Princeton researchers catch a star in the act of exploding

Published in the July 16, 2008, issue

On Jan. 9, 2008, Alicia Soderberg, a postdoctoral research associate in astrophysics at Princeton, was studying the X-ray emissions conveyed from space by NASA’s Swift satellite when she recognized an extremely bright light on the screen of her computer,...Read more

In memoriam

Published in the July 16, 2008, issue

GILBERT HUNT *48, a longtime professor of mathematics and an authority in probability theory and analysis, died May 30 in Princeton. He was 92. A member of the faculty from 1959 to 1962 and from 1965 until he retired in 1986, Hunt was widely known for...Read more

In the news

Published in the July 16, 2008, issue

SOHAIB SULTAN, the Muslim chaplain at Wesleyan University and Trinity College and the author of The Koran for Dummies, will begin work next month as the University’s first coordinator for Muslim life. Sultan said his initial priorities will be to develop the...Read more

Grafton on digitization and the future of libraries

Published in the July 16, 2008, issue

In his latest book, Codex in Crisis, published by Crumpled Press in May, history professor Anthony Grafton reflects on the staggering amount of information now available on the Web: millions of digitized books, scholarly journals, and archival material...Read more

$100 million gift from Andlinger ’52

Published in the July 16, 2008, issue

The University announced a $100 million gift July 1 from GERHARD R. ANDLINGER ’52 to support energy and environmental research. The gift will create the Gerhard R. Andlinger Center for Energy and the Environment within the School of Engineering and Applied...Read more

Winning debut for team’s robot

Published in the July 16, 2008, issue

The Princeton Autonomous Vehicle Engineering team does not mind being an underdog. Since 2004, the group of undergraduates, better known by the acronym PAVE, has built self-driving trucks for high-tech competitions sponsored by the Defense Advanced Research...Read more

A publishing house that creates each book by hand

Published in the July 16, 2008, issue

With the growth of digitized information on the Internet, and companies like Google bringing stacks of books virtually into people’s homes and offices at the click of a mouse, some pundits are prophesying the end of “real” books. But Alexander Bick, a...Read more

Thesis work ranges from ‘slow food’ to a robotic eel

Published in the July 16, 2008, issue

Since the senior thesis became established as the capstone of a Princeton undergraduate education in the 1920s, thousands of independent-study projects have been completed on subjects as varied as the students themselves. Here is a sampling of thesis work by...Read more

Seven alumni join University’s Board of Trustees

Published in the July 16, 2008, issue

In June, seven alumni were named to the University’s 40-member Board of Trustees. They are: Katherine Bradley ’86 of Washington, D.C., a longtime University volunteer and founder and president of CityBridge Foundation, a philanthropic organization that...Read more

Major fusion project gets the ax

Published in the July 16, 2008, issue

The Department of Energy is shutting down a major fusion-energy project at the Princeton Plasma Physics Lab after spending nearly $100 million on its design and construction. Continuing to assemble the National Compact Stellerator Experiment — described in...Read more