Featured Alumni

Lucy Liu ’86 is an actor. She was nominated for an Emmy and a SAG Award for her work on Ally McBeal, and has starred in such successful films as Charlie’s Angels, Kill Bill, Chicago, and Kung-Fu Panda. She currently co-stars as Joan Watson on the hit series Elementary.

Eric Lander, PhD ’74 was the founding director of the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard who has devoted his career to realizing the promise of the human genome for medicine. Rhodes scholar and MacArthur Fellow.

Eric Holder, Esq ’69 is the 82^nd Attorney General of the United States, and the first African-American to hold that position. Prior to being appointed, he served as a Judge in the Superior Court of the District of Columbia, and as US Attorney.

Joshua Lederberg, PhD ’41, ForMemRS, was an American molecular biologist known for his work in microbial genetics, artificial intelligence, and his pioneering work with Carl Sagan on exobiology for NASA. He graduated Stuyvesant at 15, and was just 33 years old when he won the 1958 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for proving that bacteria can exchange genetic material.

James Cagney ’18 was a celebrated star of stage and screen, known for his roles in the classic gangster films The Public Enemy and White Heat. He won the Academy Award for Best Actor for playing George M. Cohan in the biopic Yankee Doodle Dandy.

Paul Levitz SHS ’73, is a comic fan (The Comic Reader), editor (Batman among many titles), writer (Legion of Super-Heroes, Worlds’ Finest, and many others (including four NY Times Graphic Books Best Sellers), executive (30 years at DC, ending as President & Publisher), historian (75 Years of DC Comics: The Art Of Modern Myth-Making (Taschen, 2010)) and educator (including the American Graphic Novel at Columbia). He won two consecutive annual Comic Art Fan Awards for Best Fanzine, received Comic-con International’s Inkpot Award, the prestigious Bob Clampett Humanitarian Award, the Comics Industry Appreciation Award from ComicsPro and the Dick Giordano Humanitarian Award from the Hero Initiative. His Taschen book won the Eisner Award, the Eagle Award and Munich’s Peng Pris, and is being released in revised form as five volumes in 2013-5. He is currently working on a book on Will Eisner and the birth of the graphic novel for Abrams Comic Arts. Levitz also serves on the board of the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund, Proof: Media for Social Justice, and Boom! Studios.

Tim Robbins ’76 is an actor and director. He has starred in such critically acclaimed films as Bull Durham, Robert Altman’s The Player, and The Shawshank Redemption. He won an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for his role in Clint Eastwood’s Mystic River.

Paul Reiser ’75, is an American comedian, actor, television personality, author, screenwriter and musician. He is most widely known for his role on the long-running television sitcom Mad About You.

Eva Moskowitz ’82 is the founder and CEO of Success Academy Charter Schools, a network of 32 high-performing schools serving more than 9,000 students in New York City. Recognized nationally as a leader of education reform, she served on the New York Council and chaired the Education Committee prior to founding Success Academy in 2006. She holds a BA from the University of Pennsylvania and a PhD from Johns Hopkins University, and taught history at the University of Virginia, Vanderbilt University, and CUNY College of Staten Island.

Richard Axel ’63 is a neuroscientist whose work on the olfactory system won him the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 2004.

Grace Meng ’93 is the Congresswoman representing New York’s 6th congressional district in the US House of Representatives. Prior to this appointment she served as a member of the New York State Assembly representing the 22nd assembly district. She holds a BA from the University of Michigan and a JD from Yeshiva University.

Roald Hoffmann ’55 is an American theoretical chemist who won the 1981 Nobel Prize in Chemistry.