Additional money to support scholarships, humanities, life sciences
With Princeton's current fund-raising campaign fast approaching its initial goal of $750 million, the Board of Trustees voted on October 24 to raise the goal to $900 million. The five-year campaign, which concludes June 30, 2000, has already raised $665 million. "The generosity of so many alumni and friends over the past three years," President Shapiro said, "and a number of exciting new opportunities have inspired us to do more to secure the future of this university and to enhance our capacity to serve this nation and the global community."
The primary target for the additional money is scholarship funding. Last spring, Princeton announced a series of initiatives designed to make the university more affordable for low- and middle-income students, and the expanded campaign will seek to permanently endow these new policies.
The money will also be used to fund two new projects in the humanities. First, Princeton plans to create an interdisciplinary center for the study of religion that will explore the manifestations of religion in national life and international relations. Additionally, the university will launch a postgraduate fellowship program that will bring outstanding young humanities scholars to campus at the beginning of their careers in academia.
In the life sciences, Princeton will establish a state-of-the-art center for research in the emerging field of genomics. At the center, biologists, physicists, chemists, mathematicians, and computer scientists will work together to find practical applications in biology and medicine for the growing wealth of information about the human genome. The campaign money will build upon a recent $1.9-million grant from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, part of which is financing Princeton's undergraduate certificate program in biophysics -- designed to prepare a new generation of scientists for the "postgenomics world" that will arrive when the mapping of the human genome is complete.
So far, more than 73 percent of alumni have participated in the Anniversary Campaign for Princeton since its launch in 1995. The campaign has financed new programs in the environment, finance, and Jewish studies, and a wave of new construction, including a dormitory, a campus center, a social-science building, a stadium and track, and additions to the physics and music buildings.
Ask the professor
John A. Pinto, professor of art and archaeology
What is the most influential building of antiquity?
Among the celebrated monuments of the ancient world that have endured in our collective memory, one stands out: the Pantheon, constructed in Rome under the Emperor Hadrian (A.D. 117-138). Why? In part, simply because it survived. This great temple, dedicated to all the gods, stands structurally intact, embedded in the dense urban fabric that grew up around it in the course of the Middle Ages and the Renaissance. Its preservation is due, in large measure, to its consecration as a Christian church in the seventh century.
The Pantheon results from the inspired union of two forms, each embodying powerful associations: an imposing columnar portico derived from the Greeks and a vast circular interior crowned by a hemispherical dome. Light enters from a single source, an oculus at the center of the dome. As the sun moves through the sky on its daily and seasonal course, the angle of its rays entering the building constantly changes, animating the space and effecting a dynamic connection between the earth and the heavens.
The Pantheon's survival ensured that generations of architects would devote close study to its innovative structure and harmonious proportions, which inspired a wide range of creative responses. Donato Bramante, for example, in formulating his design for New Saint Peter's, adapted the Pantheon's dome, raising it up on a cylindrical drum with an encircling colonnade. Bramante's design was adapted in turn by Sir Christopher Wren for St. Paul's in London and by the architects of our nation's Capitol. Thomas Jefferson used the Pantheon as the model for the Library Rotunda at the University of Virginia.
In these, and countless other progeny, the Pantheon has left its stamp on the architecture of the western world.
Firestone preserves ancient manuscripts
Ancient
books interred with Egyptian mummies thousands of years ago are
coming back to life in Firestone Library. The Department of Rare Books
and Special Collections has a dozen such books, chiefly Pharaonic
funerary texts written on papyrus in Hieroglyphic or Hieratic script. Most of the
collection was donated to Princeton in 1942 by Robert Garrett 1897.
Until very recently, several of these books were still tightly rolled up and in extremely fragile condition. However, thanks to funding from the National Endowment for the Humanities, the papyri are being unrolled and repaired in the library's preservation office. When first unrolled, the papyri are like a giant and demoniacally complex jigsaw puzzle. Andrea Harland, under the supervision of Senior Paper Conservator Ted Stanley, has been painstakingly reassembling the pieces so that the scrolls can be seen for the first time by modern eyes.
The restored manuscript shown here is from a Book of the Dead made for a woman named (N)es-Ese, who was called a "chantress of Amon," a title indicating that she was either a high priestess or the wife of a high priest. The roll probably dates from the Ptolemaic Period (332-30 B.C.). Scenes from the afterlife of (N)es-Ese in the Field of Hetep are depicted in a series of pen-and-ink drawings toward the left side of the roll. More information about the project is available about the project from Don Skemer, curator of manuscripts (609-258-3186).
DORM DEDICATED: Princeton dedicated Vincent and Celia Scully Hall on Sunday, October 26. The 260-bed dormitory is the first to be built on campus since 1987, and it includes such amenities as kitchens, laundry and study rooms, and meeting rooms for educational activities. Scully Hall overlooks Poe Field, on the southern perimeter of the main campus. The new dormitory is a gift from University Trustee John Scully '66 and his family in honor of his parents. Scully, a graduate of the Woodrow Wilson School, lives in Ross, California, and is the managing director of SPO Partners & Co., a private investment firm in Mill Valley. Scully was a founding director of the Princeton University Investment Company (Princo), which manages the university's endowment, and in 1992 he established a professorship in finance. Calling residential life an "essential element of a Princeton education," Scully said he hoped the dorm "will further enrich the undergraduate experience." Designed by architect Rodolfo Machado, it cost $23 million.
ELECTION RESULTS: Democrat Rush Holt, who was the assistant director of the Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory for 10 years, was elected to Congress from New Jersey's 12th District, which includes Princeton. In an error that recalled the famous "Dewey defeats Truman" gaff of 1948, Holt's opponent, Republican incumbent Michael Pappas, was initially declared the winner due to a reporting mistake by Mercer County officials. "Obviously," Holt dead-panned to the Princeton Metro Times, "the people counting the votes ... were cooperating to build suspense." In other races involving Princetonians, Republican Christopher Bond '60 was reelected to the Senate from Missouri, and Republicans Jim Leach '64 from Iowa and Robert Ehrlich '79 from Maryland were reelected to the House of Representatives.