List of people from Newton, Massachusetts

Newton, Massachusetts has been the home of many notable people.

This is a dynamic list and may never be able to satisfy particular standards for completeness. You can help by adding missing items with reliable sources.

Academics

• Michael Rosbash, geneticist and chronobiologist at Brandeis University, recipient of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 2017
• Daron Acemoglu, economist and professor of economics at MIT
• Frederick M. Ausubel, molecular biologist, professor at Harvard Medical School
• David Berson, neurobiologist, professor at Brown University
• Jean Briggs, anthropologist and expert on Inuit languages, raised in Newton
• J. Walter Fewkes, ethnologist and archaeologist
• Stanley Fischer, former governor of the Bank of Israel, former professor at the MIT Department of Economics
• Alexandra I. Forsythe, author of the first computer science textbook; helped found the Stanford University Department of Computer Science
• William Tudor Gardiner, 55th Governor of Maine, January 2, 1929 – January 4, 1933
• Caroline D. Gentile, associate professor emeritus of education, University of Maine at Presque Isle
• Michael Hammer, one of the founders of the management theory of business process reengineering
• H. Robert Horvitz, MIT professor of biology; won the Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine in 2002 together with Sydney Brenner and John Sulston
• Steven Hyman, neuroscientist and Provost of Harvard University
• Ruth Langer, professor of theology at Boston College; expert on Jewish Liturgy and on Christian-Jewish relations
• Robert C. Lieberman, political scientist and provost of the Johns Hopkins University
• William Stetson Merrill, classifier at Newberry Library; expert on classification of library books, author of A Code for Classifiers
• Arnold A. Offner, historian, author, and former professor
• Rosalind Picard, director of the Affective Computing Research Group at the MIT Media Lab
• Jeffrey Sachs, Harvard professor, 1980–2002; current director of the Earth Institute at Columbia University
• Ruggero Santilli, Center for Theoretical Physics of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology
• Jonathan Sarna, Joseph H. Braun and Belle R. Braun Professor of American Jewish History in the department of Near Eastern and Judaic Studies at Brandeis University
• Andrei Shleifer, economist and professor of economics at Harvard
• Isadore Singer, mathematician, recipient of the Abel Prize (2004) and National Medal of Science (1983), and Institute Professor in the Department of Mathematics at MIT
• Lawrence Summers, former Harvard president, former secretary of the treasury, and nephew of the Nobel Prize laureate Paul Samuelson
• Scott Sumner, economist and professor of economics at Bentley University
• Susumu Tonegawa, MIT professor; won the Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine in 1987
• Edward Wagenknecht, literary critic, prolific writer and Boston University professor, lived on Otis Street in West Newton
• Melvin M. Weiner, electrical engineer, author, inventor, he was the first to reduce pass-bands and stop-bands in photonic crystals to practice
• Victor Weisskopf, theoretical physicist; worked with Heisenberg, Schrödinger and Niels Bohr; group leader of the Theoretical Division of the Manhattan Project at Los Alamos
• Howard Zinn, radical historian and author of A People's History of the United States

Actors and actresses

• Peggy Bernier, actress and comedienne
• Virginia Bosler, actress
• Louis C.K., born Louis Szekely, stand-up comedian, Louie TV series, actor and writer
• Jessica Chaffin, actress, comedienne, and writer
• Priyanka Chopra, actress
• Matt Damon, actor, film producer, philanthropist and screenwriter
• Dimitri Diatchenko, actor and musician
• Anne Dudek, actress, played Dr. Amber Volakis in TV series House
• Kathryn Erbe, actress, star of Law & Order: Criminal Intent
• Marin Hinkle, actress, best known for playing Judith Harper on CBS's Two and a Half Men
• Josephine Hull, actress
• Jennifer Dundas, actress
• Alex Karpovsky, actor, best known for playing Ray Ploshansky on HBO's Girls
• Jonathan Katz, actor, best known for his starring role on the animated sitcom Dr. Katz, Professional Therapist
• Karen Kondazian, actress and author
• John Krasinski, actor, best known for playing Jim Halpert on NBC's The Office
• Ben Kurland, actor
• Matt LeBlanc, actor, best known for playing Joey Tribbiani on Friends
• Jack Lemmon, Oscar-winning actor
• Christopher Lloyd, actor, best known for playing Rev. Jim in TV series Taxi and as "Doc" (Emmett Brown) in Back to the Future films
• Robert Morse, actor, star of How To Succeed in Business Without Really Trying and Mad Men
• Olga C. Nardone, actress, best known for playing three parts in The Wizard of Oz
• Hari Nef, actress, model, and writer
• B. J. Novak, comedian, writer, best known for playing Ryan Howard on The Office
• Rebecca Pidgeon, actress, singer and songwriter, wife of playwright David Mamet
• Amy Poehler, actress and comedian, Saturday Night Live and Parks and Recreation
• Robert Preston, actor, "Professor" Harold Hill in The Music Man
• James Remar, actor, known for many films and TV series Dexter
• Joe Rogan, actor and comedian
• Eli Roth, film director, producer, writer and actor
• John Slattery, actor, best known for playing Roger Sterling in Mad Men
• Arnold Stang, comic actor
• Brian J. White, actor, best known for his role in The Shield

Artists

• David Bowes, painter
• Mickie Caspi, artist, calligrapher
• Tama Hochbaum, artist and photographer
• Plane Jane (Andrew Dunayevsky), drag performer and competitor on season 16 of RuPaul's Drag Race
• Roger Kellaway, Oscar-nominated and Grammy-winning composer, arranger, and pianist
• Bow Sim Mark, wushu practitioner; mother of actor Donnie Yen
• Florence Maynard, photographer
• Arthur Polonsky, draughtsman, painter and academic
• Nancy Schön, sculptor of the Make Way for Ducklings statues on Boston Common; also did statues of Winnie-the-Pooh and Eeyore at the Newton Free Library
• Sidewalk Sam (Robert Guillemin), folk artist
• Edwin Lord Weeks, painter
• Morgan Bassichis, American comedic performer, writer, and artist

Authors, writers, journalists, poets

• Binyamin Appelbaum, journalist
• Tom Ashbrook, journalist and radio broadcaster
• Isaac Asimov, prolific science fiction and non-fiction writer
• Russell Banks, writer of fiction and poetry
• Alex Beam, columnist for the Boston Globe
• Thomas Bulfinch, author of Bulfinch's Mythology
• Ty Burr, film critic for the Boston Globe
• Virginia Lee Burton, illustrator and author of children's books
• Russell Gordon Carter, writer
• Anita Diamant, author of fiction and nonfiction books
• Ralph Waldo Emerson, essayist, poet, lecturer, philosopher
• Bill Everett, comic book writer, artist (creator of Sub-Mariner, co-creator of Daredevil)
• Ellen Goodman, Pulitzer Prize-winning syndicated columnist
• Ann Warren Griffith, writer
• Dan Harris, correspondent for ABC News; anchor for Nightline; co-anchor for the weekend edition of Good Morning America
• Nate Kenyon, author
• Raymond Kurzweil, writer, futurist, inventor
• Don Lessem, author
• Barry Levy, screenwriter, best known for the 2008 film Vantage Point
• Bill Lichtenstein, Peabody Award-winning journalist and filmmaker
• Melissa Lozada-Oliva, poet and spoken word artist
• David Mamet, playwright, screenwriter and film director
• Adam Mansbach, novelist
• Elizabeth McCracken, author
• Tova Mirvis, novelist
• Diana Muir, writer and historian
• Charles J.V. Murphy, journalist and author
• Michael Novak, author
• William Novak, author
• Robert Pinsky, former Poet Laureate of the United States
• Caroline Mehitable Fisher Sawyer, writer, editor
• Anne Sexton, poet, writer
• Edward Sheehan, journalist and author
• Samuel Shem, playwright
• Harriet Beecher Stowe, author of Uncle Tom's Cabin
• Andrew Szanton, collaborative memoirist
• Celia Thaxter, poet and writer
• Ben Ames Williams, novelist
• Jonathan Wilson, novelist and critic

Business and industry

• Roger Berkowitz, owner of Legal Sea Foods
• Charles Bilezikian, co-founder of Christmas Tree Shops
• Elizabeth Boit, textile manufacturer
• Richard B. Carter, head of Carter's Ink Company 1905–1949
• Jim Davis, CEO of New Balance
• Semyon Dukach, professional gambler, entrepreneur, writer
• Leo Kahn, co-founder of Staples
• Jim Koch, co-founder and chairman of the Boston Beer Company
• Louis K. Liggett, drug store magnate
• Eddie Lowery, golf caddy, auto dealer
• John Palmer Parker, early Hawaiian rancher, married into Hawaiian royal family
• Sumner Redstone, global media businessman
• Francis Edgar Stanley (1849–1918), co-inventor of the Stanley Steamer
• Freelan Oscar Stanley (1849–1940), co-inventor of the Stanley Steamer and builder of the Stanley Hotel
• Donald Valle, founder and owner of Valle's Steak House
• Richard Valle, restaurateur; son of Donald Valle; owner of Valle's Steak House
• Peter Lynch, mutual fund manager and philanthropist

Colonial figures

• Waban, 17th-century American Indian tribal chief; lived in Nonantum
• Ephraim Williams, colonel in the colonial militia during the French and Indian War and benefactor of Williams College
• Thomas Wiswall (1601–1683), prominent early citizen of the Massachusetts Bay Colony and Cambridge Village, Massachusetts

Environmentalists

• Francis P. Farquhar (1887–1974), former president of the Sierra Club

Government, education and politics

• Benigno Aquino Jr. and Corazon Aquino, Filipino public intellectual and political figures; lived with their five children in Newton, 1980–1983; Corazon eventually became the first female president of the Philippines (1986–1992); their third child and only son, Benigno III or "Noynoy", was elected president in 2010
• Benigno Aquino III, 15th president of the Philippines (assumed office June 2010; term ended June 2016), lived in Newton 1980–1983
• Jake Auchincloss, member of the U.S. House of Representatives for Massachusetts's 4th congressional district
• Thomas Cardozo, first African American State Superintendent of Education in Mississippi (1874–1876)
• Evan Falchuk, founder of the United Independent Party and candidate for governor of Massachusetts in 2014
• Barney Frank, former U.S. Representative for Massachusetts's 4th congressional district
• Joseph Healy, U.S. Representative from New Hampshire
• Joseph Kennedy III, son of Joseph P. Kennedy II and former U.S. Representative for Massachusetts's 4th congressional district
• Richard Lakin, Freedom Rider, school principal, terrorism victim
• Horace Mann, public educator, college president (Antioch College) and U.S. Representative from Massachusetts
• Lisa Monaco, United States Deputy Attorney General and former Homeland Security Advisor
• Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, Shah of Iran; exiled after Ayatollah Khomeini took power; lived for a short time in Newton
• Cyrus Peirce, public educator, college president of Framingham State College (once located in West Newton); namesake of the Peirce School in West Newton
• John Pigeon, representative of Newton to the Massachusetts Provincial Congress and served as Massachusetts Commissary General while a resident
• Roger Sherman, only person to have signed all four basic documents of American sovereignty: the Continental Association of 1774, the Declaration of Independence, the Articles of Confederation, and the United States Constitution; born and spent his first two years in Newton
• Henry Lawrence Southwick, author, actor and 3rd President of Emerson College (1908–1932)
• Nguyen Van Thieu, exiled President of South Vietnam
• Rochelle Walensky, Director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
• John W. Weeks, mayor of Newton; U.S. Congressman and U.S. Senator from Massachusetts; U.S. Secretary of War under Harding
• Sinclair Weeks, son of John W. Weeks; born in West Newton; like his father, served as mayor of Newton and U.S. Senator; U.S. Secretary of Commerce under President Dwight Eisenhower
• Harry F. Stimpson Jr., lawyer who was the United States Ambassador to Paraguay

Military

• James S. Gracey, Commandant of the U.S. Coast Guard

Music

• Leonard Bernstein, composer, conductor, pedagogue, pianist.
• Robert Beaser, composer, professor, The Juilliard School
• Dai Buell, pianist, performed the first piano recital on radio in 1921, lived at the Aloha Bungalow
• Ralph Burns, songwriter, bandleader, composer, conductor, arranger and bebop pianist
• Rob Chiarelli, multiple Grammy Award winner
• Catie Curtis, folk/pop singer
• Stephen Custer, cellist with the Los Angeles Philharmonic, grew up in Newton
• Fat Mike, lead singer and bassist of punk rock band NOFX
• Alfred Genovese, principal oboist of Metropolitan Opera and Boston Symphony Orchestra
• Osvaldo Golijov, Grammy award-winning composer of classical music
• Avi Jacob, singer-songwriter
• Mike Mangini, drummer for Dream Theater
• Vaughn Monroe, singer, trumpeter and big band leader
• Jane Morgan, popular singer, specializing in traditional pop music
• Jesse Novak, composer
• Aoife O'Donovan, singer-songwriter, lead singer of band Crooked Still
• Seiji Ozawa, Boston Symphony Orchestra Music Director Laureate
• Horatio Parker, composer, first Dean of Yale School of Music, born in Auburndale (a village of Newton)
• Rachel Platten, singer and songwriter
• Seth Putnam, singer and leader of grindcore band Anal Cunt
• Fritz Richmond, jug and washtub bass player
• Mark Sandman, lead singer of the alternative rock band Morphine
• Jason Solowsky, composer

Philosophy, religion and spirituality

• Ram Dass (Dr. Richard Alpert), author, philosophic and religious guru
• Mary Baker Eddy, founder of the Church of Christ, Scientist; her last home has been preserved as the Dupee Estate-Mary Baker Eddy Home
• Timothy Leary, author, psychologist, lecturer at Harvard, advocate of L.S.D.-25 (i.e., lysergic acid diethylamide) and other entheogens

Physicians

• Donald Berwick, former Administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services; candidate for Massachusetts Governor in 2014
• Atul Gawande, general and endocrine surgeon at Brigham and Women's Hospital
• Kurt Julius Isselbacher, M.D., American physician and the former Mallinckrodt Distinguished Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School and Director Emeritus of the Massachusetts General Hospital Cancer Center
• Sara Murray Jordan, gastroenterologist

Political activists

• Charles Jacobs, founder of the American Anti-Slavery Group and of The David Project Center for Jewish Leadership
• Andrea Levin, director of the Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America
• Leonard Zakim, prominent New England religious and civil rights leader

Producers and directors

• Brad Falchuk, writer, director, and producer of Nip/Tuck and Glee
• Andrew Bujalski, film director, screenwriter, and actor
• Lyn Greene, writer, director and producer of Nip/Tuck, Boss and Masters of Sex
• Eli Roth, film director, producer, actor
• Bruce Sinofsky, director of documentary films, Brothers Keeper, The Paradise Lost Trilogy, Metallica: Some Kind of Monster (TV series), Iconoclasts
• Julie Taymor, director of Broadway theatre and film

Psychologists and psychiatrists

• Julian Jaynes, psychologist
• Kenneth Levin, psychiatrist and historian
• Kurt Lewin, "the father of social psychology"

Radio, television personalities

• Paula S. Apsell, television producer
• Tom Ashbrook, host of the NPR radio show On Point
• Maria Lopez, former judge, TV personality
• Jade McCarthy, ESPN sportscaster
• Suzyn Waldman, color commentator for New York Yankees

Science, medicine and technology

• Michael Rosbash, geneticist and chronobiologist at Brandeis University, recipient of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 2017
• Dan Bricklin, with Bob Frankston, co-creator of VisiCalc, the first spreadsheet
• Charles Stark Draper, inventor of the aircraft inertial guidance system; founder of MIT's Draper Labs
• Wes Hildreth, a USGS geologist born in Newton.
• Reginald Fessenden (1866–1932), inventor and radio pioneer; his house at 45 Waban Hill Road is listed in the National Register of Historic Places
• Bob Frankston, with Dan Bricklin, co-creator of VisiCalc, the first spreadsheet
• Atul Gawande, surgeon, writer for The New Yorker
• Ashish Jha, Dean of Brown University School of Public Health and White House COVID-19 pandemic Response Coordinator
• Jonathan Mann, head of the World Health Organization's global AIDS project
• Charles Johnson Maynard, naturalist and ornithologist; lived in the Charles Maynard House
• Thomas C. Peebles, physician, responsible for first isolating the measles virus, setting the stage for the development of a vaccine
• Judy Smith, nurse who disappeared from Philadelphia in 1997; found murdered in North Carolina five months later
• Rochelle Walensky, Director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and former Chief of the Division of Infectious Diseases at Massachusetts General Hospital
• Frank E. Winsor, civil engineer and chief engineer of the Quabbin Reservoir project

Songwriters

• Katharine Lee Bates, professor of English at Wellesley College and author of the lyrics to "America the Beautiful"
• Samuel Francis Smith, Baptist minister and author of the lyrics to My Country, 'Tis of Thee, also known as "America"

Sports

Auto racing

• Pete Hamilton, NASCAR racer, winner of the 1970 Daytona 500

Baseball

• The following are current and former players of the Boston Red Sox:
  • Matt Clement (former)
  • Jim Corsi (former) (born in Newton)
  • John Curtis (former) (born in Newton)
  • Hal Deviney (former) (born in Newton)
  • JD Drew (former)
  • Bob Gallagher (former) (born in Newton)
  • Gabe Kapler (former)
  • Mark Loretta (former)
  • Doug Mirabelli (former)
  • Trot Nixon (former)
  • David Ortiz (former)
  • Wily Mo Peña (former)
  • Jimmy Piersall (former)
  • Jason Varitek (former)
  • Ted Williams (former)

• The following also played Major League Baseball:
  • Bob Barr (born in Newton)
  • Sean DePaula (born in Newton)
  • Bob Dresser (born in Newton)
  • Jake Fishman (born in Newton)

• The following play for a national team:
  • Jake Fishman, American-Israeli (born in Newton; plays for Team Israel)
  • Ben Wanger, American-Israeli baseball pitcher (born in Newton; plays for Team Israel)

Basketball

• Geoffrey Gray (born 1997), American player in the Israeli Basketball Premier League
• Tom Heinsohn (1934–2020), NBA player
• Jayson Tatum, NBA player

Boxing

• Joe DeNucci, middleweight boxer and MA State Auditor

Fencing

• Paul Friedberg, Olympic fencer

Figure skating

• Tenley Albright (born 1935 in Newton Centre), first American female skater to win an Olympic gold medal; other titles included 1952 Olympic silver medal, 1953 and 1955 World Champion, 1953 and 1955 North American champion, and 1952–1956 U.S. national champion
• Gracie Gold, 2014 and 2016 U.S. champion, Olympic team bronze medalist, born in Newton
• Jennifer Kirk, 2000 World Junior champion, born in Newton
• John Summers, 1978–80 national champion in ice dancing

Football

• Kiko Alonso, (former) linebacker for the Miami Dolphins
• Patrick Sullivan, (former) general manager, New England Patriots
• Will Levis, (current) quarterback for the Tennessee Titans

Soccer

• Daouda Kante, (former) New England Revolution player
• Taylor Twellman, (former) New England Revolution player

Skateboarding

• Andy MacDonald, eight-time X Games gold medalist and eight-time World Cup Skateboarding champion