List of University of Sydney people

• Dennis A. Ahlburg – 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 – former President of the Australian Academy of Science; Emeritus Professor of Electrical Engineering at the Australian National University
• Elizabeth Bannan – educationist awarded the Walter Beavis prize and the Jones medal[1][2]
• Brian L. Byrne – social scientist known for research in psycholinguistics; Emeritus Professor of Psychology at the University of New England
• Jill Ker Conway – 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 Lend Lease Corporation; director of Nike, Merrill Lynch, and Colgate-Palmolive
• Beverly Derewianka – Emeritus Professor of Linguistics at the University of Wollongong
• Margaret Gardner – Vice-Chancellor of Monash University
• Michael Halliday – creator of the systemic functional grammar, an internationally influential grammar model
• Frank Lancaster Jones – sociologist known for research on social inequality, social stratification, social mobility, and national identity
• Sir Robert Madgwick – 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[3]
• Robert May, Baron May of Oxford – former President of the Royal Society; Chief Scientific Adviser to the UK Government
• Jim Peacock – former President of Australian Academy of Science
• Michael Pitman – former Chief Scientist of Australia
• Ken Robinson – former Head of the Department of Computer Science at the University of New South Wales
• Nicholas Saunders – former Vice-Chancellor of the University of Newcastle and former Dean of Medicine at Monash University and Flinders University
• Michael Spence – President and Provost of the University College London and former Vice-Chancellor and Principal of the University of Sydney
• Sir Brian Windeyer – former Dean of the Middlesex Hospital Medical School at the University of London and former Vice-Chancellor of the University of London[4]
• Nicki Packer – Distinguished Professor of Glycoproteomics at Macquarie University

• Eva Maria Cox
• Germaine Greer
• Noel Pearson[9]
• Charles Perkins[10]

• Sikhanyiso Dlamini – Princess of Swaziland
• Taufa'ahau Tupou IV – King of Tonga

• Sir William Deane
• Sir John Kerr

• Dame Marie Bashir (NSW)
• Richard Butler (Tas)
• Peter Coleman (NF)
• Sir Roden Cutler (NSW)
• Tom Pauling (NT)
• Sir James Plimsoll (Tas)
• Sir James Rowland (NSW)

• Tony Abbott
• Anthony Albanese
• Sir Edmund Barton
• John Howard
• Sir William McMahon
• Sir Earle Page
• Malcolm Turnbull
• Gough Whitlam

• Mike Baird
• Gladys Berejiklian
• Sir Thomas Bavin
• Sir Joseph Carruthers
• John Fahey
• Sir George Fuller
• Nick Greiner
• Morris Iemma
• James McGirr
• Dominic Perrottet
• Nathan Rees
• Sir Eric Willis
• Neville Wran

• John Anderson
• Sir Garfield Barwick
• Lionel Bowen
• Sir Nigel Bowen
• Sir Percy Spender
• Kerry Bartlett
• Chris Bowen
• Bob Brown
• Ross Cameron
• Peter Coleman
• Craig Emerson
• Laurie Ferguson
• Martin Ferguson
• Jennie George
• Joe Hockey
• Tom Hughes
• Ros Kelly
• Peter King
• Andrew Laming
• Mark Latham
• Robert McClelland
• Daryl Melham
• Tsebin Tchen
• Danna Vale

• Clare Martin (NT)
• George Thorn (QLD)

• Natalie Bennett – former leader of the Green Party of England and Wales
• H. V. Evatt – 3rd President of the United Nations General Assembly
• Trixie Gardner, Baroness Gardner of Parkes – member of the House of Lords of the United Kingdom
• John Horgan – 36th Canadian Premier of British Columbia
• Martin Indyk – former United States Ambassador to Israel
• Dave Sharma – former Australia Ambassador to Israel
• Alvin Tan – Minister of State of Singapore
• Teh Cheang Wan – former Minister of National Development of Singapore
• Catherine West – member of the House of Commons of the United Kingdom
• Akhilesh Yadav – 20th Chief Minister of Uttar Pradesh of India

• Sir Emmet McDermott
• Nelson Meers
• Clover Moore
• Frank Sartor
• Lucy Turnbull

• Tony Cole – 13th Secretary of the Department of the Treasury
• Philip Flood – 5th Secretary of the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade
• Neil McInnes – intellectual, journalist and senior public servant (Medicine and Physiology; did not graduate)[11]
• Ewart Smith – campaigner against the Australia Card (LLB)[12]

• John Bell – actor, theatre director and theatre impresario
• Bruce Beresford – film director
• Anne Boyd – composer, first Australian and first woman appointed Professor of Music at the University of Sydney
• Rose Byrne – actress
• Jane Campion – New Zealand director, producer, and screenwriter
• Alex Cubis – actor
• Somaratne Dissanayake – Sri Lankan film director, screenwriter and producer
• Christopher Doyle – cinematographer
• Sandy Edwards – photographer
• Jacqueline Fernandez – Bahraini–Sri Lankan actress and model who predominantly works in Bollywood, Miss Universe Sri Lanka 2006
• Charles Firth – comedian
• John Flaus – broadcaster, actor, voice talent, anarchist, poet and raconteur
• Ania Freer – documentary filmmaker
• Andrew Hansen – comedian and musician
• Michael Hannan – composer, pianist, and musicologist[13]
• Tom Gleeson – comedian, radio and television presenter
• May Hollinworth – theatre producer and director
• Yvonne Kenny – soprano
• Chas Licciardello – comedian
• Dolph Lundgren – Swedish actor, filmmaker, and martial artist
• Julian Morrow – comedian and television producer
• Craig Reucassel – comedian, radio and television presenter
• Dame Joan Sutherland – dramatic coloratura soprano
• Chris Taylor – comedian
• Peter Weir – film director
• Kip Williams – director of the Sydney Theatre Company
• Georgina Wilson – Filipino-British model, actress
• Roger Woodward – pianist, composer, conductor

• Alan Atkinson
• Carl Bridge
• Sir Christopher Clark
• Anne Philomena O'Brien
• John Manning Ward

• Phillip Adams
• Bob Ellis
• Elizabeth Fell
• Robert Hughes
• Clive James
• Paul Kelly – Editor-at-Large of The Australian
• Ray Martin
• Richard McGregor
• Jessica Rowe
• Lillian Roxon
• Adam Spencer
• Avani Dias

• Millicent Armstrong
• Nikos Athanasou
• Clive Stephen Barry
• Dora Birtles
• Christopher Brennan
• Geraldine Brooks – winner of the Pulitzer Prize for March (2006)
• Dymphna Cusack
• Ursula Dubosarsky
• Germaine Greer – writer and public intellectual
• Kate Grenville
• A. D. Hope – Emeritus Professor of English at the Australian National University
• Geoffrey Lehmann
• Dominic Knight
• Niall Lucy
• Jeni Mawter
• Les Murray
• Jennifer Rowe
• James Roy
• Margaret Clunies Ross – McCaughey Professor of English and Early English Literature, Director of the Centre for Medieval Studies at the University of Sydney
• Pierre Ryckmans (Simon Leys)
• Kimberley Starr

• David Malet Armstrong
• Stephen Hetherington
• Peter Godfrey-Smith
• J. L. Mackie
• John Passmore
• Wesley Wildman

• Hugh Atkin – lawyer, former Tipstaff at the Supreme Court of New South Wales
• John Davies – Judge of the United States District Court
• Marcus Einfeld – Judge of the Federal Court of Australia
• Geoffrey Robertson – international human rights lawyer
• Charles Waterstreet – criminal defence lawyer, writer and producer

• Ron Bracewell – known for nulling interferometry, and the Bracewell probe concept in SETI; Lewis M. Terman Emeritus Professor of Electrical Engineering at Stanford University
• Philip K. Chapman – Apollo 14 Mission Scientist
• Greg Chamitoff – NASA astronaut and University of Sydney Lawrence Hargrave Professor of Aeronautical Engineering
• Bernard Mills – developed the Mills Cross Telescope and Molonglo Observatory Synthesis Telescope
• Ruby Payne-Scott – first to use radio interferometry
• Edwin Ernest Salpeter – Crafoord Laureate Astronomy 1997, known for the initial mass function and accretion disk model of active galactic nuclei
• Paul D. Scully-Power – first Australian-born astronaut to fly in space

• Marnie Blewitt – molecular biologist, scientist in the field of epigenetics
• Catherine King – ecotoxicologist, Antarctic researcher
• June Lascelles – microbiologist, pioneer in microbial photosynthesis
• Robert May, Baron May of Oxford – Crafoord Laureate Biosciences 1996
• Roland Stocker – scientist in the field of redox biology
• John Mattick – molecular biologist
• Sir Gustav Nossal

• Arthur Birch
• Sir John Cornforth – winner of the Nobel Prize for Chemistry (1975)
• David Craig
• Philip A. Gale
• Noel Hush – winner of the 2007 Welch Award in Chemistry
• Alice Motion
• Elizabeth New
• Sir Robert Robinson – winner of the Nobel Prize for Chemistry (1947)
• Peter Rutledge
• Barbara H. Stuart
• Anthony Weiss – McCaughey Professor in Biochemistry and Fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry, for discoveries on human elastic materials that accelerate the healing and repair of arteries, skin and 3D human tissue components
• Jenny Zhang

• Michael Georgeff – AAAI Fellow, Director of the Australian Artificial Intelligence Institute
• Rick Jelliffe – inventor of the Schematron schema language
• Rod Johnson – best-selling author; expert in Java/Java EE; founder of the Spring Framework
• John Lions – author of Lions' Commentary on UNIX 6th Edition, with Source Code, commonly known as the Lions Book
• Vaughan Pratt – ACM Fellow; pioneer in computer science; Emeritus Professor of Computer Science at Stanford University
• Ross Quinlan – AAAI Fellow; highly cited scholar and a pioneer in decision theory
• Ken Thompson– co-creator of unix; Turing Award recipient[16]
• Andrew Tridgell – co-inventor of the rsync algorithm; author of and contributor to the Samba file server

• Ronald Ernest Aitchison – solid-state physicist and electronics engineer
• Ronald N. Bracewell – known for nulling interferometry, and the Bracewell probe concept in SETI; Lewis M. Terman Emeritus Professor of Electrical Engineering at Stanford University
• John Bradfield – designer of the Sydney Harbour Bridge
• Julie Cairney – materials scientist and engineer and Director of the Australian Centre for Microscopy and Microanalysis
• Graeme Clark – inventor of the bionic ear implant
• Bryan Gaensler – Dean of Dunlap Institute for Astronomy and Astrophysics and Professor of Astronomy at the University of Toronto
• Robert May, Baron May of Oxford – former Chairman of the University Research Board and Professor of Zoology at Princeton University
• John O'Sullivan – winner of 2009 Prime Minister's Prize for Science; an originator of wireless technology, credited with the invention of WiFi,[17]
• Ruby Payne-Scott – first female radio astronomer
• David Skellern – made pioneering contributions to WIFI technology
• Richard H. Small – co-inventor of Thiele/Small parameters
• Neville Thiele – co-inventor of Thiele/Small parameters
• David Warren – inventor of the "black box" (flight data recorder)

• Bruce Bolt – pioneer of engineering seismology; Professor of Earth and Planetary Science at the University of California, Berkeley
• Brian O'Brien – physicist and space scientist
• Richard Dowden – noted geo- and astrophysicist
• Herbert Huppert – Professor of Theoretical Geophysics and Foundation Director, Institute of Theoretical Geophysics, Cambridge University; Fellow of King's College, Cambridge
• Richard Makinson – physicist known for his contributions to amorphous semiconductors
• Bernard Mills – inventor of the Mills Cross Telescope
• Edwin Ernest Salpeter – astrophysicist known for his contributions to Bethe–Salpeter equation and initial mass function; Emeritus Professor of Physics at Cornell University

• Vanessa Barrs – feline researcher
• William Ian Beardmore Beveridge – Professor of Animal Pathology and Director of the Institute of Animal Pathology at Cambridge University from 1947 to 1975
• Chris Brown – veterinarian and TV presenter, most notably in the factual TV series Bondi Vet
• Sir Ian Clunies Ross – Chairman Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation
• Hugh McLeod Gordon – veterinary parasitologist
• Daria Nina Love – veterinary microbiologist
• Gordon McClymont – agricultural scientist, ecologist, and educationist; foundation chair of the Department of Rural Science at the University of New England; originator of the term "sustainable agriculture"
• Ross Perry – Australia’s first registered avian veterinarian; first to study and name Psittacine Beak and Feather Disease, for which he was co-discoverer of viral infection agent[20]
• Sanjaya Rajaram – World Food Prize Laureate and the Head of Wheat Programme from 1976 to 2001 at International Maize and Wheat Improvement Centre (CIMMYT), once referred to as "the greatest present-day wheat scientist in the world" by Norman Borlaug
• Elizabeth Tasker – fire ecologist

• David Gulasi – Australian social media figure active in China[26]
• Paul Hockings – anthropologist
• Margaret McArthur – anthropologist and nutritionist
• Mervyn Meggitt – anthropologist
• Anne Pattel-Gray – theologian

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.

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.