20 UCLA Notable Alumni Who Changed the World

When you think of UCLA, names like Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Francis Ford Coppola, or Sara Bareilles probably come to mind, and for good reason. Ranked the No. 2 public university in the U.S. and 46th globally, UCLA offers world-class programs across medicine, business, engineering, and the arts, drawing exceptional students who go on to define their fields.

With an acceptance rate of just 9.41%, only the most driven and talented make it through, which means the alumni network is built on a foundation of proven excellence from day one.

Whether you’re curious about who’s walked those iconic Westwood walkways before you or just love a success story, diving into the lives of UCLA notable alumni is both inspiring and eye-opening. From Nobel laureates to Olympic gold medalists, this list proves that a UCLA education can take you just about anywhere.

• UCLA Notable Alumni in Politics and Public Service
• UCLA Notable Alumni in Science and Tech
• UCLA Notable Alumni in the Arts and Entertainment
• UCLA Notable Alumni in Sports
• Frequently Asked Questions
• Takeaways

UCLA Notable Alumni in Politics and Public Service

UCLA has a long history of producing influential leaders, and the political world is no exception. These UCLA notable alumni have made their mark on history through public service and diplomacy.

1. Ralph Bunche

Degree: Bachelor of Arts in International Relations / Political Science (Class of 1927)

Ralph J. Bunche began his journey at UCLA, where he excelled academically and became valedictorian of the Class of 1927. He went on to earn a master’s degree in Political Science from Harvard and pursued his doctorate while teaching at Howard University, contributing to the study of racial politics in the American South, notably in the seminal work An American Dilemma.

In 1950, he became the first African American and person of color to win the Nobel Peace Prize, honored for mediating the historic Armistice Agreements between Arab nations and Israel.

Over a nearly two-decade career as Undersecretary General of the United Nations, Bunche became a global icon for his work in peacekeeping, decolonization, human rights, and civil rights, helping draft the U.N. Charter sections on trusteeship and decolonization.

Late in life, despite serious health challenges, he joined Rev. Martin Luther King to lead the 1965 march from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama. In 2003, UCLA renamed its Center for African American Studies in his honor, commemorating the centenary of his birth.

2. Antonio Villaraigosa

Degree: Bachelor of Arts in History (Class of 1977)

Antonio Villaraigosa is proof that the path to public office doesn’t have to be a straight line. He grew up in a tough East L.A. neighborhood, was expelled from high school, and eventually transferred from East Los Angeles College to UCLA, where he earned a B.A. in history in 1977.

In 2005, Villaraigosa was sworn in as the 41st Mayor of Los Angeles, the city’s first Latino mayor in 133 years. During his two terms, he expanded the LAPD to its largest size in city history, championed Measure R (a $40 billion investment in L.A. transit), and made public education a top priority.

Before becoming mayor, Villaraigosa also served three terms in the California State Assembly and rose to become Speaker of the Assembly. He’s currently running for California governor in the 2026 race.

3. Elinor Ostrom

Degree: Bachelor of Arts (1954), Master of Arts (1962), and Ph.D. in Political Science (1965)

A triple Bruin and a genuine trailblazer, Elinor Ostrom earned all three of her degrees at UCLA, and then changed how the world thinks about resource management. Her research focused on how communities can successfully manage shared resources like forests, fisheries, and water systems without government or private control.

In 2009, Ostrom became the first woman ever to win the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences, sharing the honor for her analysis of economic governance and the commons.

UCLA Notable Alumni in Science and Tech

UCLA is also home to some of the most important scientific and technological minds of the past century. These UCLA notable alumni have helped build the modern world, from the internet you’re using right now to chemistry textbooks and breakthrough medical discoveries.

4. Vinton Cerf

Degree: Master of Science (1970) and Ph.D. in Computer Science (1972)

If you’re reading this online, you have Vinton Cerf to thank. He’s literally called “the Father of the Internet.”

Cerf came to UCLA for his graduate studies because UCLA was one of the few places working on radical new ideas in communication. While there, he worked in Professor Leonard Kleinrock’s lab, which connected the first two nodes of ARPANET, the predecessor to today’s internet.

He later co-designed TCP/IP, the foundational protocol that lets computers around the world actually talk to each other. For that work, Cerf won the Turing Award (the “Nobel Prize of computing”) in 2004 and the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2005. He currently serves as VP and Chief Internet Evangelist at Google.

5. Glenn Seaborg

Degree: Bachelor of Arts in Chemistry (Class of 1934)

Glenn Seaborg might be one of the most influential chemists of the 20th century, and his story started at UCLA. After graduating in 1934, he went on to discover or co-discover ten transuranium elements, including plutonium, the same element that powers nuclear reactors and (less proudly) atomic weapons.

Seaborg won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1951 for his work on transuranium elements, and later became the longtime chairman of the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission under three presidents. He also helped shape the modern periodic table.

The ultimate honor? Element 106 is officially named seaborgium, making him one of the only people to have an element named after them while still alive.

6. Randy Schekman

Degree: Bachelor of Arts in Molecular Biology (Class of 1971)

Randy Schekman is living proof that what you study in college can take you all the way to Stockholm. He completed an individual field of concentration in molecular biology at UCLA in 1971 before heading to Stanford for his Ph.D.

His research revealed how cells transport molecules in tiny “packages” called vesicles, work that’s foundational to understanding everything from insulin secretion to neurotransmitter release in the brain.

Schekman shared the 2013 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for those discoveries about the machinery regulating vesicle traffic. Today, he’s a professor at UC Berkeley and a passionate advocate for open-access science publishing.

7. Ardem Patapoutian

Degree: Bachelor of Science in Molecular, Cellular, and Developmental Biology (Class of 1990)

Born in Beirut and forced to flee the Lebanese Civil War, Ardem Patapoutian arrived in Los Angeles and put himself through UCLA, working as a pizza delivery driver and writing horoscopes for an Armenian newspaper to pay tuition.

That hustle paid off. His research at Scripps Research uncovered the receptors that allow our bodies to sense touch, pressure, and pain, essentially decoding how the human body feels the world around it. In 2021, Patapoutian shared the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for discovering these receptors.

8. Henry Samueli

Degree: Bachelor of Science (1975), Master of Science (1976), and Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering (1980)

Henry Samueli is a triple Bruin who has UCLA’s engineering school named after him. The son of Holocaust survivors, Samueli enrolled at UCLA at age 16 and earned all three of his degrees in electrical engineering at the school.

After teaching at UCLA as a professor, Samueli co-founded Broadcom Corporation in 1991 with one of his doctoral students. The company revolutionized broadband communications, its chips are now found in cable modems, Wi-Fi routers, and set-top boxes around the world.

Following a major gift from Samueli and his wife Susan, UCLA renamed its engineering school the UCLA Henry Samueli School of Engineering and Applied Science in 2000. He’s also a member of the Giving Pledge and co-owner of the NHL’s Anaheim Ducks.

9. William F. Sharpe

Degree: Bachelor of Arts (1955), Master of Arts (1956), and Ph.D. in Economics (1961)

Another triple Bruin and a Nobel laureate to boot, William F. Sharpe is the brain behind some of the most widely used tools in modern finance. His Capital Asset Pricing Model (CAPM) and the “Sharpe Ratio” are still taught in every finance and economics program in the country, and used by investment firms managing trillions of dollars.

Sharpe shared the 1990 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences for his contributions to the theory of financial economics.

UCLA Notable Alumni in the Arts and Entertainment

Some of the most creative minds in film, music, comedy, and literature got their start at UCLA. These UCLA notable alumni have left their mark on the cultural world, proving that a Bruin education can lead straight to Oscars, Grammys, Pulitzers, and Tony Awards.

10. Francis Ford Coppola

Degree: Master of Fine Arts in Film (Class of 1967)

When it comes to UCLA notable alumni who shaped modern cinema, Francis Ford Coppola is in a category of his own. He enrolled in UCLA’s film school in 1960 and earned his M.F.A. with the thesis film You’re a Big Boy Now, which actually got a theatrical release through Warner Bros.

Just a few years later, Coppola directed The Godfather (1972), one of the most acclaimed films in history, followed by The Conversation, The Godfather Part II, and Apocalypse Now. He’s won five Academy Awards, two Palmes d’Or at Cannes, and is widely regarded as one of the greatest filmmakers of all time.

Coppola also co-founded American Zoetrope with George Lucas, helping kick-start the careers of legends like Sofia Coppola, Al Pacino, Harrison Ford, and Robert De Niro.

11. Carol Burnett

Degree: Associate of Arts in Theater Arts (Class of 1954)

Long before The Carol Burnett Show became a comedy institution, Carol Burnett was a Hollywood High kid who showed up at UCLA in 1951 with $50 of tuition money mailed to her by an anonymous donor. She initially wanted to study journalism, but a theater arts class changed everything. “I got a laugh. And I just thought, ‘Ooh, that’s kind of nice,'” she later told UCLA.

Burnett left UCLA before completing her bachelor’s to chase her dreams in New York, but not before earning an Associate of Arts degree in 1954. She went on to win seven Emmys, a Tony, a Grammy, a Presidential Medal of Freedom, and the Kennedy Center Honor. In 2025, she came full circle by endowing a scholarship at UCLA’s School of Theater, Film and Television.

12. Sara Bareilles

Degree: Bachelor of Arts in Communication (Class of 2003)

Before “Love Song” and “Brave” became radio staples, Sara Bareilles was just a UCLA communication major performing with Awaken A Cappella, the campus’s first a cappella group. She actually competed in and won UCLA’s annual Spring Sing showcase as a solo act in 2000 and 2003.

After graduating, Bareilles signed with Epic Records and went on to win two Grammy Awards, earn three Tony nominations, and compose the Broadway hit Waitress. She returned to UCLA to deliver the 2025 College commencement address, telling graduates that her time at UCLA “still shapes the person I have become.”

13. Kay Ryan

Degree: Bachelor of Arts (1967) and Master of Arts in English (1968)

If you’ve ever read a poem that hit harder than it had any right to in just a few short lines, there’s a good chance it was by Kay Ryan. She earned both her B.A. and M.A. in English at UCLA and went on to redefine what a contemporary American poem could do. Her work is known for its compact, witty, and deeply philosophical style, often slipping in surprising rhymes and observations about ordinary things.

Ryan served as the 16th U.S. Poet Laureate from 2008 to 2010 and won the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry in 2011 for her collection The Best of It: New and Selected Poems. She’s also a MacArthur “Genius” Fellow.

14. Jonathan Gold

Degree: Bachelor of Arts in Music (Class of 1982)

Jonathan Gold studied music at UCLA, but he became famous for writing about something else entirely: food. As a critic for LA Weekly and the Los Angeles Times, he transformed how Americans thought about restaurant criticism, celebrating taco trucks, strip-mall noodle joints, and immigrant kitchens with the same care he gave to fine dining.

In 2007, Gold became the first food critic ever to win the Pulitzer Prize for Criticism. He turned restaurant reviewing into an art form, and his work fundamentally changed the L.A. food scene (and arguably American food writing) before his passing in 2018.

15. Brad Delson

Degree: Bachelor of Arts in Communication Studies (Class of 1999)

Before Linkin Park sold over 100 million records worldwide, lead guitarist Brad Delson was a communication studies major at UCLA, where he was roommates with future Linkin Park bassist Dave Farrell.

The band’s 2000 debut album Hybrid Theory sold more than 18 million copies and earned the rare RIAA Diamond Award. Follow-up albums Meteora and Minutes to Midnight hit No. 1 on the Billboard charts, and Linkin Park became one of the defining rock acts of the 2000s.

Delson’s Bruin connection also reaches deeper: he met original Linkin Park members through UCLA’s tight-knit campus music community, which has produced everyone from Sara Bareilles to members of Maroon 5.

UCLA Notable Alumni in Sports

You probably saw this coming. UCLA is one of the most decorated athletic programs in the world. These UCLA notable alumni have racked up Olympic gold medals, NBA championships, Grand Slam titles, and Hall of Fame inductions.

16. Jackie Robinson

Degree: Attended UCLA from 1939 to 1941 but left before completing his degree

When Jackie Robinson enrolled at UCLA in 1939, he made history before he even stepped on a major league diamond. He became the first UCLA student-athlete to letter in four varsity sports—baseball, basketball, football, and track—a feat that still hasn’t been matched.

Robinson left UCLA before graduating to help support his family, eventually serving in the U.S. Army during World War II. Then came the moment that changed sports forever.

In 1947, Robinson broke Major League Baseball’s color barrier by signing with the Brooklyn Dodgers, becoming the first African American player in the modern MLB era. He won Rookie of the Year, was named NL MVP in 1949, and was inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1962. His No. 42 is now permanently retired across all of Major League Baseball.

17. Kareem Abdul-Jabbar

Degree: Bachelor of Arts in History (Class of 1969)

Known as Lew Alcindor during his college years, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar is widely considered one of the greatest players in basketball history and his legend started at UCLA under legendary coach John Wooden.

At UCLA, he was a three-time National Player of the Year and led the Bruins to three consecutive NCAA championships from 1967 to 1969. He graduated with a B.A. in history in 1969 before being drafted first overall by the Milwaukee Bucks.

In the NBA, Abdul-Jabbar racked up six MVP awards, six championships, and 19 All-Star selections. He was the NBA’s all-time leading scorer for nearly four decades until LeBron James passed him in 2023. Beyond basketball, he’s also an accomplished author, activist, and recipient of the Presidential Medal of Freedom.

18. Arthur Ashe

Degree: Bachelor of Arts in Business Administration (Class of 1966)

Arthur Ashe came to UCLA on a tennis scholarship in 1963 and went on to become one of the most influential figures in sports history, on and off the court.

While at UCLA, he won the 1965 NCAA singles championship and helped lead the Bruins to a team national title. He graduated with a degree in business administration in 1966, the first member of his paternal family to graduate college.

Ashe became the first Black man to win the U.S. Open (1968), the Australian Open (1970), and Wimbledon (1975), and he remains the only Black male player ever to win those three Grand Slam singles titles.

Off the court, Ashe was a passionate activist against apartheid and a leading voice for AIDS awareness after contracting HIV from a blood transfusion. The main stadium at the U.S. Open, Arthur Ashe Stadium, bears his name, as does UCLA’s Arthur Ashe Student Health and Wellness Center.

19. Jackie Joyner-Kersee

Degree: Bachelor of Arts in History (Class of 1986)

Jackie Joyner-Kersee came to UCLA in 1980 on a basketball scholarship from East St. Louis, Illinois, and somehow ended up becoming one of the greatest athletes of all time.

At UCLA, she was a dual-sport star, starting all four seasons on the women’s basketball team while also dominating track and field. She won the Broderick Cup in 1985 as the nation’s top female collegiate athlete and graduated with a B.A. in history in 1986, which she has called “her greatest off-field accomplishment.”

Joyner-Kersee won three Olympic gold medals, one silver, and two bronze across four Olympic Games, and she still holds the world record in the heptathlon (7,291 points) set back in 1988. Sports Illustrated for Women once named her the Greatest Female Athlete of the 20th Century. She’ll deliver UCLA’s 2026 College commencement address.

20. Bill Walton

Degree: Bachelor of Arts in History (Class of 1974)

Bill Walton was the centerpiece of one of the most dominant college basketball runs in NCAA history. As a Bruin, he played on two NCAA championship teams (1972 and 1973) and was named National Player of the Year three times.

His performance in the 1973 NCAA championship game, where he hit 21 of 22 shots and scored 44 points, is still considered one of the most legendary individual performances in the history of college sports.

After graduating with a B.A. in history in 1974, Walton went on to win two NBA championships, an NBA MVP award, and an NBA Finals MVP. He was inducted into the Basketball Hall of Fame in 1993 and became one of the most beloved (and entertaining) sports broadcasters of his generation before his passing in 2024.

Frequently Asked Questions

1. Who are some famous female notable UCLA alumni?

UCLA has produced some of the most influential women in the world. Elinor Ostrom (’54, ’62, ’65) became the first woman ever to win the Nobel Prize in Economics. Carol Burnett (’54) is a comedy legend with seven Emmys and a Presidential Medal of Freedom. Sara Bareilles (’03) is a Grammy-winning singer and Broadway composer. Lastly, Jackie Joyner-Kersee (’86) is widely considered the greatest female athlete of all time.

2. Why are there so many celebrities who went to UCLA?

UCLA attracts talented, driven individuals from all over the world, and its location in Los Angeles puts it right in the middle of the entertainment industry. The UCLA School of Theater, Film and Television has produced everyone from Francis Ford Coppola to Charles Burnett, while programs in music, art, and communications continue to send graduates straight into Hollywood, Broadway, and beyond.

3. What is UCLA’s motto?

UCLA’s motto is “Fiat Lux,” which is Latin for “Let there be light.” It reflects the university’s mission to advance knowledge, ignite curiosity, and use research and education to make the world better.

4. How hard is it to get into UCLA?

UCLA is extremely competitive. As one of the top public universities in the country, its acceptance rate hovers in the single digits each year. Successful applicants typically have strong GPAs, rigorous coursework, meaningful extracurricular involvement, and compelling personal insight questions.

Takeaways

• UCLA has shaped the careers of some of the most influential people in the world, from Nobel laureates and tech pioneers to Olympic legends and Hollywood icons.
• This list of UCLA notable alumni is proof that a Bruin education can unlock doors in nearly every field imaginable, whether you’re chasing a Pulitzer, a gold medal, or a place on the periodic table.
• Dreaming of becoming a Bruin yourself? Working with a college admissions consultant can help sharpen your application strategy and increase your chances of getting accepted.