History of honorary degrees - Harvard University
Source: https://www.harvard.edu/about/history/honorary-degrees
Archived: 2026-04-23 17:36
History of honorary degrees - Harvard University
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Year
Recipient
Degree
2025
Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Richard Alley, Esther Duflo, Elaine H. Kim, Rita Moreno, Abraham Verghese
various
2024
Lawrence S. Bacow, Gustavo Adolfo Dudamel Ramírez, Sylvester James Gates Jr., Jennie Chin Hansen, Joy Harjo-Sapulpa, Maria A. Ressa
various
2023
Jennifer A. Doudna, Thomas Jeffrey Hanks, Katalin Karikó, David Levering Lewis, Hugo Noé Morales Rosas, Michael Glenn Mullen
various
2022
José Ramón Andrés Puerta, Jacinda Kate Laurell Ardern, Jean-Jacques Muyembe Tamfum, Martha Craven Nussbaum, Vicki Lynn Ruiz, Gloria Marie Steinem, William Julius Wilson
various
2021
Frances Hamilton Arnold, Martin Baron, Arlie Russell Hochschild, Salman Amin Khan, Margaret Hilary Marshall, Sebastião Salgado, Anna Deavere Smith
various
2019
Lonnie G. Bunch III, Ingrid Daubechies, Drew Faust, William Chester Jordan, Angela Merkel, David Jay Remnick, Emmanuel Saez, Marilyn Strathern, Wu Hung
various
2018
Sallie Watson Chisholm, Rita Dove, Harvey Vernon Fineberg, Ricardo Lagos, George Emanuel Lewis, Twyla Tharp, Wong Kar Wai
various
2017
Norman R. Augustine, Hawa Abdi Dhiblawe, Dame Judi Dench, Sandra M. Gilbert, James Earl Jones, Walter E. Massey, Michael Rabin, John Williams, Huda Y. Zoghbi, Mark Zuckerberg
various
2016
El Anatsui, Mary L. Bonauto, His Excellency Fernando Henrique Cardoso, David B. Davis, Elaine Fuchs, Arnold Rampersad, The Right Honourable Lord Martin Rees, Steven Spielberg, Judith Jarvis Thomson
various
2015
Svetlana Leontief Alpers, Robert M. Axelrod, Wallace S. Broecker, Linda B. Buck, Renée Fleming, Patricia Albjerg Graham, Denis Mukwege, Deval L. Patrick, Peter Salovey, Bryan Stevenson
various
2014
Isabel Allende, Michael Bloomberg, President George H.W. Bush, Aretha Franklin, Patricia King, Peter H. Raven, Seymour Slive, Joseph E. Stiglitz
various
2013
José Abreu, Partha Dasgupta, Donald R. Hopkins, Robert M. May, Thomas M. Menino, Elaine Pagels, C. Dixon Spangler, Jr., JoAnne Stubbe, Oprah Winfrey
various
2012
John Adams, K. Anthony Appiah, Gillian Beer, Walter Kohn, Wendy Kopp, John Lewis, Mario Molina, Fareed Zakaria
various
2011
Tim Berners-Lee, Plácido Domingo, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Dudley Herschbach, James R. Houghton, Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, Rosalind Krauss, John G.A. Pocock, David Satcher
various
2010
Thomas R. Cech, Renée Fox, Freeman A. Hrabowski III, Susan Lindquist, Thomas Nagel, David G. Nathan, Onora O’Neill, Richard Serra, David H. Souter, Meryl Streep
various
2009
Pedro Almodóvar, Steven Chu, Joan Didion, Wendy Doniger, Ronald M. Dworkin, Anthony S. Fauci, Sarah Hrdy, Robert S. Langer, Wynton Marsalis, Sidney Verba
various
2008
Karim Aga Khan, James P. Comer, Wen C. Fong, Eric R. Kandel, Damon J. Keith, Edward M. Kennedy, Gerda Lerner, John McCarthy, Janet Rowley, J.K. Rowling, Daniel Tosteson
various
2007
Daniel Aaron, Jocelyn Bell Burnell, William H. Gates, Conrad Harper, William F. Russell, Joan Wallach Scott, Robert Silvers, Lawrence H. Summers, Karen K. Uhlenbeck
various
2006
Francis Atiyah, Elizabeth Blackburn, Philip E. Converse, Philippe de Montebello, Shirley Ann Jackson, Jim Lehrer, Robert Parris Moses, Norman Ramsey, Leo Steinberg
various
2005
Mary Ellen Avery, David Baltimore, Caroline Walker Bynum, D. Ronald Daniel, John Lithgow, Quentin Skinner, Charles Marstiller Vest, Edward Witten
various
2004
Kofi Atta Annan, Margaret Atwood, John Michael Bishop, Robert Lee Carter, Suzanne Farrell, Daniel Kahneman, Frank Kermode, Shirley M. Tilghman, E.O. Wilson
various
2003
Gary S. Becker, Elliot Forbes, Norman C. Francis, Ellsworth Kelly, Mary-Claire King, Donald Knuth, Linda Nochlin, Philip Roth, Robert G. Stone, P. Roy Vagelos, Ernesto Zedillo Ponce de Leon
various
2002
Sydney Brenner, Peter Brown, Katherine Dunham, Albert Hirschman, Yuan T. Lee, Daniel P. Moynihan, Howard Raiffa, Mamphela Ramphele, Julius B. Richmond, Neil L. Rudenstine, Ruth J. Simmons, Bernard Williams
various
2001
John Ashbery, Ela Bhatt, Geoffrey Canada, Jürgen Habermas, Isabella Karle, Leon Kirchner, Alice Rivlin, Robert E. Rubin, Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr., Richard A. Smith, Charles H. Townes
various
2000
Nicolaas Bloembergen, Noam Chomsky, Frank O. Gehry, Andrew S. Grove, Judith R. Hope, Katherine B. Loker, Maclyn McCarthy, Constance Baker Motley, Kenzaburo Oe, Seiji Ozawa, Amartya Sen
various
Year
Recipient
Degree
1999
Kenneth Arrow, Bernard Bailyn, Herbert Block (Herblock), Julia Kristeva, Mario Vargas Llosa
various
1998
Samuel H. Beer, Robert A. Dahl, Gertrude B. Elion, Seamus Heaney, John H. Johnson, Nelson Mandela, Jaroslav Pelikan, Mary Robinson, Henry Rosovsky, Jean-Pierre Serre
various
1997
Edward Abraham, Madeleine Albright, Jerome Bruner, Henry Chadwick, William Forge, Quincy D. Jones, Jr., Arthur Miller, W. Jason Morgan, Janet L. Norwood, John Rawls, Emily Vermeule
various
1996
Chinua Achebe, Harold Amos, Walter H. Annenberg, William T. Coleman, Jr., Natalie Davis, Francois Furet, Judith Jamison, Maya Lin, Oseola McCarty, Charles P. Slichter
various
1995
Helene Ahrweiler, Alfred D. Chandler, Jr., Mildred Dresselhaus, Hanna H. Gray, Vaclav Havel, Jacob Lawrence, Doris Lessing, I. M. Pei, James Tobin, John C. Whitehead
various
1994
Harry A. Blackmun, Bennett Carter, Albert Gore, Jr., William H. Gray III, Mason Hammond, Richard C. Levin, Sadako Ogata, Maxine F. Singer, James Q. Wilson
various
1993
Daniel Boorstin, James E. Burke, Julia Child, W. Edwards Deming, Shmuel Eisenstadt, Albert Eschenmoser, Oscar Handlin, Nannerl Keohane, Deborah Meier, Christine Nusslein-Volhard, Colin L. Powell, Ravi Shankar, Susan Sontag, Wole Soyinka
various
1992
Robert Adams, Jr., Daniel Bell, Baruj Benacerraf, Derek Bok, Gro Harlem Brundtland, Dominique de Menil, Robert Solow, Joan Steitz, Isaac Stern, Edward Stone, John Updike, Clifton Wharton, Jr., Torsten Wiesel
various
1991
Georges Duby, Marian Wright Edelman, Ada Louise Huxtable, Francois Jacob, Gustav Leonhardt, Yo-Yo Ma, Frederick Mosteller, Eduard Shevardnadze, Andrei Sinyavsky
various
1990
Ella Fitzgerald, Stephen W. Hawking, Helmut Kohl, Michael Kimbrough Marshall, Adrienne Rich, David Riesman, Herbert A. Simon
various
1989
Benazir Bhutto, Toni Morrison
LL.D.
1988
Jessye Norman, Oscar Arias Sánchez
various
1987
Thomas P. O’Neill Jr.
LL.D.
1986
Lord Carrington
LL.D.
1985
Louise Nevelson
Art.D.
1984
Juan Carlos I, Benny Goodman
various
1983
Carlos Fuentes
LL.D.
1982
Mother Teresa, Tennessee Williams
various
1981
Ansel Adams, Leontyne Price
Art.D.
1980
Octavio Paz
Litt.D.
1979
Desmond Tutu
LL.D.
1978
John Cheever, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
Litt.D.
1977
Barbara Jordan, Eudora Welty
various
1976
Arthur Fiedler
Art.D.
1974
Mstislav L. Rostropovich, Beverly Sills
Mus.D.
1973
Georgia O’Keeffe, Robert Penn Warren
various
1972
Saul Bellow
Litt.D.
1968
Mohammad Reza Pahlavi
LL.D.
1967
Leonard Bernstein
Mus.D.
1966
Martha Graham
Art.D.
1961
Aaron Copland
Mus.D.
1957
Lady Barbara Jackson, Erwin Panofsky
various
1956
John F. Kennedy
LL.D.
1955
Helen Adams Keller
LL.D.
1951
Thornton Wilder
Litt.D.
1947
George Marshall
LL.D.
1946
Dwight Eisenhower
LL.D.
1943
Winston Churchill
LL.D.
1940
Carl Sandburg
Litt.D.
1938
Walt Disney
A.M.
1937
Robert Frost
Litt.D.
1935
Albert Einstein
S.D.
1929
Franklin Delano Roosevelt
LL.D.
1919
Theodore Roosevelt
A.M.
1917
Herbert Hoover
LL.D.
1916
John Singer Sargent
Art.D.
1907
Woodrow Wilson
LL.D.
1905
William Howard Taft
LL.D.
Year
Recipient
Degree
1896
Booker T. Washington
A.M.
1872
Ulysses S. Grant
LL.D.
1866
Ralph Waldo Emerson
LL.D.
1859
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
LL.D.
1852
Alexis Charles Henri de Tocqueville
LL.D.
1833
Andrew Jackson
LL.D.
1832
Washington Irving
LL.D.
1822
John Quincy Adams
LL.D.
Year
Recipient
Degree
1792
Samuel Adams
LL.D.
1787
Thomas Jefferson
LL.D.
1781
John Adams
LL.D.
1776
George Washington
LL.D.
1753
Benjamin Franklin
A.M.
Year
Recipient
Degree
1692
William Brattle
S.T.B.
1692
John Leverett
S.T.B.
1692
Increase Mather
S.T.D.
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Year
Recipient
Degree
2025
Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Richard Alley, Esther Duflo, Elaine H. Kim, Rita Moreno, Abraham Verghese
various
2024
Lawrence S. Bacow, Gustavo Adolfo Dudamel Ramírez, Sylvester James Gates Jr., Jennie Chin Hansen, Joy Harjo-Sapulpa, Maria A. Ressa
various
2023
Jennifer A. Doudna, Thomas Jeffrey Hanks, Katalin Karikó, David Levering Lewis, Hugo Noé Morales Rosas, Michael Glenn Mullen
various
2022
José Ramón Andrés Puerta, Jacinda Kate Laurell Ardern, Jean-Jacques Muyembe Tamfum, Martha Craven Nussbaum, Vicki Lynn Ruiz, Gloria Marie Steinem, William Julius Wilson
various
2021
Frances Hamilton Arnold, Martin Baron, Arlie Russell Hochschild, Salman Amin Khan, Margaret Hilary Marshall, Sebastião Salgado, Anna Deavere Smith
various
2019
Lonnie G. Bunch III, Ingrid Daubechies, Drew Faust, William Chester Jordan, Angela Merkel, David Jay Remnick, Emmanuel Saez, Marilyn Strathern, Wu Hung
various
2018
Sallie Watson Chisholm, Rita Dove, Harvey Vernon Fineberg, Ricardo Lagos, George Emanuel Lewis, Twyla Tharp, Wong Kar Wai
various
2017
Norman R. Augustine, Hawa Abdi Dhiblawe, Dame Judi Dench, Sandra M. Gilbert, James Earl Jones, Walter E. Massey, Michael Rabin, John Williams, Huda Y. Zoghbi, Mark Zuckerberg
various
2016
El Anatsui, Mary L. Bonauto, His Excellency Fernando Henrique Cardoso, David B. Davis, Elaine Fuchs, Arnold Rampersad, The Right Honourable Lord Martin Rees, Steven Spielberg, Judith Jarvis Thomson
various
2015
Svetlana Leontief Alpers, Robert M. Axelrod, Wallace S. Broecker, Linda B. Buck, Renée Fleming, Patricia Albjerg Graham, Denis Mukwege, Deval L. Patrick, Peter Salovey, Bryan Stevenson
various
2014
Isabel Allende, Michael Bloomberg, President George H.W. Bush, Aretha Franklin, Patricia King, Peter H. Raven, Seymour Slive, Joseph E. Stiglitz
various
2013
José Abreu, Partha Dasgupta, Donald R. Hopkins, Robert M. May, Thomas M. Menino, Elaine Pagels, C. Dixon Spangler, Jr., JoAnne Stubbe, Oprah Winfrey
various
2012
John Adams, K. Anthony Appiah, Gillian Beer, Walter Kohn, Wendy Kopp, John Lewis, Mario Molina, Fareed Zakaria
various
2011
Tim Berners-Lee, Plácido Domingo, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Dudley Herschbach, James R. Houghton, Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, Rosalind Krauss, John G.A. Pocock, David Satcher
various
2010
Thomas R. Cech, Renée Fox, Freeman A. Hrabowski III, Susan Lindquist, Thomas Nagel, David G. Nathan, Onora O’Neill, Richard Serra, David H. Souter, Meryl Streep
various
2009
Pedro Almodóvar, Steven Chu, Joan Didion, Wendy Doniger, Ronald M. Dworkin, Anthony S. Fauci, Sarah Hrdy, Robert S. Langer, Wynton Marsalis, Sidney Verba
various
2008
Karim Aga Khan, James P. Comer, Wen C. Fong, Eric R. Kandel, Damon J. Keith, Edward M. Kennedy, Gerda Lerner, John McCarthy, Janet Rowley, J.K. Rowling, Daniel Tosteson
various
2007
Daniel Aaron, Jocelyn Bell Burnell, William H. Gates, Conrad Harper, William F. Russell, Joan Wallach Scott, Robert Silvers, Lawrence H. Summers, Karen K. Uhlenbeck
various
2006
Francis Atiyah, Elizabeth Blackburn, Philip E. Converse, Philippe de Montebello, Shirley Ann Jackson, Jim Lehrer, Robert Parris Moses, Norman Ramsey, Leo Steinberg
various
2005
Mary Ellen Avery, David Baltimore, Caroline Walker Bynum, D. Ronald Daniel, John Lithgow, Quentin Skinner, Charles Marstiller Vest, Edward Witten
various
2004
Kofi Atta Annan, Margaret Atwood, John Michael Bishop, Robert Lee Carter, Suzanne Farrell, Daniel Kahneman, Frank Kermode, Shirley M. Tilghman, E.O. Wilson
various
2003
Gary S. Becker, Elliot Forbes, Norman C. Francis, Ellsworth Kelly, Mary-Claire King, Donald Knuth, Linda Nochlin, Philip Roth, Robert G. Stone, P. Roy Vagelos, Ernesto Zedillo Ponce de Leon
various
2002
Sydney Brenner, Peter Brown, Katherine Dunham, Albert Hirschman, Yuan T. Lee, Daniel P. Moynihan, Howard Raiffa, Mamphela Ramphele, Julius B. Richmond, Neil L. Rudenstine, Ruth J. Simmons, Bernard Williams
various
2001
John Ashbery, Ela Bhatt, Geoffrey Canada, Jürgen Habermas, Isabella Karle, Leon Kirchner, Alice Rivlin, Robert E. Rubin, Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr., Richard A. Smith, Charles H. Townes
various
2000
Nicolaas Bloembergen, Noam Chomsky, Frank O. Gehry, Andrew S. Grove, Judith R. Hope, Katherine B. Loker, Maclyn McCarthy, Constance Baker Motley, Kenzaburo Oe, Seiji Ozawa, Amartya Sen
various
Year
Recipient
Degree
1999
Kenneth Arrow, Bernard Bailyn, Herbert Block (Herblock), Julia Kristeva, Mario Vargas Llosa
various
1998
Samuel H. Beer, Robert A. Dahl, Gertrude B. Elion, Seamus Heaney, John H. Johnson, Nelson Mandela, Jaroslav Pelikan, Mary Robinson, Henry Rosovsky, Jean-Pierre Serre
various
1997
Edward Abraham, Madeleine Albright, Jerome Bruner, Henry Chadwick, William Forge, Quincy D. Jones, Jr., Arthur Miller, W. Jason Morgan, Janet L. Norwood, John Rawls, Emily Vermeule
various
1996
Chinua Achebe, Harold Amos, Walter H. Annenberg, William T. Coleman, Jr., Natalie Davis, Francois Furet, Judith Jamison, Maya Lin, Oseola McCarty, Charles P. Slichter
various
1995
Helene Ahrweiler, Alfred D. Chandler, Jr., Mildred Dresselhaus, Hanna H. Gray, Vaclav Havel, Jacob Lawrence, Doris Lessing, I. M. Pei, James Tobin, John C. Whitehead
various
1994
Harry A. Blackmun, Bennett Carter, Albert Gore, Jr., William H. Gray III, Mason Hammond, Richard C. Levin, Sadako Ogata, Maxine F. Singer, James Q. Wilson
various
1993
Daniel Boorstin, James E. Burke, Julia Child, W. Edwards Deming, Shmuel Eisenstadt, Albert Eschenmoser, Oscar Handlin, Nannerl Keohane, Deborah Meier, Christine Nusslein-Volhard, Colin L. Powell, Ravi Shankar, Susan Sontag, Wole Soyinka
various
1992
Robert Adams, Jr., Daniel Bell, Baruj Benacerraf, Derek Bok, Gro Harlem Brundtland, Dominique de Menil, Robert Solow, Joan Steitz, Isaac Stern, Edward Stone, John Updike, Clifton Wharton, Jr., Torsten Wiesel
various
1991
Georges Duby, Marian Wright Edelman, Ada Louise Huxtable, Francois Jacob, Gustav Leonhardt, Yo-Yo Ma, Frederick Mosteller, Eduard Shevardnadze, Andrei Sinyavsky
various
1990
Ella Fitzgerald, Stephen W. Hawking, Helmut Kohl, Michael Kimbrough Marshall, Adrienne Rich, David Riesman, Herbert A. Simon
various
1989
Benazir Bhutto, Toni Morrison
LL.D.
1988
Jessye Norman, Oscar Arias Sánchez
various
1987
Thomas P. O’Neill Jr.
LL.D.
1986
Lord Carrington
LL.D.
1985
Louise Nevelson
Art.D.
1984
Juan Carlos I, Benny Goodman
various
1983
Carlos Fuentes
LL.D.
1982
Mother Teresa, Tennessee Williams
various
1981
Ansel Adams, Leontyne Price
Art.D.
1980
Octavio Paz
Litt.D.
1979
Desmond Tutu
LL.D.
1978
John Cheever, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
Litt.D.
1977
Barbara Jordan, Eudora Welty
various
1976
Arthur Fiedler
Art.D.
1974
Mstislav L. Rostropovich, Beverly Sills
Mus.D.
1973
Georgia O’Keeffe, Robert Penn Warren
various
1972
Saul Bellow
Litt.D.
1968
Mohammad Reza Pahlavi
LL.D.
1967
Leonard Bernstein
Mus.D.
1966
Martha Graham
Art.D.
1961
Aaron Copland
Mus.D.
1957
Lady Barbara Jackson, Erwin Panofsky
various
1956
John F. Kennedy
LL.D.
1955
Helen Adams Keller
LL.D.
1951
Thornton Wilder
Litt.D.
1947
George Marshall
LL.D.
1946
Dwight Eisenhower
LL.D.
1943
Winston Churchill
LL.D.
1940
Carl Sandburg
Litt.D.
1938
Walt Disney
A.M.
1937
Robert Frost
Litt.D.
1935
Albert Einstein
S.D.
1929
Franklin Delano Roosevelt
LL.D.
1919
Theodore Roosevelt
A.M.
1917
Herbert Hoover
LL.D.
1916
John Singer Sargent
Art.D.
1907
Woodrow Wilson
LL.D.
1905
William Howard Taft
LL.D.
Year
Recipient
Degree
1896
Booker T. Washington
A.M.
1872
Ulysses S. Grant
LL.D.
1866
Ralph Waldo Emerson
LL.D.
1859
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
LL.D.
1852
Alexis Charles Henri de Tocqueville
LL.D.
1833
Andrew Jackson
LL.D.
1832
Washington Irving
LL.D.
1822
John Quincy Adams
LL.D.
Year
Recipient
Degree
1792
Samuel Adams
LL.D.
1787
Thomas Jefferson
LL.D.
1781
John Adams
LL.D.
1776
George Washington
LL.D.
1753
Benjamin Franklin
A.M.
Year
Recipient
Degree
1692
William Brattle
S.T.B.
1692
John Leverett
S.T.B.
1692
Increase Mather
S.T.D.