Princeton Rhodes Scholars have for the most part followed professional careers -- law, medicine, the ministry, and education. Those in public service have included Supreme Court Justice John M. Harlan '20, Career Ambassador William W. Butterworth, Jr. '25, Attorney General Nicholas DeB. Katzenbach '43, and Senator Paul S. Sarbanes '54. There have been a number of college presidents: William E. Stevenson '22 (Oberlin), Paul S. Havens '25 (Wilson), Caleb F. Gates, Jr. '26 (University of Denver), James Harlan Cleveland '38 (University of Hawaii), and James McN. Hester '46 (New York University and United Nations University). Princeton called back seven Scholars to teach classics, English, or history: Paul R. Coleman-Norton '19, Donald A. Stauffer '23, E.D.H. Johnson '34, Gordon A. Craig '36, James H. Billington '50, Arthur W. Litz, Jr. '51, and Neil L. Rudenstine '56 (later Provost). Among those in medicine have been two classmates in 1913: Wilder Penfield, the brain surgeon, and Wilburt C. Davison, Dean of the Duke University Medical School, and among those in music, Frank E. Taplin '37, President of the Metropolitan Opera. Journalists include John B. Oakes '34, editor of the New York Times editorial page.
Henry Allison Page III, Rhodes Scholar in 1935, was killed in action in World War II and awarded a Congressional Medal of Honor. Dan Sachs, Rhodes Scholar in 1960, who was an outstanding football player, died in 1967 after a three-year struggle with cancer. In his memory, friends, classmates, and fellow football players established a scholarship enabling a graduating senior who desires, like him, to go into public service, to study abroad, as he did.
The best-known Princeton Rhodes Scholar~~~ in recent years has been basketball All-American and Olympic gold medalist Bill Bradley '65.