Viviana Zelizer receives highest award from American Sociological Association

By Daniel Day The American Sociological Association (ASA) recognized Viviana Zelizer, the Lloyd Cotsen ’50 Professor of Sociology, for her pioneering contributions with its highest honor, the W.E.B. Du Bois Career of Distinguished Scholarship Award. Continue Reading →

Ecologist Jeanne Altmann and ethicist Peter Singer honored with Frontiers of Knowledge Awards

By Liz Fuller-Wright and Daniel Day Two Princeton professors, Jeanne Altmann and Peter Singer, have been awarded 2023 Frontiers of Knowledge Awards by the BBVA Foundation. The awards recognize basic research and creative work worldwide Continue Reading →

Four engineering professors receive Moore Foundation experimental physics awards

By the Office of Engineering Communications Four Princeton University researchers — Nathalie de Leon, Julia Mikhailova, Barry Rand and Jeff Thompson — have won a Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation Experimental Physics Investigators Initiative award. Continue Reading →

Bryan, McComas and Buschman receive prestigious honors from the National Academy of Sciences

By Liz Fuller-Wright Three Princetonians are among the 16 scientists receiving the highest honors given by the National Academy of Sciences (NAS). These major awards recognize extraordinary scientific achievements in a wide range of fields Continue Reading →

Patricia Smith and Ilya Kaminsky named Academy of American Poets Chancellors

By Jamie Saxon Patricia Smith, professor of creative writing in the Lewis Center for the Arts, and Ilya Kaminsky, professor of creative writing, have been named Academy of American Poets Chancellors. Chancellors serve six-year terms Continue Reading →

Making the Supreme Court

By Siya Arora President Richard Nixon had a golden opportunity in 1971 to fill a double vacancy on the Supreme Court when two justices resigned within the span of six days. “Is there a woman Continue Reading →

Like clockwork

John Brooks II is exploring the link between circadian rhythms, the immune system, and the community of beneficial bacteria that live within the digestive tract. Continue Reading →

Alsdorf, Leving and Mendelberg receive 2023 Guggenheim Fellowships

By Jamie Saxon Three Princeton faculty members have received 2023 Guggenheim Fellowships. Bridget Alsdorf, professor of art and archaeology, was awarded the Guggenheim in the field of fine arts research. Her research specializes in European Continue Reading →

Elliot Lieb wins American Physical Society’s highest honor, and mathematics’ Gauss Prize

By Liz Fuller-Wright Elliott Lieb, Princeton’s Eugene Higgins Professor of Physics, Emeritus, and professor of mathematical physics, emeritus, received the 2022 American Physical Society (APS) Medal for Exceptional Achievement in Research for “major contributions to Continue Reading →

Artificial intelligence enters a new era

Computers that can see the world and understand our language are taking on new challenges Continue Reading →

Beyond guess and check

Some problems are so complex that they could take trillions of years to solve Continue Reading →

Soaking up the sun

Across our solar system, supersonic winds of charged particles from the sun blow at a million miles per hour. These winds form a protective bubble around our entire solar system that shields us from galactic Continue Reading →

Fields Medal and MacArthur Fellowship go to June Huh

By Liz Fuller-Wright June Huh, professor of mathematics, was awarded the 2022 Fields Medal, often referred to as the “Nobel Prize of mathematics,” in recognition of his work in combinatorics. He was awarded a 2022 Continue Reading →

Breakthrough Prize goes to Cliff Brangwynne

By Scott Lyon Princeton bioengineer Clifford Brangwynne won the 2023 Breakthrough Prize for Life Sciences in recognition of his contributions to the study of living cells. Brangwynne’s research has changed how scientists understand cellular organization, Continue Reading →

Shark Week was every week for Megalodon

By Liz Fuller-Wright New research shows that prehistoric megatooth sharks, the biggest sharks that ever lived, were at the very highest rung of the prehistoric food chain — what scientists call the highest “trophic level.” Continue Reading →

‘Fantastic giant tortoise,’ believed extinct, confirmed alive in the Galápagos

By Liz Fuller-Wright A tortoise from a Galápagos species long believed extinct has been found alive and now confirmed to be a living member of the species. The tortoise, named Fernanda after her Fernandina Island Continue Reading →

Solar technology marks major milestone

By Scott Lyon Researchers have developed the first perovskite solar cell with a commercially viable lifetime, marking a major milestone for an emerging class of renewable energy technology. The research team projects their device can Continue Reading →

DNA barcoding advances nanoparticle self-assembly

By Wendy Plump More than two decades ago, scientists demonstrated that the self-assembly of nanoparticles — for fabrication of miniaturized devices, for example — was possible if the nanoparticles could be labeled with a known Continue Reading →

Ben Bernanke, former Princeton professor and economics department chair, receives Nobel Prize in economic sciences

By Denise Valenti Ben Bernanke, a Princeton professor of economics and public affairs from 1985 to 2002, chairman of the economics department from 1996 to 2002, and founder of the Bendheim Center for Finance, is Continue Reading →

The Matter of Black Living: The Aesthetic Experiment of Racial Data, 1880–1930

University of Chicago Press, April 2022 Autumn Womack, Assistant Professor of African American Studies and English As the nineteenth century came to a close and questions concerning the future of African American life reached a Continue Reading →

India Is Broken: A People Betrayed, Independence to Today

Stanford University Press, Feb. 2023 Ashoka Mody, Charles and Marie Robertson Visiting Professor in International Economic Policy When Indian leaders first took control of their government in 1947, they proclaimed the ideals of national unity Continue Reading →

A Monetary and Fiscal History of the United States, 1961–2021

Princeton University Press, Oct. 2022 Alan S. Blinder, Gordon S. Rentschler Memorial Professor of Economics and Public Affairs Alan Blinder, one of the world’s most influential economists and one of the field’s best writers, draws Continue Reading →

The Price of Slavery: Capitalism and Revolution in the Caribbean

University of Virginia Press, March 2022 F. Nick Nesbitt, Professor of French and Italian The Price of Slavery analyzes Marx’s critique of capitalist slavery and its implications for the Caribbean thought of Toussaint Louverture, Henry Continue Reading →

Only the Clothes on Her Back: Clothing and the Hidden History of Power in the Nineteenth-Century United States

Oxford University Press, Feb. 2022Laura F. Edwards, Class of 1921 Bicentennial Professor in the History of American Law and Liberty What can dresses, bedlinens, waistcoats, pantaloons, shoes and kerchiefs tell us about the legal status Continue Reading →

Cancer connection

Combining therapeutics with dietarychanges could prove effective against some forms of cancer. Continue Reading →

Climate in crisis

Advances in reclaiming carbon from wastewater, lithium-ion-battery recycling, innovative building materials and new approaches to urban infrastructures are active areas of research at Princeton. Continue Reading →

Age of intolerance?

Was the medieval period an age of intolerance? Or are scholars ascribing modern conceptions of race to the peoples of the past? Continue Reading →

When cars no longer rule

Marshall Brown, director of the Princeton Urban Imagination Center, questions the future of traffic signs, parking lots and garbage trucks. Continue Reading →

Mystery on the moon

Graduate student Erin Flowers investigates similarities between Earth
and Titan, Saturn’s largest moon. Continue Reading →

Between living bodies and objects

Text courtesy of the Lewis Center for the Arts Dancers navigate sculptures’ dangerously sharp elements in the performance installation Two Person Operating System Type 2, a collaboration between Lewis Center for the Arts’ Martha Friedman, Continue Reading →

A NOBEL YEAR – Princeton scholars and alumni received an unprecedented five Nobel Prizes

Nobel medal
David MacMillan

NOBEL PRIZE IN CHEMISTRY

‘This idea took off’

By Liz Fuller-Wright

David MacMillan, the James S. McDonnell Distinguished University Professor of Chemistry, received the Nobel Prize in chemistry for his role in inventing the field of organocatalysis, which finds revolutionary ways to design and build small organic molecules to drive chemical reactions.

Organocatalysts, which are greener than traditional metal catalysts, are used to construct new drugs and materials, and their impact ranges from industrial applications to pharmaceuticals to everyday products like clothing, shampoo, carpet fibers and more.

“All scientists have so many ideas along the way,” MacMillan said. “We have way more ideas than ever succeed — but this one took off, and it took off like gangbusters.”

Princeton University senior meteorologist Syukuro “Suki” Manabe

NOBEL PRIZE IN PHYSICS

‘Following my curiosity’

By Liz Fuller-Wright

Princeton University senior meteorologist Syukuro “Suki” Manabe received the Nobel Prize in physics for his climate science research, which laid the foundation for the development of current climate models.

Manabe has been on the Princeton faculty since 1968. During a press conference on the day of the announcement, Manabe repeatedly cited the “great fun” to be had in modeling Earth’s climate and urged students to follow their curiosity and their joy, rather than trying to predict what research may prove impactful in future decades. “I never imagined that this thing I was beginning to study [would have] such huge consequences,” he said. “I was doing it just because of my curiosity.”

Maria Ressa, Joshua Angrist and David Card

NOBEL PRIZES FOR PEACE, ECONOMICS

Safeguarding freedom, insights on the labor market

By Denise Valenti

The 2021 Nobel Peace Prize was awarded to Princeton graduate Maria Ressa of the Class of 1986 for her efforts to “safeguard freedom of expression, which is a precondition for democracy and lasting peace.” Ressa has been a journalist in Asia for more than 30 years, serving as CNN’s bureau chief in Manila and Jakarta and founding the online news site Rappler.com.

Princeton alumni David Card and Joshua Angrist were awarded the 2021 Nobel Memorial Prize in economic sciences for providing new insights about the labor market. Card (Ph.D. ’83) taught at Princeton from 1983-96 and is now at the University of California-Berkeley. Angrist (Ph.D. ’89) is a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and a research associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research.

Pushing Cool: Big Tobacco, Racial Marketing, and the Untold Story of the Menthol Cigarette

University of Chicago Press, 2020 Keith Wailoo, the Henry Putnam University Professor of History and Public Affairs Spanning a century, Pushing Cool reveals how the twin deceptions of health and Black affinity for menthol were Continue Reading →

Cosmology’s Century: An Inside History of Our Modern Understanding of the Universe

Princeton University Press, 2020 P. James E. Peebles, the Albert Einstein Professor of Science, Emeritus Modern cosmology began a century ago with Albert Einstein’s general theory of relativity and his notion of a homogenous, philosophically Continue Reading →

Magical Habits

Duke University Press, 2021 Monica Huerta, assistant professor of English and American studies Monica Huerta draws on her experiences growing up in her family’s Mexican restaurants and her life as a scholar of literature and Continue Reading →

Tolstoy Together: 85 Days of War and Peace with Yiyun Li

A Public Space, 2021 Yiyun Li, professor of creative writing in the Lewis Center for the Arts From the acclaimed author of Dear Friend, from My Life I Write to You in Your Life, comes Continue Reading →

Risk on the Table: Food Production, Health, and the Environment

Berghahn Books, 2021 Edited by: Angela Creager, the Thomas M. Siebel Professor in the History of Science, and professor of history, and Jean-Paul Gaudillière, senior researcher at the Institut National de la Santé et de Continue Reading →

Deep Life: The Hunt for the Hidden Biology of Earth, Mars, and Beyond

Princeton University Press, 2020 Tullis Onstott, professor of geosciences (1955-2021) Deep Life takes readers to uncharted regions deep beneath Earth’s crust in search of life in extreme environments and reveals how astonishing new discoveries are Continue Reading →

Dean’s welcome

Computer drawing of proposed entrance to new facility
Pablo Debenedetti

An extraordinary year for research

If the past two years have taught us anything, it is that research can provide solutions to global challenges.

Without research, we would not have the benefit of highly effective and safe vaccines against SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19. We would not understand how the virus spreads, and how important masking is as a public health measure. In other words, we would not have the tools that will help us turn the corner on this deadly pandemic.

As we celebrate research that provides direct benefits to our everyday lives, it is important to recognize that many of these discoveries originated as open-ended explorations, questions asked not with personal or corporate gain in mind, but because the asker wanted to know the answer.
Princeton is a place that encourages the pursuit of open-ended questions of the kind that can lead to unexpected places and, in some cases, to great societal rewards. Whether the research is aimed broadly at enriching human knowledge or aimed at a specific challenge, curiosity is often the starting point.

This year’s Nobel Prize winners, five of whom have substantial ties to Princeton, remind us of the
impact of open-ended, curiosity-driven research. Two faculty members received Nobel Prizes, in
chemistry and physics, and three alumni won Nobel Prizes, one for peace and two for economic sciences.
Physics Nobelist Syukuro Manabe, a senior meteorologist who has been at Princeton since 1968, earned the prize for work that laid the foundation for the development of current climate models. Manabe stated of his research, “I was doing it just because of my curiosity. I really enjoyed studying climate change.”

David MacMillan, the James S. McDonnell Distinguished University Professor of Chemistry, was awarded the Nobel Prize in chemistry for making catalysts from inexpensive organic materials. Little did he know at the time that the innovation would transform the manufacture of products like pharmaceuticals, clothing and shampoo. “What we care about is trying to invent chemistry that has an impact on society and can do some good,” MacMillan said, “and I am thrilled to have a part in that.”

These are sentiments that most of our faculty researchers at Princeton can endorse, whether we are conducting open-ended, theoretical work or, as you’ll read in these pages, trying to address societal challenges such as preventing pandemics, treating cancer, or protecting our environment.

At Princeton, research and curiosity are integrally woven into the endeavors of our undergraduates and graduate students, postdoctoral researchers, faculty and research staff. I believe these values help explain Princeton’s disproportionate share of Nobels this year.

And when the next pandemic strikes — or when we are called upon as a society to address the consequences of our continued reliance on fossil fuels — curiosity will be one of the drivers that spurs our researchers to bold explorations, some producing tangible benefits for humankind, and others enriching our intellect.

Pablo G. Debenedetti
Dean for Research
Class of 1950 Professor in Engineering and Applied Science
Professor of Chemical and Biological Engineering

New “recycler” protein kicks cancer to the curb

Researchers at Princeton have found a “recycler” protein that helps prevent cancer from spreading. Continue Reading →

Bacterial anti-infective defense systems could aid humans

A systematic way to identify bacterial defense mechanisms could uncover new drugs, including ones that could help fight the novel coronavirus. Continue Reading →

Conversation spreads droplets more than six feet indoors

researchers have found that ordinary conversation creates a conical, “jet-like” airflow that carries a spray of tiny droplets from a speaker’s mouth across meters of an interior space.
Continue Reading →

Dean’s note

Brick building

Highlighting the resilience of research

The image of the brilliant researcher working alone in the lab is a staple of popular culture, but it is more the exception than the rule. In most disciplines, research is collaborative and highly social. Large teams have cooperated to decode the human genome, detect gravitational waves, piece together historical documents and excavate archeological sites. Today, research is more often than not a team sport.

COVID-19 has challenged that norm. In March 2020, researchers at Princeton, like those at universities across the country, switched off computers and equipment, cleaned out lab refrigerators, and shuttered their labs and offices. They went home to bedrooms, basements and dining rooms to spend the next few months staring at lab mates and collaborators through a two-dimensional screen.

Despite these challenges, Princeton research continued. Princeton researchers continued. They crunched data, wrote up their results, and shared their ideas and insights via videoconferencing. They maintained the social side of science. I cannot help but be impressed and inspired by how well Princeton research thrived throughout the roughly three-month stay-at-home period.

In June, we were fortunate to welcome back a portion of our research community, those whose work requires on-campus equipment. As of this message’s writing (early November), we continue to operate under the principle that work that can be done remotely should continue to be done remotely. We are working to bring back additional researchers as soon as it can be done safely.

If I was impressed by our researchers’ orderly shutdown in March, I am even more impressed with how our community has reopened the labs with thoughtfulness and consideration for one another’s health and safety. Our survey of researchers who have returned to campus showed very high compliance with mask wearing, social distancing, staying home when sick, and other public health measures.

What is more, our research enterprise continues to thrive. Our sponsored research expenditures for fiscal year 2020 were the highest on record, and our faculty continue to submit proposals and obtain funding for COVID-19 research and for other projects. In fact, proposal submissions during this period were the third highest on record. Our faculty and research teams continue to publish high-impact findings in major journals.

I’m particularly proud of how our scientists and scholars are contributing to confronting the pandemic. Early on, Princeton awarded nearly half a million dollars in COVID-19-related research funding that has already led to insights on ways to prevent infection as well as on how the pandemic is affecting the economy and our everyday lives.

COVID-19 is not the only challenge facing our nation in 2020. We continue to confront racial injustice, a major economic crisis, and the undeniable effects of anthropogenic climate change. Several stories in these pages address how research and scholarship at Princeton are helping to address some of these challenges.

The Princeton spirit is indomitable. Our creativity and resourcefulness, not to mention our intellectual leadership, mean that the brilliant researcher, even if working at home due to COVID-19 public health restrictions, is never alone. Princeton is many brilliant researchers working together, for new knowledge, in the nation’s service and the service of humanity.

Pablo Debenedetti
Dean for Research
Class of 1950 Professor in Engineering and Applied Science Professor of Chemical and Biological Engineering

Pablo Debenedetti
Dean for Research Pablo Debenedetti, Class of 1950 Professor in Engineering and Applied Science Professor of Chemical and Biological Engineering. Photo by Frank Wojciechowski