X-Nico

19 unusual facts about Princeton University


Acheson J. Duncan

Duncan spent 13 years on the faculty at Princeton University and three years in the US Army before coming to Johns Hopkins University in 1946 as an associate professor of statistics in the School of Business.

Arthur Wightman

Advised by John Wheeler, his 1949 Princeton doctoral dissertation was entitled The Moderation and Absorption of Negative Pions in Hydrogen.

Association for the Study of Free Institutions

Its President is Bradford P. Wilson, a Professor at Princeton University and Executive Director of the James Madison Program in American Ideals and Institutions.

Charles Percy Parkhurst

Parkhurst went on to obtain his master’s in fine art at Princeton University in 1941 with his mentor, Clarence Ward’s urging as there was no higher level degree in art history at the time.

Dave Forney

He received the B.S.E. degree in Electrical Engineering from Princeton University in 1961, summa cum laude, and the M.S. and Sc.D degrees in Electrical Engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1963 and 1965, respectively.

Fred Tappert

Tappert began his scientific career in the field of plasma physics, receiving his Ph. D. from Princeton University in 1967.

Grid-oriented storage

Starting in January 2007, demonstrations were presented at Princeton University, Cambridge University Computer Lab and others.

Ira Condict

A graduate of The College of New Jersey (now Princeton University), Condict was ordained as a minister in the Presbyterian faith.

Jimmy Yu

He received an MA degree in Chinese Buddhist studies from University of Kansas in 2002 and a Ph.D. from Princeton University's Department of Religion in 2008.

Kirkmichael

This serves as the village hall and in 1898 was gifted to the village by James McCosh, President of Princeton University, whose family came from this part of Ayrshire.

Kul Gautam

Gautam completed a Master of Public Affairs (MPA) in economic development from the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs at Princeton University.

Lewis Ferry Moody

He was the first Professor of Hydraulics in the School of Engineering at Princeton.

Mass Driver 1

The mass driver was inspired and designed by Gerard K. O'Neill of Princeton University (who was on sabbatical at MIT during the 1976-77 academic year) and Henry Kolm of MIT.

New Jersey in the American Revolution

The Americans set up cannons facing Nassau Hall of Princeton University, and two cannonballs made contact with the walls of the hall.

In the summer of 1783, the Continental Congress met in Nassau Hall of Princeton University.

Oleg Timofeyev

A recipient of numerous scholarly awards, including IREX and Fulbright fellowships, he has taught and lectured at Maimonides State Academy (Moscow), Duke University, the University of Kansas, Northwestern University, Princeton University, the University of Iowa, Grinnell College, and the Smithsonian.

The Amazing Mrs Pritchard

As a young woman at Oxford University, Catherine had the chance of a fellowship to study at Princeton University but her then-tutor Hilary Rees-Benson (later a political opponent) recommended another student instead, in part due to jealousy of Catherine—the two remain rivals even when serving together in Ros's cabinet.

Trenton Central High School

The Tornadoes 381 FIRST robotics team, from the Applied Engineering & Science Academy, is sponsored by Bristol Myers Squibb, Sarnoff Corporation and Princeton University.

William Stryker Gummere

Gummere was captain of the Princeton football team that met Rutgers in 1869 in the first intercollegiate football game played in America.


A Sense of Where You Are

In A Sense of Where You Are, John McPhee profiles Bill Bradley during Bradley's senior year at Princeton University. Bradley, who would later play in the National Basketball Association and serve in the United States Senate, was widely regarded as one of the best basketball players in the country, and his status as a Rhodes Scholar playing in the Ivy League only added to his allure.

Adam Gussow

Raised in suburban Congers, New York, educated at Princeton University (B.A. 1979, Ph.D. 2000) and Columbia University (M.A. 1983), Gussow is the son of Alan Gussow, an artist/environmentalist, and Joan Dye Gussow, an author, nutrition educator, and organic farmer.

Alison Boden

Alison L. Boden is the Dean of Religious Life and the Dean of the Chapel at Princeton University.

Allison Balson

She graduated valedictorian from her high school and went on to receive a Bachelor's Degree from Princeton University and a Master's Degree from Trinity College, Dublin, Ireland.

Andrei Linde

Among the various awards he's received for his work on inflation, in 2002 he was awarded the Dirac Medal, along with Alan Guth of MIT and Paul Steinhardt of Princeton University.

Anti-austerity protests

There are also those like Nobel Prize winning Princeton economist Paul Krugman, who argue that austerity measures tend to be counterproductive when applied to the populations and programs they are usually applied to.

Arthur Stephen Lane

Born in Arlington, Massachusetts, Lane received a B.A. from Princeton University in 1934, where he received the Moses Taylor Pyne Honor Prize, Princeton's highest undergraduate honor.

Ballygar

He is Laurence Rockefeller University Professor of Politics and Human Values at Princeton University.

Bonnie Marranca

She is a Guggenheim Fellow, a recipient of the Leverhulme Trust Visiting Professorship in the UK, and Fulbright Senior Scholar who has taught at Columbia University, Princeton University, NYU, Duke University, the University of California-San Diego, Free University of Berlin, and the Autonomous University of Barcelona Institute for Theatre .

Burleigh Cruikshank

Sportswriter Walter S. Trumbull of the The New York Sun suggested that the Michigan Aggies, Washington & Jefferson, Chicago University, and Notre Dame were the new "Big 4 of College Football" instead of the traditional grouping of Princeton, Yale, Harvard, and Penn.

Criticism of the IPCC Fourth Assessment Report

In a lecture given at Princeton University, IPCC author Michael Oppenheimer admitted that the IPCC report could have better explained the contribution of melting ice sheets in predictions of sea level rise.

Daniel Sigman

Daniel Sigman is an American geoscientist, and the Dusenbury Professor of Geological and Geophysical Sciences at Princeton University.

David D. Kirkpatrick

He was born in Buffalo, New York, earned a B.A. in history and American studies at Princeton University, graduating magna cum laude, and attended the graduate program in American Studies at Yale.

David Rieff

He finally ended up at Princeton University, where he graduated with an A.B. in 1978, and was a Senior Editor at Farrar, Straus and Giroux from 1978 to 1989, working with such authors as Joseph Brodsky, Elias Canetti, Carlos Fuentes, Alberto Moravia, Les Murray, Philip Roth, Mario Vargas Llosa, and Marguerite Yourcenar.

Debra Ann Livingston

Livingston was born in Waycross, Georgia, and received a Bachelor of Arts, magna cum laude, from the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs at Princeton University in 1980 and a Juris doctor from Harvard Law School in 1984, where she served as an editor of the Harvard Law Review.

Edwin F. Russell

After graduating from Princeton University, he worked during the 1940s as the associate publisher of The (Newark, NJ) Star-Ledger.

Golandsky Institute

Led by Edna Golandsky, Artistic Director, the Institute holds an annual seminar at Princeton University and hosts symposia and master classes worldwide.

H. Vinson Synan

As Synan was making preparation for his academic career, Oral Roberts, a friend of the family, offered him a full scholarship to earn a Ph.D. in theology at Harvard, Yale, or Princeton if he would return and teach at Oral Roberts University.

John Williams Walker

He was educated at the prestigious Willington Academy of Dr. Moses Waddel near Petersburg, Georgia, and received degrees in 1806 and 1809 from Princeton University.

Judicial Procedures Reform Bill of 1937

Attorney General Cummings received novel advice from Princeton University professor Edward S. Corwin in a December 16, 1936 letter.

L. W. Sumner

Sumner received his bachelor's degree from the University of Toronto in 1962 and his doctoral degree from Princeton University in 1965, with a thesis supervised by Stuart Hampshire and Joel Feinberg.

Lindenwold High School

Princeton University recognized Lindenwold High School's Ann Ryan as one of four outstanding New Jersey secondary school teachers at its Commencement ceremonies on June 6, 2006.

Lycée Rochambeau

As of the 2012-2013 school year, students have gone on to attend McGill University, the University of British Columbia, University of Toronto, University of Pennsylvania, Johns Hopkins University, Princeton University, Sciences Po Paris, Stanford University, USC, University of Michigan, University College London, various faculties at the University of Paris and elsewhere.

Malcolm Diamond

Malcolm L. Diamond (November 6, 1924 – December 27, 1997) was William H. Danforth Professor of Religion, Emeritus, at Princeton University.

Master of the Playing Cards

Many of his engravings, especially the cards, contain compositional elements that also occur in the miniatures of the Giant Bible of Mainz of 1452-3 and other illuminations made in Mainz between then and 1482, including at least one illuminated copy of the Gutenberg Bible, the copy now in Princeton University library.

Naser Qureshi

He did his PhD in Physics from the University of California, Santa Barbara (Thesis: Therahertz dynamics in semiconductor heterostructures); A.B. in Physics from Princeton University (Thesis: High-Tc superconductivity); and a post-doctorate in Electrical Engineering, University of California, Santa Cruz (Ultrafast magnetism).

New Jersey in the American Revolution

Distinguished lawyer Richard Stockton, New Jersey-born and College of New Jersey graduate, sacrificed his royal judicial title and his considerable international economic interest in order to be an elected delegate for New Jersey at the General Congress.

Paul Schiff Berman

He earned his A.B., summa cum laude, from Princeton University in 1988 and his J.D. in 1995 from New York University School of Law where he served as Managing Editor of the NYU Law Review and received the University Graduation Prize for the graduating law student with the highest cumulative grade point average.

Pemetrexed

The molecular structure of pemetrexed was developed by Edward C. Taylor at Princeton University and clinically developed by Indianapolis based drug maker, Eli Lilly and Company in 2004.

Philip Benedict

He completed his M.A. in 1972 and his Ph.D. in 1975 at Princeton University, under the direction of Theodore K. Rabb and Lawrence Stone.

Piney Woods Country Life School

More than 98 percent of Piney Woods' graduates go on to attend colleges, including Xavier University, Princeton University, the University of Chicago, Smith College, Harvard University, Vassar College, Tufts University and Amherst College.

Raymond Geuss

He taught at Princeton University, Columbia University, and University of Chicago in the United States and at Heidelberg and Freiburg in Germany before taking up a lecturing post at Cambridge in 1993.

Robert G. W. Anderson

Subsequently, he has held visiting academic posts at the Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton University and at the Centre for Research in the Arts, Social Sciences, and Humanities (CRASSH) at the University of Cambridge (2002–2003).

Robert Kraichnan

From 1962 on, he was supported by research grants and worked as a freelance consultant for the Los Alamos National Laboratory, Princeton University, the Office of Naval Research, the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution and NASA.

Roger D. Nelson

Until his retirement in 2002, he served as the coordinator of experimental work in the Princeton Engineering Anomalies Research Lab (PEAR), directed by Robert Jahn in the department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, School of Engineering/Applied Science, Princeton University.

South of the Border, West of the Sun

He wrote it in 1992 while he was a visiting scholar at the Princeton University in the United States.

Suzi Wizowaty

Born in Cincinnati, Ohio, Wizowaty grew up in Europe, Texas and Connecticut, graduating from Princeton University (BA cum laude, 1977) and Goddard College in Plainfield, Vermont (MA, 1985).

Syl Apps, Jr.

Syl Apps, Jr.'s son, Syl Apps III, was a hockey player in his own right, starring at Princeton University before spending four years in the minor leagues, retiring in 2003.

Sylvain Cappell

Sylvain Edward Cappell (born 1946), a Belgian American mathematician and former student of William Browder at Princeton University, is a topologist who has spent most of his career at the Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences at NYU, where he is now the Silver Professor of Mathematics.

T. B. Irving

As a scholar, Irving taught and studied at a number of leading universities in the U.S. and Canada, including McGill, Princeton, the University of Minnesota, and the University of Tennessee.

V-2 sounding rocket

The Army assembled an Upper Atmosphere Research Panel of representative from the Air Material Command, Naval Research Laboratory (NRL), Army Signal Corps, Ballistic Research Laboratory, Applied Physics Laboratory, University of Michigan, Harvard University, Princeton University, and General Electric Company.

Valerie Ogoke

Ogoke was recruited by several university basketball programs including Princeton University, Dartmouth College, the University of California, San Diego, the University of Santa Clara and the University of Portland.

Van de Graaff generator

The Van de Graaff generator was developed, starting in 1929, by physicist Robert J. Van de Graaff at Princeton University with help from colleague Nicholas Burke.

Vangelis Petsalis

His works have been presented in Classical Discoveries, by Princeton University's radio station WPRB, during a segment called "A Visit with Greek composer, Vangelis Petsalis".

Wesley Englehorn

While he was a junior in high school, he was reportedly recruited by Princeton University to come east to play football for the school.