Princeton University is a private coeducational research university located in Princeton, New Jersey. It is one of eight universities that
belong to the Ivy League.
Originally founded at Elizabeth, New Jersey, in 1746 as the College of New Jersey, it relocated to Princeton in 1756 and was renamed “Princeton University” in
1896.[3] Princeton was the fourth institution of higher education in the U.S. to
conduct classes.[4][5] Princeton has never had any official religious affiliation, rare among
American universities of its age. At one time, it had close ties to the Presbyterian
Church, but today it is nonsectarian and makes no religious demands on its
students.[6][7] The university has ties with the Institute for
Advanced Study, Princeton Theological Seminary and the
Westminster Choir College of Rider
University.[8]
Princeton has traditionally focused on undergraduate education and academic
research, though in recent decades it has increased its focus on graduate
education and offers a large number of professional Master's degrees and PhD programs in a range of subjects. The
Princeton University Library holds over six million books. Among many others, areas of research include anthropology, geophysics,
entomology, and robotics, while the Forrestal Campus has special facilities for the study of plasma physics and meteorology.
History
The History of Princeton University goes back to its establishment by
"New Light" Presbyterians, Princeton was
originally intended to train Presbyterian ministers. It opened at Elizabeth, New
Jersey, under the presidency of Jonathan Dickinson as the
College of New Jersey. (A proposal was made to name it for the colonial Governor,
Jonathan Belcher, but he declined.) Its second president was Aaron Burr, Sr.; the third was Jonathan Edwards. In
1756, the college moved to Princeton, New Jersey.
Between the time of the move to Princeton in 1756 and the construction of Stanhope Hall in 1803, the college's sole building
was Nassau Hall, named for William III of
England of the House of Orange-Nassau. The college also got one of its
colors, orange, from William III. During the American Revolution, Princeton was
occupied by both sides, and the college's buildings were heavily damaged. The Battle of
Princeton, fought in a nearby field in January of 1777, proved to be a decisive victory for General George Washington and his troops. Two of Princeton's leading citizens signed the United States Declaration of Independence,[citation needed] and during the summer of 1783, the
Continental Congress met in Nassau Hall, making Princeton the country's capital for
four months. The much-abused landmark survived bombardment with cannonballs in the
Revolutionary War when General Washington struggled to wrest the building
from British control, as well as later fires that left only its walls standing in 1802 and 1855. Rebuilt by Joseph Henry Latrobe, John Notman, and John Witherspoon, the modern Nassau Hall has been much revised and expanded from the original designed
by Robert Smith. Over the centuries, its role shifted from an all-purpose
building, comprising office, dormitory, library,
and classroom space, to classrooms only, to its present role as the administrative center of the university. Originally, the
sculptures in front of the building were lions, as a gift in 1879. These were later replaced with tigers in 1911.[9]
The Princeton Theological Seminary broke off from the college in 1812,
since the Presbyterians wanted their ministers to have more theological training, while the faculty and students would have been
content with less.[citation needed] This reduced the student body and the external support for Princeton for
some time. The two institutions currently enjoy a close relationship based on common history and shared resources.
Nassau Hall, the university's oldest building. Note the tiger sculptures beside the steps (See discussion above).
The university was becoming an obscure backwater when President James McCosh took office
in 1868. During his two decades in power, he overhauled the curriculum, oversaw an expansion of inquiry into the sciences, and
supervised the addition of a number of buildings in the High Victorian
Gothic style to the campus.[10] McCosh Hall is named
in his honor.
In 1896, the college officially changed its name from the College of New Jersey
to Princeton University to honor the town in which it resided. During this year, the college also underwent large expansion and
officially became a university. Under Woodrow Wilson, Princeton introduced the
preceptorial system in 1905, a then-unique concept that augmented the standard lecture method of teaching with a more personal
form where small groups of students, or precepts, could interact with a single instructor, or preceptor, in their field of
interest.
In 1969, Princeton University first admitted women as undergraduates. In 1887, the university had actually maintained and
staffed a sister college in the town of Princeton on Evelyn and Nassau streets, called
the Evelyn College for Women, which was closed after roughly a decade of
operation. After abortive discussions in 1967 with Sarah Lawrence College to
relocate the women's college to Princeton and merge it with the university, the administration decided to admit women and turned
to the issue of transforming the school's operations and facilities into a female-friendly campus. The administration barely
finished these plans by April 1969 when the admission's office began mailing out its acceptance letters. Its five-year
coeducation plan provided $7.8 million for the development of new facilities that would eventually house and educate 650 women
students at Princeton by 1974. Ultimately, 148 women, consisting of 100 freshwomen and transfer students of other years, entered
Princeton on September 6, 1969 amidst much media attention.
(Princeton enrolled its first female graduate student, Sabra Follett Meserve, as a Ph.D. candidate in Turkish history in 1961. A
handful of women had studied at Princeton as undergraduates from 1963 on, spending their junior year there to study subjects in
which Princeton's offerings surpassed those of their home institutions. They were considered regular students for their year on
campus, but were not candidates for a Princeton degree.)
Campus
Many campus buildings have neo-Gothic archways and lanterns. Seen here is Blair Arch, the largest and most famous archway on
campus.
Princeton's campus features buildings designed by noted architects such as Benjamin
Latrobe, Ralph Adams Cram, McKim, Mead
& White, Robert Venturi, and Nick Yeager. The
campus, located on 2 km² of landscaped grounds, features a large number of Neo-gothic-style buildings, most dating from the late 19th and early 20th centuries. It is
situated about one hour from New York City and Philadelphia. The first Princeton building constructed was Nassau Hall, situated in the
north end of Campus on Nassau Street. Stanhope Hall (once a library, now administrative offices) and East and West College, both
dormitories, followed. While many of the succeeding buildings—particularly the dormitories of the Northern campus—were built in a
Collegiate Gothic style, the university is something of a mixture of
American architectural movements. Greek Revival temples (Whig and Clio Halls) about the lawn south of Nassau Hall, while a
crenellated theater (Murray-Dodge) guards the route west to the library. Modern buildings are confined to the east and south of
the campus, a quarter overlooked by the 14-story Fine Hall. Fine, the Math Department's home, designed by Warner, Burns, Toan and Lunde and completed in 1970, is the tallest building at the university.[11] Contemporary additions feature a number of big-name
architects, including IM Pei's Spelman Halls, Robert
Venturi's Frist Campus Center, Rafael
Vinoly's Carl Icahn Laboratory, and the Hillier Group's Bowen Hall. A residential
college by Demetri Porphyrios and a science library by Frank Gehry are under construction. Much sculpture adorns the campus,
including pieces by Henry Moore (Oval with Points, also nicknamed "Nixon's Nose"), Clement Meadmore (Upstart II), and
Alexander Calder (Five Disks: One Empty). At the base of campus is the Delaware
and Raritan Canal, dating from 1830, and Lake Carnegie, a man-made lake
donated by the steel magnate Andrew Carnegie, used for crew (rowing) and sailing.
Cannon Green
Cannon Green is located on the south end of the main lawn. Buried in the ground at the center is the "Big Cannon", the top of
which protrudes from the earth and is traditionally spray-painted in orange with the current senior class year. A second "Little
Cannon" is buried in the lawn in front of nearby Whig Hall. Both were
buried in response to periodic thefts by Rutgers students. The "Big Cannon" is said
to have been left in Princeton by Hessians after the Revolutionary War but moved to New Brunswick during the War of 1812. Ownership of the cannon was disputed and the cannon was eventually taken back to Princeton
partly by a military company and then by 100 Princeton students. The "Big Cannon" was eventually buried in its current location
behind Nassau Hall in 1840. In 1875, Rutgers students attempting to recover the original cannon stole the "Little Cannon"
instead. The smaller cannon was subsequently recovered and buried as well. The protruding cannons are occasionally painted
scarlet by Rutgers students who continue the traditional dispute.[12]
The Academy Award winning movie, A Beautiful
Mind, contains a scene on Cannon Green. John Nash plays Go with his college rival while sitting on stone benches in the middle of the green. (The benches do not
exist; like many elements of the Princeton setting, they were introduced for the film.)
Buildings
McCarter Theater
The Tony-award-winning[13] McCarter Theatre was built by the Princeton Triangle
Club using club profits and a gift from Princeton University alumnus Thomas McCarter. Today the Triangle Club is an
official student group and performs its annual freshmen revue and fall musicals in McCarter. The McCarter is also recognized as
one of the leading regional theaters in the United States.
Art Museum
The Princeton University Art Museum was established to give students direct, intimate, and sustained access to original works
of art to complement and enrich instruction and research at the university, and this continues to be its primary function.
Numbering nearly 60,000 objects, the collections range chronologically from ancient to contemporary art, and concentrate
geographically on the Mediterranean regions, Western
Europe, China, the United States, and
Latin America. There is a collection of Greek and
Roman antiquities, including
ceramics, marbles, bronzes, and Roman mosaics from Princeton University’s excavations in
Antioch. Medieval Europe is represented by sculpture,
metalwork, and stained glass. The collection of Western European paintings includes examples from the early Renaissance through the nineteenth century, and there is a growing collection of twentieth-century and
contemporary art.
Among the strengths in the museum are the collections of Chinese art, with important holdings in bronzes, tomb figurines,
painting, and calligraphy; and pre-Columbian art,
with examples of the art of the Maya. The museum has collections of old master prints and drawings and a comprehensive collection
of original photographs. African art is represented as well as Northwest Coast Indian art. Other works include those of the John
B. Putnam, Jr., Memorial Collection of twentieth-century sculpture, including works by such modern masters as Alexander Calder, Jacques Lipchitz, Henry Moore and Pablo Picasso. The Putnam Collection is overseen by
the Museum but exhibited outdoors around campus.
University Chapel
Princeton University Chapel is the third-largest university chapel in the
world. Known for its gothic architecture, the chapel houses one of the largest and
most precious stained glass collections in the country. Both the Opening Exercises for entering freshmen and the Baccalaureate
Service for graduating seniors take place in the University Chapel. Construction on the Princeton University Chapel began in 1924
was completed in 1927, at a cost of $2.4 million. Princeton's Chapel is the world's third-largest university chapel, behind those
of Valparaiso University and King's
College, Cambridge, England.[14] It was designed by the University's lead consulting architect,
Ralph Adams Cram, previously of Boston's architectural firm Cram, Goodhue and Ferguson,
leading proponents of the Gothic revival style. The vaulting was built by
the Guastavino Company, whose thin Spanish tile vaults can be found in Ellis Island, Grand Central Station, and hundreds of other
significant works of 20th century architecture.
The 270-foot-long, 76-foot-high, cruciform church is in the collegiate Gothic style, and is made largely from Pennsylvania sandstone and Indiana
limestone. It seats 2000 people, many in pews made from wood salvaged from Civil War-era gun carriages. Seats in the chancery are made from oak from Sherwood Forest. The 16th Century pulpit was brought from
France and the primary pipe organ has 8000 pipes and 109
stops.
One of the most prominent features of the chapel is its stained glass windows which
have an unusually academic leaning. Three of the large windows have religious themes: the north aisle windows shows the life of
Jesus, the north clerestory shows the spirtual development of the Jews, while the south aisle has the teachings of Jesus. The
stained glass in the south clerestory portrays the evolution of human thought from the Greeks to modern times. It has windows on
such topics as Science, Law, Poetry and War.
Organization
Princeton is among the wealthiest universities in the world, with an endowment of US$14.2 billion. Ranked fourth
largest in the United States, the university has the largest per-student endowment in the
world. This is sustained through the continued donations of its alumni and is maintained by investment advisors.[15] Some of Princeton's wealth is invested in its
art museum, which features works by Claude Monet and
Andy Warhol, among other prominent artists.
This watercolor shows
Cleveland Tower as seen from just outside Procter Hall at the Old
Graduate College in the noon autumn sun. The tower was built in
1913 as a memorial to former
United States President
Grover Cleveland, who also served as a university trustee. One of the largest
carillons in the world, the class of 1892 bells, was installed in 1927. The Chapel Music program plays the
bells Sunday afternoons during each semester, except during exam periods.
University housing is guaranteed to all undergraduates for all four years, and more than 95 percent of students live on campus
in dormitories. Freshmen and sophomores live in residential colleges. Juniors and
seniors have the option to live off-campus, but high rent in the Princeton area encourages almost all students to live in dorms.
Undergraduate social life revolves around a number of coeducational "eating
clubs", which students may choose to join at the end of their sophomore year, and which host a number of social events
throughout the academic year.
Princeton has six undergraduate residential colleges, each housing approximately
500 freshmen, sophomores, and a handful of junior and senior resident advisers. Each
college consists of a set of dormitories, a dining hall, a variety of other amenities — such as study spaces, libraries,
performance spaces, and darkrooms — and a collection of administrators and associated faculty. Two colleges, Wilson College and Forbes College (formerly
Princeton Inn College), date to the 1970s; three others, Rockefeller, Mathey, and Butler Colleges, were created in 1983 following
the Committee on Undergraduate Residential Life (CURL) report suggesting colleges as a solution to a perception of fragmented
campus social life. The construction of Whitman College, the university's sixth, was completed in 2007.
Rockefeller College and Mathey College
are located in the northwest corner of the campus; their Collegiate Gothic
architecture often graces University brochures. Like most of Princeton's Gothic buildings, they predate the residential college
system and were fashioned into colleges from individual dormitories.
Wilson College and Butler College, located south of the center of the campus, were
built in the 1960s, with Wilson serving as an early experiment in Residential Colleges. Butler, like Rockefeller and Mathey, was
a collection of ordinary dorms (called the "New New Quad") before the addition of a dining hall made it a residential college.
Widely disliked for its edgy modernist design, the dormitories on the Butler Quad were
scheduled to be demolished in 2007, and the college is being partially housed in upperclass dormitories until its reconstruction
is completed.
Forbes College, located slightly southwest of the southwest corner of the campus, is a
former hotel, purchased by the university and expanded to form a residential college. The "Princeton Inn College" was one of the
first residential colleges in the 1970s along with Wilson College. Butler and most of Forbes are in a different municipality, Princeton Township, from the rest of
the main campus, which is in Princeton Borough.
In 2003, Princeton broke ground for a sixth college, named Whitman
College after its principal sponsor, Meg Whitman, the CEO of eBay and a member of the Princeton Class of 1977. The new
dormitories were constructed in the neo-Gothic architectural style and were
designed by renowned architect Demetri Porphyrios.
Construction finished in 2007, and Whitman College was inaugurated as Princeton's sixth residential college that year.
A variant on the present college system was originally proposed by University President Woodrow Wilson in the early twentieth century. Wilson's model was much closer to Yale's present system, which features four-year colleges. Lacking the support of the Trustees, the plan languished until 1968, when Wilson College was established, capping
a series of alternatives to the eating clubs. A series of often fierce debates raged before the present underclass-college system
emerged. The plan was first attempted at Yale, but the administration was initially uninterested; an exasperated alum,
Edward Harkness, finally paid to have the college system implemented at Harvard in the 1920s, leading to the oft-quoted aphorism that the college system is a Princeton idea
done at Harvard with Yale's money.
Princeton has one graduate residential college, known simply as the Graduate College, located beyond Forbes College at the outskirts of campus. The
far-flung location of the G.C. was the spoil of a squabble between Woodrow Wilson and then-Graduate School Dean Andrew Fleming West, which the latter won.[16] (Wilson preferred a central location for the College; West wanted the graduate students as far as
possible from the noisy, dissolute undergraduates.) The G.C. is composed of a large Collegiate Gothic section crowned by
Cleveland Tower, a local landmark that also houses a world-class carillon. The attached New Graduate College houses more students. Its design departs from collegiate gothic,
and is reminiscent of Butler College, the newest of the five pre-Whitman undergraduate colleges.
Academics
The courtyard of East Pyne
Princeton offers two main undergraduate degrees: the Bachelor of Arts (A.B.) and the Bachelor of Science in
engineering (B.S.E.). Courses in the humanities are traditionally either seminars or semi-weekly lectures with an additional
discussion seminar, called a "precept" (short for "preceptorial"). To graduate, all A.B. candidates must complete a senior thesis
and one or two extensive pieces of independent research, known as "junior papers" or "J.P.s." They must also fulfill a
two-semester foreign language requirement and distribution requirements with a total of 31 classes. B.S.E. candidates follow a
parallel track with an emphasis on a rigorous science and math curriculum, a computer science requirement, and at least two
semesters of independent research including an optional senior thesis. All B.S.E. students much complete at least 36 classes.
A.B. candidates typically have more freedom in course selection than B.S.E. candidates because of the fewer number of required
classes, though both enjoy a comparatively high degree of latitude in creating a self-structured curriculum.
Undergraduates at Princeton University agree to conform to an academic honesty policy called the Honor Code. Students
write and sign the honor pledge, "I pledge my honor that I have not violated the Honor Code during this examination," on every
in-class exam they take at Princeton. (The form of the pledge was changed slightly in 1980; it formerly read, "I pledge my honor
that during this examination, I have neither given nor received assistance.") The Code carries a second obligation: upon
matriculation, every student pledges to report any suspected cheating to the student-run Honor Committee. Because of this code,
students take all tests unsupervised by faculty members. Violations of the Honor Code incur the strongest of disciplinary
actions, including suspension and expulsion. Out-of-class exercises are outside the Honor Committee's jurisdiction. In these
cases, students are often expected to sign a pledge on their papers that they have not plagiarized their work ("This paper represents my own work in accordance with University
regulations."), and allegations of academic violations are heard by the University Committee on Discipline.
Princeton offers postgraduate research degrees in mathematics, physics, astronomy and plasma physics, economics, history,
political science, philosophy, and English. Although Princeton offers professional graduate degrees in engineering, architecture, and finance, it has no medical school, law
school, or business school like other research universities.[17] Its most famous professional school is the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs
(known as "Woody Woo" to students), founded in 1930 as the School of Public and International Affairs and renamed in
1948.
The university's library system houses over eleven million holdings[18] including six million bound volumes;[19] The main university library, Firestone
Library, housing almost four million volumes, is one of the largest university libraries in the world[citation needed] (and among the largest "open stack"
libraries in existence).[citation needed] Its collections include the Blickling
homilies. In addition to Firestone, many individual disciplines have their own libraries, including architecture, art
history, East Asian studies, engineering, geology, international affairs and public policy, and Near Eastern studies. Seniors in
some departments can register for enclosed carrels in the main library for workspace and the private storage of books and
research materials. In February 2007, Princeton became the 12th major library system to join Google's ambitious project to scan
the world's great literary works and make them searchable over the Web.[20]
Princeton is one of the most selective colleges in the United States, admitting only 9.5% of undergraduate applicants in
2007.[21] In September 2006, Princeton University
announced that all applicants for the Class of 2012 would be considered in a single pool, effectively ending the Early Decision program.[22] In
2001, Princeton was the first university to eliminate loans for all students who qualify for
aid, expanding on earlier reforms. U.S. News &
World Report and Princeton Review both cite Princeton as having the
fewest number of students graduating with debt even though 60% of incoming students are on some type of financial aid.[citation needed] The Office of Financial Aid
estimates that Princeton seniors on aid will graduate with average indebtedness of $2,360, compared to the national average of
about $20,000.
Rankings
From 2001 to 2008, Princeton University has been ranked 1st among national universities by U.S. News and World Report (USNWR).[23] Among other outlets, Princeton is tied for 8th among world universities by Shanghai Jiao Tong University,[24] 10th among world universities and 7th in North America by THES - QS World University Rankings.[25][26]
Princeton University also participates in the National
Association of Independent Colleges and Universities (NAICU)'s University and College Accountability Network (U-CAN).
Fine Hall, the home of the Department of Mathematics. It is the tallest building on campus, although its height above sea level
is not higher than the University Chapel, significantly uphill from Fine.
See also List of Princeton University people#Notable Princeton
professors. Princeton University also recently purchased a supercomputer, Orangena, from
IBM, as of 11/2005 the 79th fastest in the world (LINPACK performance of 4713; compare up to
12250 for other U. S. universities and 280600 for the top-ranked supercomputer, belonging to the U. S. Department of Energy).[27]
Student life and culture
Cuyler, Class of 1903, and Walker Halls are Princeton dormitories in the
Collegiate
Gothic style.
Princeton hosts two Model United Nations conferences, PMUNC[28] in the fall for high school students and PICSim[29] in the spring for college students.
Princeton also runs Princeton Model Congress, held once a year in mid-November. The 4-day conference is for high schoolers
from around the country and the fierce competition gives the conference its prestige.
Each residential college hosts social events and activities, guest speakers (such as Edward
Norton, who showed a special sneak-preview of Fight Club on campus), and trips. The
residential colleges are best known for their performing arts trips to New York City.
Students sign up to take trips to see the ballet, the opera, and Broadway shows.
The eating clubs are co-ed organizations for upperclassmen
located on the east end of campus. Most upperclassmen eat their meals at one of the 10 eating clubs, whose houses also serve as
evening and weekend social venues for members and guests.
Although the school's admissions policy is "need-blind" Princeton was ranked
last (based on the proportion of students receiving Pell Grants) in economic diversity among all national universities ranked by
U.S. News & World Report.[30] While Pell figures are widely used as a gauge of the number of low-income
undergraduates on a given campus, the rankings article cautions, "the proportion of students on Pell Grants isn't a perfect
measure of an institution's efforts to achieve economic diversity."
- Arch Sings - Free late-night concerts in one of the larger arches on campus offered by one or several of Princeton's
thirteen undergraduate a cappella groups. Most often held in Blair Arch or Class of
1879 Arch.
- Bonfire - ceremonial bonfire on Cannon Green behind Nassau Hall, held only if Princeton beats both Harvard and Yale at football in the same season; the most recent bonfire was lit November
17, 2006, after a 12-year drought.
- Bicker - Selection process for new-members employed by
selective eating clubs
- Cane Spree - an athletic competition between freshmen and sophomores held in the fall
- The Clapper or Clapper Theft - climbing to the top of Nassau Hall and stealing the bell clapper so as to
prevent the bell from ringing and, thus, from starting class on the first day of the school year. For safety reasons, the clapper
has now been removed permanently.
- Class Jackets (Beer Jackets) - Each graduating class (and each class at its multiple-of-5 reunion
thereafter—5th, 10th, etc.) designs a Class Jacket featuring their class year. The artwork is almost invariably dominated by the
school colors and tiger motifs.
- Communiversity - an annual street fair with performances, arts and crafts, and other activities in an attempt to
foster interaction between the university and residents of the Princeton community
- Dean's Date Theater - tradition of gathering late in the afternoon on the final deadline for written work for the
semester ("Dean's Date") outside McCosh Hall to watch other students run to hand in their papers. Some students perform
cartwheels and other antics (if they are not running too late).[citation needed]
- FitzRandolph Gate - at the end of Princeton's graduation ceremony, the new graduates process out through the main gate
of the university as a symbol of their leaving college and entering the real world. According to tradition, anyone who leaves
campus through FitzRandolph Gate before his or her own graduation date will not graduate (though entering through the gate is
fine).
- Holder Howl - The midnight before Dean's Date (when most final papers and assignments are due) students from Holder
Hall and elsewhere come to the Holder courtyard and "howl" to release the frustration of last-minute work on their
assignments.[citation needed]
- Houseparties - formal parties thrown simultaneously by all of the eating clubs at the end of the spring term
- Lawnparties - parties with live bands thrown simultaneously by all of the eating clubs at the start of classes and conclusion of the year
- Newman's Day - Students attempt to drink 24 beers in the 24 hours of
April 24. According to the New York Times,
"the day got its name from an apocryphal quote attributed to Mr. Newman: '24 beers in a case, 24 hours in a day. Coincidence? I
think not.'"[31] Newman has spoken out against the
tradition, however.[32]
- Nude Olympics - annual (nude and partially nude) frolic in Holder Courtyard during the first snow of the winter.
Started in the early 1970s, the Nude Olympics went co-ed in 1979 and gained much notoriety with the American press. For safety
reasons, the administration banned the Olympics in 2000.
- Prospect 11 - referring to the act of drinking a beer at all eleven eating clubs on The Street in one night.
With the recent closure of Campus Club, this has become impossible; however, the historical
Cannon Club is due to reopen in Spring 2008, and the Prospect 11 will return.
- P-rade - traditional parade of alumni and their families, who process by class year, during Reunions
- Reunions - annual gathering of alumni, held the weekend before
graduation
- Robo - commonly played team drinking game at Princeton University, thought to have
originated there. Beirut is equally popular.
- The Phantom of Fine Hall - a former tradition - before 1993, this was the legend of an obscure, shadowy figure that
would infest Fine Hall (the Mathematics department's building) and write complex equations on blackboards. Although mentioned in
Rebecca Goldstein's 1980s book The Mind-Body Problem about Princeton graduate
student life (Penguin, reissued 1993), the legend self-deconstructed in the 1990s when the Phantom turned out to be in reality
the inventor, in the 1950s, of the Nash equilibrium result in game theory,
John Forbes Nash. The former Phantom, by then also haunting the computation center
where courtesy of handlers in the math department he was a sacred monster with a guest account, shared the 1994 Nobel Prize and
is now a recognized member of the University community. (Unlike the book, the film version of A Beautiful Mind does not attempt to be factual; its screenwriter called it "a stab at the
truth… but not by way of the facts.")
Athletics
The Princeton Review (unaffiliated with the university) declared Princeton the
10th strongest "jock school" in the nation. It has also consistently been ranked at the top of the Time Magazine's Strongest College Sports Teams lists. Most recently, Princeton was ranked as a top 10
school for athletics by Sports Illustrated. Princeton is best known for its men and
women's crews, winning several NCAA and Eastern Sprints titles
in recent years.
Princeton won a record 21 conference titles from 2000–2001. By the end of 2004, Princeton had garnered 36 Ivy League
conference titles from 2001–2004 sports seasons. In 2005, its women's soccer team made
the NCAA Final Four, the first Ivy League team to do so. The Tigers have taken every field
hockey conference title since 1994.
Princeton's basketball team is perhaps the best-known team within the Ivy League,
nicknamed the "perennial giant killer" which it acquired during Pete Carril's coaching
career from 1967–1996. Its most notable upset was the defeat of defending NCAA basketball champion, UCLA, in its opening round and Carril's final collegiate victory in that season's
collegiate basketball playoffs. During that 29 year span, Pete Carril won 13 Ivy League championships and received 11 NCAA berths
and 2 NIT bids. Princeton won the NIT championship in 1975. A legacy of his coaching career is the deliberate "Princeton offense" employed by a number of other collegiate basketball teams, including
Georgetown in their Final Four appearance.
From 1992–2001, a nine year span, Princeton's men's basketball team had entered the NCAA tournament 6 times—from a conference that has never had an
at-large entry in the NCAA tournament. For the last half-century, Princeton and
Penn have traditionally battled for men's basketball dominance in the Ivy
League; Princeton had its first losing season in 50 years of Ivy League basketball in 2005. Princeton tied the record for fewest
points in a Division I game since the 3-point line started in 1986–87 when they scored 21 points in a loss against
Monmouth University on December 14, 2005.
Princeton's men's lacrosse team has enjoyed much success since the early 1990s and is widely recognized as a perennial
powerhouse in the Division I ranks. The team has won thirteen Ivy League titles (1992, 1993, 1995–2004, 2006) and six national
titles (1992, 1994, 1996–1998, 2001).[33]
The Princeton women's volleyball team has won 13 Ivy League titles, and its men's volleyball team in 1998 became the first
non-scholarship school to make the NCAA Final Four in 25 years.
On November 6, 1869, Princeton fielded a team of twenty-five undergraduates to compete against Rutgers College in the first intercollegiate soccer game, held on the Rutgers campus in
New Brunswick, New Jersey. This game has been claimed by some to be the first
game of American Football, but in fact it more closely resembled 'soccer'. Rutgers won
with a score of six runs to Princeton's four. However, Princeton won every subsequent game through its evolution into forms more
recognizable as American football through 1938. The two schools, which compete in other NCAA
events, have not met in football since 1980. Princeton's rivalry with Yale, active since
1873, is the second oldest in American football (counting years when the game was played under rules which resembled soccer and
not American football). In more recent years, Princeton has excelled in both men's and women's lacrosse, and both men's and
women's crew.
Old Nassau
This phrase can refer to:
- Princeton's alma mater since 1859, with words by then-freshman Harlan Page Peck and music
by Karl A. Langlotz. Before the Langlotz tune was written, the song was sung to the melody of
"Auld Lang Syne", which also fits. The text of Old Nassau is available from Wikisource.
- Nassau Hall, to which the song refers, built in 1756 and named after William III of
England, of the House of Orange-Nassau. When built, it was the largest
college building in North America. It served briefly as the capitol of the United States when the Continental Congress convened
there in the summer of 1783.
- By metonymy, Princeton University as a whole.
- A chemical reaction, an example of a "clock reaction", dubbed "Old Nassau" because
the solution turns first orange and then black, the Princeton colors. It is also known as the "Hallowe'en reaction".
- List of Princeton University people
- List of presidents of Princeton University
Princeton University has been home to scholars, scientists, writers, and statesmen, including four United States presidents,
two of whom graduated from the university. James Madison and Woodrow Wilson graduated from Princeton, Grover Cleveland was
not an alumnus but served as a trustee of Princeton university for some
time while spending his retirement in the town of Princeton, and John F. Kennedy spent
his freshman fall at the university before leaving due to illness and transferring to Harvard.
In fiction
- See also: List of Princeton
University people#Fictional
- F. Scott Fitzgerald's literary debut, This Side of Paradise, is a loosely autobiographical story of his years at Princeton. A
Princeton Alumni Weekly article on Princeton fiction called it the "Ur novel of Princeton
life." [1]
- In Ernest Hemingway's The Sun Also
Rises, the character Robert Cohn attended Princeton.
- Geoffrey Wolff's The Final Club is a coming-of-age book about Nathaniel
Auerbach Clay, a fictional member of the Princeton Class of 1960 (Wolff was an actual member of this class). The Final
Club is written as homage to F. Scott Fitzgerald's This Side of Paradise and The Great
Gatsby.
- Mohsin Hamid's The Reluctant
Fundamentalist is partly set at Princeton and the characters Changez and Erica are fictional members of the Princeton
Class of 2001 (Hamid was an actual member of the Princeton Class of 1993).
- A Beautiful Mind, the Academy
Award winning film about the famous mathematician John Forbes Nash features a
major part depicting Nash's initial days at Princeton University. [2] Although
the film is a fictionalized biography, in real life Nash did receive his doctorate from Princeton and is a Princeton professor.
(The book of the same title by Sylvia Nassar, on which the movie is very loosely based with a great deal of artistic license, is
a totally non-fictional biography and thus ineligible for a listing in this section.)
- The movie I.Q., starring Meg Ryan and
Tim Robbins with Walter Matthau as Albert Einstein takes place in Princeton. [3] A scene where Tim Robbins' character gives a lecture is in Room 302 of the
Palmer Physics Laboratory, which is now the Frist Campus Center.
- The book The Rule of Four, as well as a series of mystery books by
Ann Waldron, including The Princeton Murders,
Death of a Princeton President, Unholy Death in
Princeton, A Rare Murder in Princeton, and newest The Princeton Impostor are set on Princeton's campus and the campus of neighboring Princeton Theological Seminary. [4]
- In Harold & Kumar Go to White Castle, Princeton is
one of their destinations.[5] However, the film was not shot on the undergraduate campus (where the movie implies the protagonists are) but
rather in the graduate dormitories.
- In the film Risky Business, Tom Cruise as
Joel Goodson proves himself Princeton material by becoming a pimp, leading to his interviewer's
sexual gratification. [6]
- The movie Spanglish is presented as an essay on a fictional Princeton
application. [7]
- In the movie "A Cinderella Story," a major part of the storyline revolves around Chad Michael Murray's and Hilary Duff's
characters both aiming to attend Princeton to study writing.
