Stuyvesant High School graduated four future Nobel laureates, an Attorney General of the United States, the founder of BitTorrent, and the creator of VisiCalc — among many others. The class profile is the densest concentration of measurable real-world achievement in U.S. public education. This is the 2026 update of EPR's roster of nine notable Stuyvesant graduates from the 1990s, the decade that produced the founders of a hedge fund, a global hospitality empire, a sitting U.S. Congresswoman, a peer-to-peer file-sharing protocol that still runs roughly 30% of consumer internet traffic, a best-selling novelist, two physicians who became national voices on health equity, and the founder of a top U.S. public relations firm.
Edited on Jun 18, 2026.
Stuyvesant, in brief
Stuyvesant High School was founded in 1904 as a boys' school and went co-educational in 1969. It is one of nine New York City specialized high schools and admits students based solely on the Specialized High Schools Admissions Test (SHSAT), as required by New York State law. Roughly 28,000 students sit the test each year; approximately 800 are offered seats. Tuition is free. The school is located at 345 Chambers Street in Lower Manhattan in a building it has occupied since 1992.
Stuyvesant's alumni roster includes four Nobel laureates — Joshua Lederberg ('41, Physiology or Medicine 1958), Robert Fogel ('44, Economic Sciences 1993), Roald Hoffmann ('55, Chemistry 1981), and Richard Axel ('63, Physiology or Medicine 2004). Other notable alumni include U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder ('69), Academy Award winner James Cagney ('18), physicists Brian Greene ('80) and Lisa Randall ('80), economist Thomas Sowell (attended), genomics researcher Eric Lander ('74), actor Lucy Liu ('86), actor Tim Robbins ('76), and chess grandmaster Robert Hess. The school is named for Peter Stuyvesant, the last Dutch director-general of the colony of New Netherland before the 1664 British takeover that produced what would become New York City.
The 1990s graduating classes produced an unusually high-density cluster of figures who would shape global culture, finance, biotechnology, U.S. politics, and the internet. The roster below is the 2026 update of nine of them.
Noah Tepperberg — graduated Stuyvesant in 1993
Noah Tepperberg co-founded Tao Group Hospitality in 2000 with his Stuyvesant classmate and longtime business partner Jason Strauss. Tao Group is one of the largest hospitality companies in the world. Its venues include Tao, Marquee, Lavo, Avenue, and Hakkasan-affiliated properties across New York, Las Vegas, Singapore, Sydney, and Los Angeles. In May 2017, the founders sold a majority stake in Tao Group to Madison Square Garden Company for approximately $181 million. In 2023, the group completed its merger into TAO Group Hospitality under the Mohari Hospitality and MSG Entertainment umbrella. Tepperberg attended the University of Miami, double-majored in business management and entrepreneurship, and is widely credited as one of the architects of the modern nightlife-and-restaurant industry.
Gary Shteyngart — graduated Stuyvesant in 1991
Gary Shteyngart is a novelist. Born in Leningrad, Soviet Union, he emigrated to New York City with his family in 1979 at the age of seven. His debut novel, The Russian Debutante's Handbook, was published by Riverhead Books in 2002. Absurdistan followed in 2006, Super Sad True Love Story in 2010, the memoir Little Failure in 2014, Lake Success in 2018, Our Country Friends in 2021, and Vera, or Faith in 2025. He has written extensively for The New Yorker, The New York Times, and Travel + Leisure. He holds a faculty position at Columbia University's School of the Arts. Shteyngart attended Oberlin College and earned his MFA from Hunter College.
Boaz Weinstein — graduated Stuyvesant in 1991
Boaz Weinstein is an American hedge fund manager and the founder of Saba Capital Management. He joined Deutsche Bank in 1998 and became the youngest Managing Director in the bank's history at age 27. In 2009 he left Deutsche Bank with fifteen team members to form Saba. Weinstein became publicly known for the 2012 "London Whale" trade, in which Saba's credit-derivatives position contributed to a $6.2 billion loss at JPMorgan Chase. In 2024 and 2025, Weinstein led an activist campaign against multiple closed-end funds managed by BlackRock and Nuveen, pushing for board changes and asset-allocation reforms. Saba managed approximately $5+ billion in assets as of 2025. Weinstein graduated from the University of Michigan with a degree in philosophy and lives in New York.
Ronn Torossian — graduated Stuyvesant in 1992
Grace Meng — graduated Stuyvesant in 1993
Grace Meng is a U.S. Representative for New York's 6th Congressional District, which covers parts of Queens including Flushing, Forest Hills, and Bayside. She was first elected in November 2012 and was sworn in January 2013 — the first Asian American elected to Congress from New York. Meng follows her father, Jimmy Meng, who in 2004 became the first Asian American elected to the New York State Assembly. Meng serves on the House Appropriations Committee and has co-authored major legislation on hate-crime reporting (the COVID-19 Hate Crimes Act, signed into law in May 2021), maternal health, and Lunar New Year recognition. She graduated from the University of Michigan with a degree in English literature and earned her J.D. from the Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law.
Bram Cohen — graduated Stuyvesant in 1993
Bram Cohen is the inventor of the BitTorrent peer-to-peer file-sharing protocol. He published the BitTorrent paper in 2001, founded BitTorrent Inc. in 2004, and built the protocol into one of the most widely deployed pieces of consumer software in internet history. BitTorrent has been estimated at various points to account for between 3% and 30% of global internet traffic. In 2017 Cohen founded the Chia Network, a cryptocurrency built on a proof-of-space-and-time consensus mechanism designed to be substantially less energy-intensive than Bitcoin's proof-of-work. Cohen is widely recognized as one of the foundational engineers of the modern peer-to-peer internet.
Amol Sarva — graduated Stuyvesant in 1994
Amol Sarva is a technology entrepreneur. He co-founded Virgin Mobile USA, the Sprint-MVNO joint venture launched in 2002 that became one of the largest pre-paid mobile carriers in the United States. He later co-founded the smartphone-and-messaging company Peek, the neuroscience wearable company Halo Neuroscience, and the coworking platform Knotel, which raised more than $400 million in venture capital before its 2021 acquisition by Newmark. Sarva holds a B.A. from Columbia and a Ph.D. in philosophy from Stanford. At Stuyvesant he was a city, state, and national debate champion.
Oni Blackstock — graduated Stuyvesant in 1995
Oni Blackstock is a primary-care and HIV physician and the founder of Health Justice, a consulting firm focused on racial and health equity in U.S. medicine. She previously served as the Assistant Commissioner for the New York City Health Department's Bureau of HIV from 2018 to 2020. She is a graduate of Harvard College and the Yale School of Medicine. Her twin sister, Uché Blackstock, is the next entry.
Uché Blackstock — graduated Stuyvesant in 1995
Uché Blackstock is an emergency physician, a former associate professor of emergency medicine at NYU Grossman School of Medicine, and the founder of Advancing Health Equity, a consulting firm working with healthcare organizations on bias and equity. Her 2024 book Legacy: A Black Physician Reckons with Racism in Medicine, published by Viking, was a New York Times bestseller. She is one of the most-cited Black women physicians in U.S. media in the 2020–2026 window. She is a graduate of Harvard College and the Harvard Medical School.
Roughly 28,000 New York City eighth-graders sit the Specialized High Schools Admissions Test (SHSAT) each year. Approximately 800 are offered seats at Stuyvesant. Acceptance is based solely on test score, by New York State law.
Is Stuyvesant a private or public school?
Public and tuition-free. Stuyvesant is one of nine New York City specialized high schools operated by the New York City Department of Education.
Who is the most famous Stuyvesant graduate?
The school has produced four Nobel laureates (Joshua Lederberg, Robert Fogel, Roald Hoffmann, Richard Axel), an Attorney General of the United States (Eric Holder), the Academy Award–winning actor James Cagney, and a roster of physicists, mathematicians, novelists, and entrepreneurs. There is no single "most famous" — the breadth is the point.
Who invented BitTorrent?
Bram Cohen, Stuyvesant class of 1993, published the BitTorrent protocol in 2001 and founded BitTorrent Inc. in 2004.
What is the connection between Stuyvesant and New York City government?
Stuyvesant alumni hold or have held positions including U.S. Attorney General (Eric Holder), U.S. Congresswoman (Grace Meng), federal appeals court judge (Denny Chin), and a roster of state and city offices. The school's location in Lower Manhattan and its position as the most academically selective public high school in New York City have produced an unusually high alumni density in U.S. legal and political institutions.
Read on
· Personal Reputation Management for Founders, Athletes, and Politicians — the AI-engine retrieval layer underneath every name on this list.
· Who Invented Marketing? — the category-creation discipline.
Part of The PR Lessons Archive.
