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Agency History
Census Records & Family History
Historical Censuses & Surveys
Galleries & Archives
Notable Alumni
Notable Alumni
As a technological and methodological innovator, the U.S. Census Bureau has long been an incubator for talent. The census has always attracted smart people who have, in turn, played a role in improving the effectiveness of both the census-taking and tabulation process.
This section showcases a few notable alumni, including Herman Hollerith, whose tabulation machine company eventually became part of IBM, and Henry Gannett, one of the forefathers of geography at the Census Bureau.
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PhotographNotable Alumni James F. Holmes1968Previous acting director of the U.S. Census Bureau in 1998.
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PhotographNotable Alumni Alexander Graham Bell1889Alexander Graham Bell achieved worldwide fame as the first person to patent the telephone on March 7, 1876.
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PhotographNotable Alumni Bernard Malamud1940A novelist and short-story writer, Malamud won two national Book Awards and a Pulitzer Prize.
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PhotographNotable Alumni Conrad Taeuber1950As chief of the Population Division, Taeuber led the expansion of the Census Bureau's demographic program to respond to emerging public policy issues.
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PhotographNotable Alumni Cyrus Guernsey Pringle1880As an agent for the U.S. Census Bureau, he explored the forests of New York, Pennsylvania, West Virginia, and New England to collect data for the 1884 Census.
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PhotographNotable Alumni Davis Rich Dewey1900Davis Rich Dewey, Ph. D. was an American economist and statistician from Burlington, Vermont.
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PhotographNotable Alumni Halbert L. Dunn1935Dunn was the leading figure in establishing a national vital statistics system in the United States.
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PhotographNotable Alumni Henry Gannett1880Gannett's efforts to resolve difficulties caused by confusion of place names led to the establishment of the U.S. Board of Geographic Names in 1890.
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PhotographNotable Alumni Herman Hollerith1880Herman Hollerith invented the electric tabulating machine.
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PhotographNotable Alumni Howard Sutherland1890A representative and a senator from West Virginia, Sutherland graduated from Westminster College, Fulton, MO, in 1889.
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PhotographNotable Alumni Ivan Petrof1880Ivan Petrof was a special agent for the Tenth Census of the United States (1880) in Alaska.
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PhotographNotable Alumni James Corbett1967James Corbett developed Dual Independent Map Encoding (DIME) to resolve problems researchers were having while experimenting with Geographic Base Files (GBF).
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PhotographNotable Alumni Jay S. Siegel1942Siegel became one of the "Founding Fathers" of demographic analysis (DA), a technique the Census Bureau first utilized as a part of the 1950 Census.
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PhotographNotable Alumni John Shaw Billings1880Billings worked on the 1880 and 1890 censuses with pioneering work on vital statistics.
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PhotographNotable Alumni John Wesley Langley1899John Wesley Langley was a U.S. Representative from Kentucky.
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PhotographNotable Alumni Joseph Adna Hill1898Hill is credited with the conception of the Method of Equal Proportions for apportioning seats in the U.S. House of Representatives to the states.
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PhotographNotable Alumni Julius Shiskin1945Shiskin was instrumental in the development of a computerized method for seasonally adjusting economic time series.
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PhotographNotable Alumni Kirby Puckett1980Before he became famous on the baseball diamond, Kirby worked as a temporary census employee for the 1980 Census in Chicago.
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PhotographNotable Alumni Lafayette Parker "Pick" Temple1933Cowboy folksinger Lafayette Parker Temple (AKA "Pick Temple) was best known for "The Pick Temple Giant Ranch" television show.
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PhotographNotable Alumni Leslie Kish1940In his 1965 book Survey Sampling, Kish summarized and developed the current theory of sampling and survey design.
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PhotographNotable Alumni Morris H. Hansen1935Hansen was, perhaps, the most influential statistician in the evolution of survey methodology in the 20th century.
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PhotographNotable Alumni Murray Feshbach1957Murray Feshbach is known for his study of the demographics of the Soviet Union and Russia.
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PhotographNotable Alumni Roger Herriot1980Herriot served as chief of the Population Division from 1980 through 1985.
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PhotographNotable Alumni Shirley A. Chisholm1970Shirley A. Chisholm broke conventions and wrote history as the first black woman elected to the United States Congress in 1968.
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PhotographNotable Alumni Shirley Kallek1972As associate director for Economic Programs, Kallek made extraordinary contributions to the development of economic statistics at the Census Bureau.
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PhotographNotable Alumni Thelma L. Strabel1916Thelma L. Strabel was an American novelist who specialized in tales of the American South and sea adventures.
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PhotographNotable Alumni Thomas Commerford Martin1900Martin was an London, England-born electrical engineer and editor who worked with Thomas A. Edison from 1877 to 1879.
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PhotographNotable Alumni W. Edwards Deming1939Before his work at the Census Bureau, Deming used a brief stint at Bell Labs to develop a theory of quality management.
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PhotographNotable Alumni W.E.B. Du Bois1904W.E.B. Du Bois used his gifts as a social scientist and writer to fight for equal rights for black Americans throughout his life.
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PhotographNotable Alumni Warren Mitofsky1960Warren Mitofsky was an influential American political pollster.
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PhotographNotable Alumni Wilbur L. Ross, Jr.1960Wilbur L. Ross, Jr. supervised the U.S. Census Bureau as the Secretary of the U.S. Department of Commerce.
Page Last Revised - August 22, 2024
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