Wednesday 30 December 2015

PRINCETON UNIVERSITY



PRINCETON UNIVERSITY




PRINCETON UNIVERSITY 

Princeton University is a private Ivy League research university in Princeton, New Jersey, United States. Founded in 1746 in Elizabeth as the College of New Jersey, Princeton was the fourth chartered institution of higher education in the Thirteen Colonies and thus one of the nine Colonial Colleges established before the American Revolution. The institution moved to Newark in 1747, then to the current site nine years later, where it was renamed Princeton University in 1896.

Princeton provides undergraduate and graduate instruction in the humanities, social sciences, natural sciences, and engineering.It offers professional degrees through the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs, the School of Engineering and Applied Science, the School of Architecture and the Bendheim Center for Finance. The University has ties with the Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton Theological Seminary, and the Westminster Choir College of Rider University. Princeton has the largest endowment per student in the United States.

Eisgruber is a 1983 graduate of Princeton University, where he earned an AB magna cum laude in physics and was inducted into Phi Beta Kappa. His senior thesis addressed topics in the theory of general relativity.He also studied political theory with Jeffrey K. Tulis ""Presidential Installation: The Ideal of a Liberal Arts University"". During his junior year at Princeton, he was a member of the Elm Club. In 1987 he received an MLitt in politics from Oxford as a Rhodes Scholar, and he earned a JD cum laude from the University of Chicago Law School in 1988,where he served as editor-in-chief of the University of Chicago Law Review.


The University has graduated many notable alumni. It has been associated with 41 Nobel laureates, 17 National Medal of Science winners, the most Abel Prize winners and Fields Medalists of any university (four and eight, respectively), ten Turing Award laureates, five National Humanities Medal recipients, 209 Rhodes Scholars, and 126 Marshall Scholars.Two U.S. Presidents, 12 U.S. Supreme Court Justices (three of whom currently serve on the court), and numerous living billionaires and foreign heads of state are all counted among Princeton's alumni.[quantify] Princeton has also graduated many prominent members of the U.S. Congress and the U.S. Cabinet, including eight Secretaries of State, three Secretaries of Defense, and two of the past four Chairs of the Federal Reserve. It is consistently ranked as one of the top universities in the world




New Light Presbyterians founded the College of New Jersey in 1746 in order to train ministers.The college was the educational and religious capital of Scots-Irish America. In 1754, trustees of the College of New Jersey suggested that, in recognition of Governor's interest, Princeton should be named as Belcher College. Gov. Jonathan Belcher replied: "What a hell of name that would be!" In 1756, the college moved to Princeton, New Jersey. Its home in Princeton was Nassau Hall, named for the royal House of Orange-Nassau of William III of England.

Following the untimely deaths of Princeton's first five presidents, John Witherspoon became president in 1768 and remained in that office until his death in 1794. During his presidency, Witherspoon shifted the college's focus from training ministers to preparing a new generation for leadership in the new American nation. To this end, he tightened academic standards and solicited investment in the college. Witherspoon's presidency constituted a long period of stability for the college, interrupted by the American Revolution and particularly the Battle of Princeton, during which British soldiers briefly occupied Nassau Hall; American forces, led by George Washington, fired cannon on the building to rout them from it.


John Witherspoon, President of the College (1768-94), signer of the Declaration of Independence
In 1812, the eighth president the College of New Jersey, Ashbel Green (1812–23), helped establish the Princeton Theological Seminary next door.The plan to extend the theological curriculum met with "enthusiastic approval on the part of the authorities at the College of New Jersey".Today, Princeton University and Princeton Theological Seminary maintain separate institutions with ties that include services such as cross-registration and mutual library access.

Before the construction of Stanhope Hall in 1803, Nassau Hall was the college's sole building. The cornerstone of the building was laid on September 17, 1754.During the summer of 1783, the Continental Congress met in Nassau Hall, making Princeton the country's capital for four months. Over the centuries and through two redesigns following major fires (1802 and 1855), Nassau Hall's role shifted from an all-purpose building, comprising office, dormitory, library, and classroom space; to classroom space exclusively; to its present role as the administrative center of the University. The class of 1879 donated twin lion sculptures that flanked the entrance until 1911, when that same class replaced them with tigers. Nassau Hall's bell rang after the hall's construction; however, the fire of 1802 melted it. The bell was then recast and melted again in the fire of 1855.


A Birds-eye view of campus in 1906
James McCosh took office as the college's president in 1868 and lifted the institution out of a low period that had been brought about by the American Civil War.During his two decades of service, 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. McCosh Hall is named in his honor.

In 1879, the first thesis for a Doctor of Philosophy Ph.D. was submitted by James F. Williamson, Class of 1877.

In 1896, the college officially changed its name from the College of New Jersey to Princeton University to honor the town in which it resides. During this year, the college also underwent large expansion and officially became a university.


In 1900, the Graduate School was established.

In 1902, Woodrow Wilson, graduate of the Class of 1879, was elected the 13th president of the university.Under Wilson, Princeton introduced the preceptorial system in 1905, a then-unique concept in the US that augmented the standard lecture method of teaching with a more personal form in which small groups of students, or precepts, could interact with a single instructor, or preceptor, in their field of interest.


Albert Einstein and Thomas Mann at Princeton, 1938
In 1906, the reservoir Lake Carnegie was created by Andrew Carnegie. A collection of historical photographs of the building of the lake is housed at the Seeley G. Mudd Manuscript Library on Princeton's campus.

On October 2, 1913, the Princeton University Graduate College was dedicated.

In 1919 the School of Architecture was established.

In 1933, Albert Einstein became a lifetime member of the Institute for Advanced Study with an office on the Princeton campus. While always independent of the university, the Institute for Advanced Study occupied offices in Jones Hall for 6 years, from its opening in 1933, until their own campus was finished and opened in 1939. This helped start an incorrect impression that it was part of the university, one that has never been completely eradicated.

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