Skip Navigation

Famous Quakers

FAMOUS QUAKERS YOU MAY KNOW FROM HISTORY  


The Quaker tradition has guided some of the world’s most respected leaders, scientists, actors, artists, and entertainers. Here are just a few:

SCIENCE

  • John Dalton - Devised the atomic theory of matter in the early 1800s
  • Joseph Lister - Discovered antiseptics; Listerine is named after him
  • Thomas Hodgkins and Thomas Young - Inventors of the microscope
  • Jocelyn Bell Burnell - Discovered the first reported pulsar; first female president of the Institute of Physics

SOCIAL ACTIVISTS

  • Levi Coffin - Abolitionist whose house was a major stop on the Underground Railroad
  • Susan B. Anthony - Women’s suffragist
  • Bayard Rustin - Pacifist and civil rights leader of the 1960s
  • Dr. Elizabeth Blackwell - First female physician in the United States, champion of women’s education

BUSINESS

  • Cadbury, Fry and Rowntree -Chocolate makers
  • William Allen - Founder of Allen & Hanbury pharmaceutical company
  • David Ricardo - Economist who devised the law of comparative advantage

POLITICS

  • Herbert Hoover - 31st President of the United States
  • Thomas Paine - Author of Common Sense, influential in the American Revolution
  • Betsy Ross - Credited with designing and sewing the first United States flag
  • Dolley Madison - First Lady, wife of President James Madison
  • Nathaniel Greene - General in the American Revolution
  • Daniel Boone - Frontiersman and early organizer of Kentucky

ARTS AND ENTERTAINMENT

  • Annie Oakley - Entertainer in Wild West shows
  • James Dean - Actor and icon of the teenage “Rebel without a Cause”
  • Edward R. Murrow - Broadcast news pioneer
  • Benjamin West - American artist
  • James Fenimore Cooper - American author
  • Bonnie Raitt - Blues musician and singer-songwriter
  • Edward Hicks - American folk painter, known for The Peaceable Kingdom
  • Daisy Newman - Author of novels and non-fiction about Quakers in America