
 * Pierre S. du Pont IV (1952) – U.S. representative from Delaware, governor of Delaware
 * Thomas Ehrlich (1952) – president of Indiana University
 * Cyrus Hamlin (1952) – literary critic and theorist
 * Harmon Elwood Kirby (1952) – career diplomat; ambassador to Togo
 * Karl Ludvigsen (1952) – automotive journalist, author, historian, and design consultant
 * David Mumford (1952) – mathematician; winner of the Fields Medal; Macarthur Fellow
 * Robert D. Richardson (1952) – historian and biographer
 * Harold Russell Scott Jr. (1952) – Broadway actor and director
 * David Wight (1952) – Olympic rower (1956–gold medal)
 * Robert G. Wilmers (1952) – businessman
 * Richard S. Arnold (1953) – judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit; namesake of federal courthouse in Little Rock
 * Hodding Carter III (1953) – Assistant Secretary of State for Public Affairs
 * Michael von Clemm (1953) – businessman, restaurateur, anthropologist
 * Bud Konheim (1953) – businessman
 * Earl J. Silbert (1953) – prosecutor in Watergate case
 * Robert C. Wetenhall (1953) – owner of the Montreal Alouettes football club
 * Jonathan Aldrich (1954) – poet
 * William Becklean (1954) – Olympic rower (1956–gold medal)
 * Peter B. Bensinger (1954) – administrator of the Drug Enforcement Administration
 * T. Alan Broughton (1954) – poet
 * Michael Z. Hobson (c. 1954) – executive vice president of Marvel Comics
 * James F. Hoge Jr. (1954) – editor of Foreign Affairs
 * Christopher Jencks (1954) – sociologist
 * David Merwin (1954) – Olympic sprint canoer (1956)
 * Robert Morey (1954) – Olympic rower (1956–gold medal)
 * George Beall (1955)– prosecutor of Vice President Spiro Agnew
 * G. Bradford Cook (1955) – chairman of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission
 * Charles D. Ellis (1955) – investment consultant; author; founder of Greenwich Associates
 * John Gager (1955) – professor of religion at Princeton University
 * Richard Maltby Jr. (1955) – theater producer, director, and lyricist; screenwriter; crossword puzzle creator
 * John D. "Jay" Rockefeller IV (1955) – governor of West Virginia; U.S. Senator from West Virginia
 * Peter Sears (1955) – Poet Laureate of Oregon
 * Tom Whedon (1955) – television screenwriter
 * Phil Wilson (c. 1955) – jazz trombonist
 * Gordon Park Baker (1956) – American-English philosopher
 * William Bayer (1956) – crime fiction writer
 * Stewart Brand (1956) – editor, author, Internet pioneer
 * H. John Heinz III (1956) – U.S. representative from Pennsylvania; U.S. senator from Pennsylvania
 * Dennis Johnson (1956) – composer, mathematician
 * J. Vinton Lawrence (1956) – C.I.A. operative; caricaturist
 * Theodore Stebbins (1956) – art historian
 * John Negroponte (1956) – U.S. Ambassador to Honduras, Mexico, the Philippines, United Nations, and Iraq; U.S. Deputy Secretary of State, the first Director of National Intelligence
 * Peter Benchley (1957) – journalist, presidential speechwriter, author, screenwriter (Jaws)
 * Peter Georgescu (1957) – author, chairman emeritus of Young & Rubicam
 * Bill Keith (1957) – banjo innovator
 * Herbert Kohler Jr. (1957) – businessman (did not graduate)
 * Terry Lenzner (1957) – lawyer
 * Jack McCarthy (1957) – writer and slam poet
 * Tim Wirth (1957) – U.S. representative from Colorado; U.S. senator from Colorado; current head of the United Nations Foundation
 * John Winslow Bissell (1958) – judge for the United States District Court for the District of New Jersey
 * Don Briscoe (1958) – television actor
 * George Gilder (1958) – writer and co-founder of the Discovery Institute
 * Warren Hoge (1958) – reporter, bureau chief, and editor at The New York Times (did not graduate)
 * David Lamb (1958) – reporter, bureau chief at The Los Angeles Times (did not graduate)
 * George de Menil (1958) – French economist
 * Stephen Robert (1958) – philanthropist and businessman, CEO of Oppenheimer & Co
 * Robert Thurman (1958) – first American to be ordained a Buddhist monk in 1964; leading expert on Tibetan Buddhism
 * John M. Walker Jr. (1958) – chief judge of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit
 * David M. Eddy (1959) – physician
 * David Rockefeller Jr. (1959) – philanthropist and businessman, descendant of John D. Rockefeller
 * Morris S. Arnold (1959) – judge on the United States Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit
 * Daniel Dennett (1959) – philosopher
 * Charles Janeway (1959) – immunologist
 * Tom Mankiewicz (1959) – screenwriter, director, producer
 * Hayford Peirce (1959) – writer
 * Benno C. Schmidt Jr. (1959) – educator, president of Yale University

1960s

 * Alvin P. Adams, Jr. (1960) – ambassador to Peru, Haiti, and Djibouti
 * Robert Mehrabian (c. 1960) – materials scientist
 * Charles Horman (1960) – journalist, victim of Chilean coup
 * Charles C. Krulak (1960) – 31st Commandant of the U.S. Marine Corps
 * Jerrold Speers (1960) – Maine State Treasurer
 * John Irving (1961) – author, The World According to Garp
 * George W. S. Trow (1961) – novelist, playwright, short story writer, longtime contributor to The New Yorker
 * Peter Simon (c. 1961) – actor
 * Robert F. Wagner Jr. (1961) – deputy mayor of New York City; president of the New York City Board of Education
 * Arthur K. Wheelock Jr. (1961) – curator of the Northern European Art Collection at the National Gallery of Art
 * Kenneth Bacon (1962) – Department of Defense spokesman; president of Refugees International
 * Evan A. Davis (1962) – president of the New York City Bar Association
 * Chester E. Finn Jr. (1962) – educator; president of the Thomas B. Fordham Foundation
 * Larry Hough (1962) – Olympic rower (1968–silver medal, 1972)
 * Myron Magnet (1962) – conservative author, editor at large of City Journal
 * Gregory B. Craig (1963) – attorney; assistant Secretary of State; White House Counsel; defended President Clinton in impeachment trial
 * Gordon Gahan (1963) – photographer
 * Craig Roberts Stapleton (1963) – U.S. Ambassador to France and Czech Republic
 * Willy Eisenhart (1964) – writer on art
 * Paul Magriel (1964) – professional backgammon and poker player; author
 * Peter Coors (1965) – president, Adolph Coors Brewing Co.
 * David Darst (1965) – managing director, Morgan Stanley
 * Barry Golson (c. 1965) – editor, journalist, author
 * Terry Goddard (1965) – Attorney General of Arizona; mayor of Phoenix
 * Judd Gregg (1965) – U.S. representative from New Hampshire; governor of New Hampshire; U.S. senator from New Hampshire (withdrew as U.S. Commerce Secretary-designate)
 * Helmut Panke (1965) – president, Bayerische Motoren Werke AG (BMW)
 * Harrison "Skip" Pope Jr. (1965) – psychiatrist
 * Charlie Smith (1965) – poet, novelist
 * James Earl Coleman Jr. (1966) – attorney
 * Kent Conrad (1966) – U.S. senator from North Dakota
 * David Eisenhower (1966) – grandson of Dwight D. Eisenhower, 34th president of the United States; namesake of the Camp David presidential retreat
 * Fred Grandy (1966) – actor; U.S. representative from Iowa; political commentator
 * Steven T. Kuykendall (1966) – U.S. representative from California
 * David Olney (1966) – folk singer/songwriter
 * Mark Ethridge (1967) – Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist; novelist; screenwriter; publisher
 * Jonathan Galassi (1967) – president and publisher of Farrar, Straus and Giroux; poet
 * Curt Hahn (1967) – filmmaker
 * Lawrence Lasker (1967) – producer and screenwriter of Sneakers
 * Frank Teruggi (1967) – journalist
 * Lincoln Caplan (1968) – author, journalist, Truman Capote Visiting Lecturer in Law and senior research scholar in law at Yale Law School
 * Geoffrey Biddle (1968) – photographer
 * Peter Galassi (1968) – curator
 * Tom Birmingham (1968) – president of the Massachusetts Senate
 * Edward Hallowell (1968) – psychiatrist
 * John Katzenbach (1968) – author; son of Nicholas Katzenbach (1938)
 * Jerome Karabel (1968) – scholar
 * Thomas Lennon (1968) – documentary filmmaker
 * Steve Mantis (1968) – Canadian politician
 * Michael Fossel (1968) – editor of the Journal of Anti-Ageing Medicine
 * Dowell Myers (1968) – professor
 * Anthony Davis (1969) – composer and jazz pianist
 * Peter W. Galbraith (1969) – diplomat, author, ambassador to Croatia (did not graduate)
 * John C. Harvey Jr. (1969) – Admiral, US Navy; Commander US Fleet Forces Command; Chief of Naval Personnel/Deputy Chief of Naval Operations
 * Christopher Kimball (1969) – founder of Cook's Illustrated; host of America's Test Kitchen
 * Jack Gilpin (1969) – movie and television actor
 * John McTiernan (1969) – filmmaker

1970s

 * Robert Bauer (1970) – attorney, White House Counsel
 * Nicholas Callaway (1970) – publisher, television producer, writer, and photographer
 * Scott McConnell (1970) – journalist
 * Alex Beam (1971) – journalist, social critic
 * Joyce Maynard (1971) – author
 * Benmont Tench (1971) – musician and producer, keyboardist for Tom Petty
 * Roland Merullo (1971) – author
 * Banthoon Lamsam (1971) – banker
 * Eben Alexander (1972) – neurosurgeon and author
 * Howard Brookner (1972) – film director
 * Robert J. Fisher (1972) – former chairman of the board, Gap, Inc.
 * Shigehisa Kuriyama (1972) – historian of medicine
 * Ned Lamont (1972) – businessman and politician; 89th governor of Connecticut
 * W. Drake McFeely (1972) – chairman and president of W.W. Norton & Company
 * Thomas G. Osenton (1972) – author; president, CEO, and publisher of The Sporting News Publishing Company
 * Bobby Shriver (1972) – activist, attorney, journalist
 * Eric Breindel (1973) – neoconservative writer, editorial page editor of the New York Post
 * Rusty Magee (1973) – comedian, actor and composer/lyricist
 * Paul Romer (1973) – chief economist of the World Bank, Nobel Prize winner in Economics, 2018
 * Clayton Spencer (1973) – president of Bates College
 * Paul Sullivan (1973) – pianist and composer
 * Emery Brown (1974) – neuroscientist and anesthesiologist
 * Andrew Holtz (1974) – journalist
 * Stephen Mandel (1974) – hedge fund manager
 * William S. Fisher (1975) – businessman and investor
 * Alix M. Freedman (1975) – Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist
 * Laurie Hays (1975) – Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist
 * Joseph Lykken (1975) – physicist
 * John O. McGinnis (1975) – legal theorist
 * Brooks D. Simpson (1975) – author, historian
 * Tom Steyer (1975) – asset manager, philanthropist, environmentalist, presidential candidate, 2020
 * Ronald Chen (1976) – dean of Rutgers law school and advocate general for the State of New Jersey
 * Charlie Hunter (1976) – artist
 * Anne Marden (1976) – Olympic rower (1984–silver medal, 1988–silver medal)
 * Ginna Sulcer Marston (1976) – advertising director for the Partnership for a Drug Free America
 * David McKean (1976) – author; U.S. Ambassador to Luxembourg
 * Norb Vonnegut (1976) – author
 * James F. Conant (1977) – philosopher
 * James Rubin (1977) – former US Assistant Secretary of State for Public Affairs (Aug. 1997 – Apr. 2000)
 * James Somerville (1977) – minister, First Baptist Church (Richmond, Virginia); former minister of First Baptist Church of Washington, DC
 * Suzy Welch (1977) – journalist; author; former editor of Harvard Business Review; married to former GE CEO Jack Welch
 * Catherine Disher (1978) – actress
 * Mark Driscoll (1978) – Emmy Award-winning screenwriter
 * Michael Lynton (1978) – CEO of Sony Entertainment Inc.
 * Paul Villinski (1978) – sculptor (did not graduate)
 * Michael Cerveris (1979) – Broadway and movie actor; winner of two Tony Awards
 * John J. Fisher (1979) – majority owner of the Oakland Athletics
 * Jonathan Smith (1979) – Olympic rower (1984–silver medal, 1984–bronze medal, 1992)
 * Andrew Sudduth (1979) – Olympic rower (1984–silver medal, 1988)
 * Hansen Clarke – U.S. representative from Michigan (did not graduate)
 * William J. "Billy" Ruane Jr. – Boston area music promoter (did not graduate)

1980s

 * Ted Hope (1980) – independent film producer, including The Ice Storm and Happiness
 * Heather Cox Richardson (1980) – historian
 * Richard Stockton Rush III (1980) – founder and CEO of OceanGate
 * Greg Daniels (1981) – producer, including The Simpsons; adapted U.S. version of The Office from the BBC version; winner of four Emmy Awards
 * Dave Douglas (1981) – jazz trumpeter and composer
 * Pamela Erens (1981) – novelist
 * Paul Klebnikov (1981) – journalist; murdered in Moscow
 * Sarah Lyall (1981) – reporter, The New York Times
 * Dan Brown (1982) – former instructor in English at Phillips Exeter Academy; bestselling author, The Da Vinci Code
 * Kim McLarin (1982) – novelist
 * Stephen Metcalf (1982) – critic-at-large and columnist at Slate magazine (did not graduate)
 * Nancy Jo Sales (1982) – journalist; author
 * Cosy Sheridan (1982) – folk singer and songwriter
 * Nicholas Perrin (1982) – former dean of Wheaton Graduate School and 16th president of Trinity International University.
 * Gwynneth Coogan (1983) – Olympic athlete (10,000m, 1992)
 * Adam Guettel (1983) – musical theater composer; composed The Light in the Piazza; winner of six Tony Awards
 * Chang-Rae Lee (1983) – author
 * Charles Cameron Ludington (1983) – historian
 * Henry Blodget (1984) – editor and CEO of Business Insider
 * Julie Livingston (1984) – public health historian, anthropologist, MacArthur Fellow
 * David Chipman (1984) – ATF agent and gun control activist
 * Stephanie Stebich (1984) – director of the Smithsonian American Art Museum
 * Roland Tec (1984) – writer, director
 * Vanessa Friedman (1985) – fashion critic
 * Shinichi Mochizuki (1985) – mathematician
 * Edmund Perry (1985) – African-American teenager shot and killed by NYPD officers; inspiration to Michael Jackson
 * Maya Forbes (1986) – screenwriter and television producer
 * David Folkenflik (1987) – National Public Radio reporter
 * Christine Harper (1987) – chief financial correspondent at Bloomberg News
 * Tal Keinan (c. 1987) – Israeli entrepreneur, financier
 * Kenji Yoshino (1987) – law school professor, author
 * Peter Orszag (1987) – director of U.S. Office of Management & Budget under President Barack Obama
 * China Forbes (1988) – musician (lead singer of Pink Martini)
 * Claudine Gay (1988) – professor of Government and of African and African-American Studies, President and Dean of Faculty of Arts and Sciences at Harvard University
 * Niel Brandt (1988) – professor of astronomy and astrophysics at Pennsylvania State University
 * Darius Arya (1989) – archaeologist, professor, documentary host
 * David Goel (1989) – hedge fund manager
 * Jeff Locker (c. 1989) – actor
 * Joon Kim (1989) – acting U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York

1990s

 * Jon Bonné (1990) – journalist
 * Michael Crowley (1990) – journalist
 * Adrian Dearnell (1990) – Franco-American financial journalist; CEO and founder of EuroBusiness Media
 * Katherine Reynolds Lewis (1990) – author
 * Jeff Ma (1990) – part of MIT blackjack team, basis of the film 21 and the book Bringing Down the House by Ben Mezrich
 * Alessandro Nivola (1990) – actor
 * John Palfrey (1990) – educator, scholar, law professor, former head of Phillips Academy of Andover
 * Brian Shactman (1990) – television news anchor
 * Jeff Wilner (1990) – tight end for the Green Bay Packers
 * Jonathan Orszag (1991) – economist
 * Trish Regan (1991) – television news anchor
 * Eunice Yoon (1991) – television new anchor
 * Roxane Gay (1992) – author
 * Jason Hall (1992) – screenwriter (American Sniper); director
 * Quentin Palfrey (1992) – lawyer, lieutenant governor of Massachusetts candidate, 2018
 * Jedediah Purdy (1992) – author, law school professor
 * Rajanya Shah (1992) – Olympic rower (2000)
 * Brandon Williams (1992) – basketball player
 * Andrew Yang (1992) – entrepreneur, presidential candidate, 2020
 * Gregory W. Brown (1993) – composer
 * John Forté (1993) – musician, recording artist, composer, music producer, educator, activist
 * Aomawa Shields (1993) – astronomer, TED Fellow
 * Debby Herbenick (1994) – human sexuality expert
 * Drew Magary (1994) – journalist, humor columnist, and novelist
 * Alex Okosi (1994) – media executive
 * Philip Andelman (1995) – music video director
 * Sloan DuRoss (1995) – Olympic rower (2004)
 * Sarah Milkovich (1996) – planetary geologist, engineer
 * Ketch Secor (1996) – musician and vocalist, Old Crow Medicine Show
 * Hrishikesh Hirway (1996) – musician and vocalist; creator and host of Song Exploder
 * Tom Cochran (1996) – Obama administration official
 * Luke Bronin (1997) – mayor of Hartford
 * Zach Iscol (1997) – US Marine Corps veteran, entrepreneur, 2021 comptroller candidate for New York City
 * Susie Suh (1997) – musician
 * Win Butler (1998) – musician; lead singer of Arcade Fire
 * Joy Fahrenkrog (1998) – member of the United States archery team
 * Georgia Gould (1998) – Olympic mountain biker (2008, 2012–bronze medal)
 * Sabrina Kolker (1998) – Olympic rower (2004, 2008)
 * Mike Morrison (1998) – professional ice hockey player
 * Kirstin Valdez Quade (1998) – writer
 * Soce, the elemental wizard (c. 1998) – rapper and producer
 * Paul Yoon (1998) – novelist
 * Mike Blomquist (1999) – U.S. National Team (rowing); 2005 Men's 8+l gold medal at 2005 World Championships

2000s

 * Sam Fuld (2000) – Major League Baseball outfielder for the Chicago Cubs, Tampa Bay Rays, Minnesota Twins, and Oakland Athletics; general manager of the Philadelphia Phillies
 * William Butler (2001) – musician; multi-instrumentalist of Arcade Fire
 * Tom Cavanagh (2001) – National Hockey League player
 * Adam D'Angelo (2002) – founder of Quora, first Chief Technology Officer of Facebook
 * Heather Jackson (2002) – triathlete and track cyclist
 * Andréanne Morin (2002) – Canadian Olympic rower (2004, 2008, 2012–bronze medal)
 * Mark Zuckerberg (2002) – founder of Facebook
 * Shani Boianjiu (2005) – author of The People of Forever Are Not Afraid
 * Nicholas la Cava (2005) – Olympic rower (2012)
 * Josh Owens (2007) – professional basketball player for Hapoel Tel Aviv of the Israeli Basketball Premier League
 * Erik Per Sullivan (2009) – actor; "Dewey" on Malcolm in the Middle

2010s

 * Caroline Calloway (2010) – media personality
 * Duncan Robinson (2013) – NBA player for the Miami Heat and former player for the Michigan Wolverines men's basketball team
 * Nicole Heavirland (2014) – USA rugby player
 * Zhuo Qun Song (2015) – the most highly decorated International Mathematical Olympiad contestant, with five gold medals and one bronze medal
 * Jacob Grandison, 2017, College Basketball player for Holy Cross, Illinois and Duke
 * Rudi Ying (2017) – Supreme Hockey League hockey player

In fiction

 * 2 Broke Girls – Caroline Channing, one of the two lead characters, delivered the line "All those who pitched business models to Warren Buffett as a member of the Phillips Exeter Entrepreneurs Club raise their hands. Holla!" in Season 1 Episode 7, "And the Pretty Problem".
 * American Psycho – The narrator, Patrick Bateman, graduated in the class of 1980.
 * A Widow for One Year, Eddie O'Hare and Ruth Cole, two central characters, attended Exeter
 * Dharma & Greg – Gregory Montgomery graduated from Exeter, Harvard, and Stanford Law.
 * In Revere, in Those Days – This novel by Roland Merullo is about a boy who, instead of attending public school in his predominantly Italian town in Massachusetts, attends Exeter and plays hockey.
 * Infinitely Polar Bear – Cam Stuart, the protagonist, played by Mark Ruffalo, claims to have been kicked out of both Exeter and Harvard.
 * Love Story – Oliver Barrett IV attended Exeter.
 * Marvel Comics – Warren Worthington III, aka Angel, attended Exeter as a child; he eventually sets up a scholarship at the school for "mutant kids". Later, X-Terminators members Boom-Boom, Rictor, and Skids also attend the school
 * The Prince of Tides – Herbert Woodruff, from the film and the novel of the same name, went to Exeter, as did his son (Bernard) in the book.
 * Robert Langdon book series – Robert Langdon, the main character, attended Exeter.
 * The West Wing – Associate Supreme Court Justice candidate Peyton Cabot Harrison III attended Exeter.
 * Trading Places – Louis Winthorpe III attended Exeter.