This is a list of University of Sydney people, including notable alumni and staff.
Alumni
Academia
- Dennis A. Ahlburg â former president of Trinity University; dean of the Leeds School of Business at the University of Colorado at Boulder and Professor of Human Resources at the Carlson School of Management at the University of Minnesota
- Brian Anderson â former president of the Australian Academy of Science; emeritus Professor of Electrical Engineering at the Australian National University
- Elizabeth Bannan â educationist; fellow of the Australian College of Education
- Brian L. Byrne â social scientist known for research in psycholinguistics; emeritus Professor of Psychology at the University of New England
- Leonie Byrnes â educator and school inspector
- Jill Ker Conway â former vice-president of the University of Toronto and President of Smith College; Visiting professor in MIT's program in Science, Technology, and Society; Chairman of Lendlease; director of Nike, Merrill Lynch, and Colgate-Palmolive
- Beverly Derewianka â Emeritus Professor of Linguistics at the University of Wollongong
- Theodore Thomson Flynn â professor of marine biology and zoology at the University of Tasmania and Queen's University of Belfast, Chair of Zoology at Queen's University of Belfast, director of the marine station at Portaferry, father of actor Errol Flynn
- Margaret Gardner â Governor of Victoria, Vice-Chancellor of Monash University, President and Vice-Chancellor of RMIT University
- Michael Halliday â creator of the systemic functional grammar, an internationally influential grammar model
- Jenny Hammond â linguist known for research on literacy development
- Frank Lancaster Jones â sociologist known for research on social inequality, social stratification, social mobility, and national identity
- Sir Robert Madgwick â first Vice-Chancellor of the University of New England; former chairman of the Australian Broadcasting Commission; Director of the Australian Army Education Service during World War II
- Robert May, Baron May of Oxford â former president of the Royal Society; Chief Scientific Adviser to the UK Government
- Jim Peacock â former president of Australian Academy of Science
- Michael Pitman â former chief scientist of Australia
- Ken Robinson â former head of the Department of Computer Science at the University of New South Wales
- Nicholas Saunders â former vice-chancellor of the University of Newcastle and former dean of medicine at Monash University and Flinders University
- Michael Spence â president and provost of the University College London and former vice-chancellor and Principal of the University of Sydney
- Sir Brian Windeyer â former dean of the Middlesex Hospital Medical School at the University of London and former vice-chancellor of the University of London
- Nicki Packer â Distinguished Professor of Glycoproteomics at Macquarie University
Architecture
Business
Community activism
Government
Royalty
Governors-General of Australia
State governors and Territory Administrators
Politicians
Prime ministers of Australia
Premiers of New South Wales
Federal politicians
Australian state and territory politicians
International politicians
Public servants
Humanities
Arts
- John Bell â actor, theatre director and theatre impresario
- Bruce Beresford â film director
- Anne Boyd â composer, first Australian and first woman appointed Professor of Music at the University of Sydney
- Rose Byrne â actress
- Jane Campion â New Zealand director, producer, and screenwriter
- Alex Cubis â actor
- Somaratne Dissanayake â Sri Lankan film director, screenwriter and producer
- Christopher Doyle â cinematographer
- Sandy Edwards â photographer
- Jacqueline Fernandez â BahrainiâÂÂSri Lankan actress and model who predominantly works in Bollywood, Miss Universe Sri Lanka 2006
- Charles Firth â comedian
- John Flaus â broadcaster, actor, voice talent, anarchist, poet and raconteur
- Ania Freer â documentary filmmaker
- Andrew Hansen â comedian and musician
- Michael Hannan â composer, pianist, and musicologist
- Tom Gleeson â comedian, radio and television presenter
- May Hollinworth â theatre producer and director
- Yvonne Kenny â soprano
- Chas Licciardello â comedian
- Dolph Lundgren â Swedish actor, filmmaker, and martial artist
- Julian Morrow â comedian and television producer
- Craig Reucassel â comedian, radio and television presenter
- Dame Joan Sutherland â dramatic coloratura soprano
- Chris Taylor â comedian
- Huỳnh Trần àNhi â Vietnamese model, Miss World Vietnam 2023
- Peter Weir â film director
- Kip Williams â director of the Sydney Theatre Company
- Georgina Wilson â Filipino-British model, actress
- Roger Woodward â pianist, composer, conductor
- Whitney Duan â artist
History
Journalism
Literature, writing and poetry
Philosophy
Law
Other legal professionals
Military
Religious leaders
Sciences
Astronauts and astronomy
Biology
Chemistry
Computer scientists
Engineering
Geology, archeology and oceanography
Mathematics and economics
Medicine
- George Henry Abbott â surgeon and former Fellow at the University of Sydney
- Katie Louisa Ardill â first woman to be appointed as a divisional surgeon in New South Wales; among the first female doctors when she joined the British Expeditionary Forces in Egypt in 1915
- Nikos Athanasou â Professor of Musculoskeletal Pathology at the Oxford University and Greek-Australian novelist
- Samy Azer â Professor of Medical Education; international medical educator
- Maxwell Bennett â proved that nerve terminals on muscles release transmitter molecules, rather than just the noradrenaline and acetylcholine that were previously known
- Dame Valerie Beral â epidemiologist; Fellow of the Royal Society; Head of Cancer Epidemiology Unit at the University of Oxford and Cancer Research UK
- Dagmar Berne â first woman to study medicine in Australia. Completed her studies in France after the Vice Chancellor and Dean of Medicine prevented her from graduating.
- Ralph Beattie Blacket â beriberi and heart disease researcher
- Grace Boelke â general practitioner; one of the first two female graduates in medicine from the University of Sydney
- Claudia Bradley â pharmacist, paediatrician, orthopaedist
- Jennifer Byrne â cancer researcher
- Janet Carr â physiotherapist
- John Carter â endocrinologist and former President of Australian Diabetes Society
- Victor Chang â pioneer of modern heart transplantation
- Robert Clancy â developer of first oral vaccine for acute bronchitis
- Graeme Clark â inventor of cochlear ear implant
- Iza Coghlan â physician; one of the first two female graduates in medicine from the University of Sydney
- David A. Cooper â HIV/AIDS researcher and Director of the Kirby Institute
- Grace Cuthbert-Browne â doctor and Director of Maternal and Baby Welfare in the New South Wales Department of Public Health, 1937âÂÂ1964
- Justine Damond â veterinarian, spiritual healer, and meditation coach before being killed by a Minneapolis Police Department officer
- Raymond Dart â anatomist and anthropologist, known for his discovery in 1924 of a fossil (first ever found) of Australopithecus africanus (extinct hominid closely related to humans)
- John Diamond â developer of Behavioral Kinesiology (now called Life-Energy Analysis), a system based upon applied kinesiology, incorporating the emotions
- Anna Donald â pioneer and advocate of evidence-based medicine
- Rachael Dunlop â medical researcher and sceptic
- John Dwyer â Australian doctor, Professor of Medicine, and public health advocate.
- Creswell Eastman â Endocrinologist, Professor of Medicine, known for Iodine Deficiency Disorders research.
- Sir John Eccles â winner of Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine (1963)
- Peter Green â Director of the Celiac Disease Center at Columbia University
- Sir Norman Gregg â identified rubella in early pregnancy as a human teratogen
- Sir Henry Harris â Regius Professor of Medicine at Oxford; first demonstrated the existence of tumour-suppressing genes
- Freida Ruth Heighway â obstetrician and gynaecologist
- Ken Hillman â intensive care physician
- Portia Holman â child psychiatrist
- David Hunter â Dean of Academic Affairs of Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health at Harvard University
- John Hunter â Challis Professor of Anatomy at age 24 years whose brilliant career, achieving international recognition, was cut short by fever just two years later
- Sir Keith Jones â surgeon and former president of the Australian Medical Association
- Sir Bernard Katz â 1970 Nobel Laureate in Medicine or Physiology "for discoveries concerning the humoral transmittors in the nerve terminals and the mechanism for their storage, release and inactivation"
- Robert Kavanaugh â dentist and George Cross recipient
- Ross Kerridge â anesthesiologist; Lord Mayor of Newcastle
- Stephen W. Kuffler â "father of modern neuroscience"
- Max Lake â Australia's first specialist hand surgeon
- Gerald Lawrie â American heart surgeon and pioneer in the surgical treatment of valvular heart disease; performed the first mitral valve repair using the daVinci robotic surgical system; Methodist Hospital Michael E. Debakey Professor of Cardiac Surgery at Baylor College of Medicine
- Sir Herbert Maitland â surgeon
- William McBride â obstetrician, who in 1961 first warned the medical world against thalidomide as a human teratogen
- Charles George McDonald â physician, army officer and academic
- Patrick McGorry â Australian of the Year 2010
- Wirginia Maixner â neurosurgeon, Director of neurosurgery at the Royal Children's Hospital in Melbourne; graduated in 1986
- Sir Michael Marmot â President of British Medical Association, Professor of Epidemiology and Public Health at University College London; has conducted ground-breaking studies into stroke
- John Mattick â Executive Director of the Garvan Institute of Medical Research in Sydney, whose research led to the discovery of the function of non-coding DNA
- Stan Devenish Meares â former president of Australian Council Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists
- Donald Metcalf â his research revealed the control of blood cell formation
- Errol Solomon Meyers â prominent Brisbane doctor; one of the founding fathers of the School of Medicine at the University of Queensland
- Jacques Miller â discoverer of the function of the thymus (the last major organ of the human body whose function remained unknown)
- Sir William Morrow â former president of Royal Australasian College of Physicians
- Philip Nitschke â physician, humanist, founder and director of Exit International
- Sir Gustav Nossal â immunologist, discoverer of the "one cell-one antibody" rule, which states that each B lymphocyte, developed in bone marrow, secretes a specific antibody in response to an encounter with a specific foreign antigen
- Mitchell Notaras â graduate who funded the $1.1 million Mitchel J Notaras Scholarship for Colorectal Medicine at the University of Sydney
- Susie O'Reilly â family doctor and obstetrician, noted for her rejected application for residency at Sydney Hospital in favour of male applicants in 1905 despite her excellent academic record
- Brian Owler â president of the Australian Medical Association
- Cecil Purser â former chairman Royal Prince Alfred Hospital
- Margery Scott-Young â surgeon
- Thomas Peter Anderson Stuart â founder of the University of Sydney medical school
- Colin Sullivan â inventor of the Continuous Positive Airflow Pressure (CPAP) mask
- Mavis Sweeney â hospital pharmacist
- Frank Tidswell â former director New South Wales Government Bureau of Microbiology and Director of Pathology at the Royal Alexandra Hospital for Children
- Alan O. Trounson â President of the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine
- John Turtle â Kellion Professor of Endocrinology at the University of Sydney
- Nan Waddy â psychiatrist
- Robert Walsh â medical researcher and geneticist
- Claire Weekes â health writer and pioneer of anxiety treatment; first woman to graduate from the University of Sydney with a doctorate of science
- Harry Windsor â heart surgeon
- Donald Wood-Smith â Professor of Clinical Surgery at Columbia University
- Jeannette Young â medical doctor and Chief Health Officer of Queensland
Physics
Veterinary and agricultural scientists
Sport
- 'Snowy' Baker â rugby union, diving, boxing, swimming and polo player
- Nigel Barker â sprinter
- Ken Catchpole â rugby union footballer, state and national representative half-back
- Alex Chambers â mixed martial artist
- Chloe Dalton â Australian rules football, rugby union player and basketballer; gold medalist at the 2016 Summer Olympics
- Caitlin De Wit â wheelchair basketball player
- Kilian Elkinson â Bermudian footballer
- Nick Farr-Jones â rugby union footballer
- Jessica Fox â slalom canoer, gold medalist at the 2020 Summer Olympics and 2024 Summer Olympics
- Peter Fuzes â association soccer player
- Scott Gourley â rugby union and rugby league
- Sienna Green â water polo player
- Phil Hardcastle â rugby union footballer
- Peter Johnson â rugby player
- Tom Lawton, Snr â rugby union player
- Jack Metcalfe â long jumper, triple jumper and javelin thrower
- Herbert Moran â rugby union player
- Stirling Mortlock â rugby union player
- Dean Mumm â rugby union player
- Otto Nothling â rugby union and cricket player
- Ellyse Perry â cricket and football player
- Mike Pyke â rugby union player and Australian rules footballer
- Alex Ross â state and national representative rugby union player
- Kevin Ryan â rugby union and rugby league player
- John Solomon â rugby union player, state and national representative versatile back
- Johnny Taylor â rugby union and cricket player
- John Thornett â rugby union player
- Dick Tooth â rugby union footballer
- John Treloar â sprinter,
- Johnnie Wallace â rugby union player, state and national representative three-quarter
- Phil Waugh â rugby union footballer
- Zhao Zong-Yuan â youngest Australian to become a chess Grandmaster
Other
Footnotes
Faculty
Administration
Chancellors
The chancellor is elected by the fellows and presides at Senate meetings. In 1924, the executive position of vice-chancellor was created, and the chancellor ceased to have managerial responsibilities. Until 1860, the chancellor was known as the provost.
Vice-Chancellors
The vice-chancellor serves as the chief executive officer of the university, and oversees most of the university's day-to-day operations, with the chancellor serving in a largely ceremonial role. Before 1924, the vice-chancellors were fellows of the university, elected annually by the fellows. Until 1860, the vice-chancellor was known as the vice-provost. Since 1955, the full title has been Vice-Chancellor and Principal.
References
Further reading
- Williams, Bruce. Liberal education and useful knowledge: a brief history of the University of Sydney, 1850âÂÂ2000, Chancellor's Committee, University of Sydney, 2002.
- Inspiring leaders at Women's College