History of honorary degrees
Honor roll
In 1753, Benjamin Franklin was granted a Master of Arts degree, which is generally considered to be the first true honorary degree awarded by Harvard. The first female recipient was Helen Keller in 1955.
Past recipients
Throughout our long history, Harvard has awarded hundreds of honorary degrees.
| Year | Recipient | Degree |
|---|---|---|
| 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. |