Distinguished Alumni

Over the years the Chemistry department at City College has been blessed with exceptional students. The list of alumni includes 4 Nobel laureates , several members of the National Academies of Science, Engineering, and Institute of Medicine, and numerous corporate executives.

Nobel Prize Winners

Julius Axelrod, '33
Shared the 1970 Nobel Prize in Medicine with Sir Bernard Katz and Ulf Von Euler for their discoveries concerning the humoral transmittors in the nerve terminals and the mechanism for their storage, release and inactivation.

Arthur Kornberg, '37
Shared the 1959 Nobel Prize in Medicine with Severo Ochoa for their discovery of the mechanisms in the biological synthesis of ribonucleic acid and deoxiribonucleic acid. Stanford page

Jerome Karle, '37
Shared the 1985 Nobel Prize in Chemistry with Herbert A. Hauptman for their outstanding achievements in the development of direct methods for the determination of crystal structures.

Leon M. Lederman, '43
Shared the 1988 Nobel Prize in Physics with Melvin Schwartz and Jack Steinberger for the neutrino beam method and the demonstration of the doublet structure of the leptons through the discovery of the muon neutrino.

In addition, Solomon Berson, '38, would probably have shared the 1977 nobel prize in Physiology and Medicine with his collaborator Rosalyn Yalow , had he not died in 1972.

Members of the National Academy of Science

Philip Handler, '36 (former president of the NAS)
David Shemin, '32
Boris Magasinik, '41
David B. Sprinson, '31
Harold Scheraga, '41, Cornell page
Saul Roseman, '41
Sidney Udenfriend, '39
Charles Yanofsky, '48
Philip Skell, '38
Elvin Kabat, '32
Melvin Simon, '59
Seymour S. Cohen, '36
Jerome A. Berson, '44
Irwin Fridovich, '51
Allen J. Bard, '55
Herbert Weissbach, '53
Martin Saunders, '52, Yale homepage