Paws for Excitement: Tiger Pride Points
In its 250-plus years, Princeton has had its share of notable firsts, award-winning faculty and alumni, and generous service to the nation and the world.
Need an orange-and-black booster? Below are a few points of alumni Tiger pride.
- Alumni live in 155 nations.
- There have been 18 alumni winners of the Nobel Prize.
- John Bardeen *36 received the Nobel Prize in Physics twice, in 1956 and in 1972, and the University’s first Madison Medal in 1973.
- George F. Kennan ’25 was a double winner of Pulitzer Prizes ‑ for history in 1957 and for his memoirs in 1968 – and he himself was the subject of a Pulitzer-winning biography by John Lewis Gaddis in 2012.
- National Humanities Medal: eight alumni and 10 faculty winners
National Medal of Science: one alumnus and 19 faculty recipients
Fields Medal (for mathematics): two alumni and five faculty winners - Among the scientific breakthroughs Princeton faculty and alumni have contributed:
- the discovery of general principles for identifying human disease genes, and enabling their application to medicine (Eric Lander ’78)
- detailed maps of the early universe that improved knowledge of the evolution of the cosmos (a team including Lyman Page Jr., the James S. McDonnell Distinguished University Professor in Physics, and David N. Spergel, the Charles A. Young Professor of Astronomy on the Class of 1897 Foundation, Emeritus)
- contributions to the detection of gravitational waves (researchers including Kip Thorne *65, who was awarded the Madison Medal in 2020).
- Special counsel Robert Mueller ’66, former first lady Michelle Obama ’85, and journalist Maria Ressa ’86 were selected for the 2019 Time 100, a list of the world’s most influential people.
- The American Whig-Cliosophic Society is the oldest college literary and debating club in the United States. Whig-Clio graduates include two U.S. presidents, two U.S. vice presidents and four U.S. Supreme Court justices.
- The House of Representatives has housed a Princeton alumnus every year since it first met in 1789.
- Princeton has won at least one athletic Ivy League title every year since 1957 (the league was established in 1956) and became the first university to notch 500 Ivy League championships on Feb. 9, 2020, when the men’s wrestling team won its matches over Cornell.
