Two years ago, Ann Herendeen ’77 was featured in a PAW story about alumni authors who had decided to self-publish books. Herendeen marketed her novel, Phyllida and the Brotherhood of Philander, with advertisements and press releases, but she told PAW that she did not have the “thick skin” required to sell books through those channels. As it turns out, she didn’t need it.
A year-and-a-half after releasing her book, Herendeen received an e-mail from an editor at HarperCollins asking if the rights were available. Before long, she had a contract and a small advance. The newly packaged book — a romantic comedy about a rich gay gentleman, his wife, and his lover, set in early 19th-century England — was published in April to positive reviews. Library Journal called it “a brilliant exploration of love, sexuality, class, and gender, but above all, it is a wonderful love story.”
Going from self-published author to “really published,” Herendeen says, “feels like being Cinderella after her first visit from her fairy godmother. Now I get to go to the ball!” By Katherine Federici Greenwood
Names in the news
Alumnus Robert Caro ’57 and professors Paul Muldoon and Kwame Anthony Appiah will be among the eight scholars and artists inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Letters May 21. … Boston Red Sox president and CEO Larry Lucchino ’67 will deliver the commencement address at Boston University May 18. … Forbes profiled Thomas Wu ’94, a managing director of Hopewell Holdings in Hong Kong and son of Gordon Wu ’58. While Wu admitted that he has much to prove, in part because of his famous father, the magazine said he deserves credit for aiding Hopewell Holdings’ recent turnaround.
The Sun-Times asked prominent women in Chicago what they would change if they ran the city. Ariel Capital president Mellody Hobson ’91 suggested adding a “financial literacy” program to the curriculum in public schools. … In the May 12 New Yorker, Malcolm Gladwell highlighted the work of technology innovator and sometimes dinosaur-bone hunter Nathan Myhrvold *83. … The Washington Post marked the passing of Pulitzer Prize-winning author William Warner ’43. Warner’s first career was in the Foreign Service, but he became better-known for his writing, beginning in 1977 when the first of his four books, Beautiful Swimmers: Watermen, Crabs and the Chesapeake Bay, won the Pulitzer for nonfiction.
PAW on the ’Tube
PAW’s online coverage of Reunions 2007 captured these scenes from the P-rade as well as other campus events that can be viewed at PAW’s YouTube channel (youtube.com/PAWstaff) or on PAW’s Web site. The YouTube channel also features archived PAW videos of the November 2006 bonfire, classic bonfires from 1926 and 1948, and coverage of Reunions 2006.
Other Princeton-related YouTube videos worth a look include footage of today’s students playing intramural dodgeball and broomball, a brief clip of a 2007 University Orchestra concert in Budapest, the Princeton University Band’s irreverent recruiting video, and a mid-1960s selection from I’ve Got a Secret with Steve Allen, featuring a classic Triangle Club kickline.
Think you know the Princeton campus? The Princetoniana Committee has a quiz for you. Before you march in the P-rade, use your walking shoes and the help of friends and family members to track down answers to these 10 questions. Each object, architectural detail, building, or place is located on campus, stretching from the Graduate College to the E-Quad. Send your answers to PAW for a chance to win one of our prizes. Entries must be received before June 4, when we will post the answers on The Weekly Blog.
Where is…
1. A building that once served as the nation’s capitol for the Continental Congress?
2. This display containing skeletons of a modern and a prehistoric tiger?
3. The “Fountain of Freedom,” in the center of which is one of the largest bronze castings in the world?
4. The grave of Nathaniel FitzRandolph, donor of Princeton’s original campus?
5. This parking garage, which won a design award from the American Institute of Architects?
6. The statue of a dean who argued about the location of the Graduate School with a future president of the United States—and won the argument?
7. A building in the shape of an octagon?
8. This stained-glass window, called the “Seven Liberal Arts Window”?
9. A flag from the aircraft carrier U.S.S. Princeton IV, which sank during a battle in 1944?
10. This word carved into the pavement?
Images courtesy of the Princetoniana Committee. Visit the Princetoniana section of the Princeton University Website for more Princeton lore.
Inside PAW-litics
PAW will host its first Reunions panel discussion, “PAW-litics 101,” on Friday, May 30, at 1:30 p.m. in the Frist Campus Center’s air-conditioned Film/Performance Theater (room 301). The event will provide an insider’s look at the 2008 presidential campaign from alumni journalists Jim Kelly ’76, managing editor of Time Inc.; Kathy Kiely ’77, a reporter for USA Today; moderator Joel Achenbach ‘82 of The Washington Post; Todd Purdum ’82, national editor at Vanity Fair; Juliet Eilperin ’92, a reporter at The Washington Post; Rick Klein ’98, senior political reporter for ABC News; and Andrew Romano ’04, an associate editor at Newsweek.
More information about the full calendar of Reunions events can be found online at the Alumni Association’s Web site.
Reading period
John Edwards ’08 catches up on some reading on Cannon Green May 7, during the spring semester reading period. Spring finals begin May 14. Photo by Frank Wojciechowski
Seniors honored for top research
Since 2004, the Princeton Undergraduate Research Symposium has provided students with a chance to share some of what they have learned in their independent work with a wider audience - and win prizes in the process.
This year, 42 undergraduates participated in the event’s poster presentations, held in the Carl Icahn Lab atrium March 7. Contestants were judged on a range of criteria that included creativity, scientific thought, demonstration of skill, and communication. Biology and engineering were the most popular categories, drawing 20 and 15 entrants, respectively. Molecular biology concentrator Ryan Corces-Zimmerman ’08 earned the top overall prize and first place in the biology category for his study on how a specific protein affects the longevity of C. elegans, a worm commonly used in lab research. Jerry Moxley ’08, another biologist, placed second overall for his work examining how spotted antbirds search for their prey. Raleigh Martin ’08, a civil and environmental engineer who won the engineering category, placed third overall for his senior thesis examination of Beijing’s summer-season climatology.
Other honorees included Kevin Kung ’08, who earned first place in physical sciences and won the Interdisciplinary Award, and Catherine Digovich ’08, the first-place winner in social sciences.
Princeton astronomer recalls a once-in-a-lifetime star sighting
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, saturating the satellite’s view “as if we had pointed a digital camera directly at the sun.” That light, Soderberg and colleague Edo Berger later confirmed, was a supernova — an explosion of a massive star.
Seeing a supernova is not unusual — the stars are brighter than 100 billion suns. But in the vastness of space, there generally is a delay of days or weeks between a supernova’s explosion and its discovery by astronomers. By then, “most of the fireworks are already over,” Soderberg said.
Soderberg is the first astronomer to observe a supernova in the act of exploding. Her finding, named Supernova 2008D, is described in a paper to be published in Nature May 22, and in a May 21 teleconference, she described the experience as being at the right place, at the right time, with the right telescope. “I truly won the astronomer’s lottery,” she said.
Soderberg had been studying another supernova, SN 2007uy, in the spiral galaxy NGC 2770, located 90 million light years from Earth in the constellation Lynx. Seeing two supernovae in the same galaxy in a matter of weeks is extraordinarily unusual — a one-in-10,000 chance, she estimates. A typical galaxy produces one supernova every 100 years.
The Princeton group’s discovery sparked a campaign of observations from telescopes in the United States and beyond, including the Hubble Space Telescope.
The use of an X-ray flash, rather than optical observation, to detect a supernova marks a “paradigm shift” and could lead to more discoveries, according to Robert Kirshner, a professor of astronomy at Harvard University and one of Soderberg’s mentors. Kirshner also stressed that luck was only part of Soderberg’s find. “If you’re active and you’re energetic, it helps a lot because you manufacture your own luck, in a way,” he said. “There’s nobody who’s more focused and energetic than Alicia Soderberg.”
Courtesy of NASA/Swift/Skyworks Digital/Dana Berry
This digital animation shows an artist’s rendering of the shock wave discovered by Princeton University’s Alicia Soderberg and a team of scientists. A supernova is born when the core of a massive star (the blue orb) runs out of nuclear fuel and collapses under its own gravity to form an ultradense object known as a neutron star. The shock wave erupts and ripples through the star, emitting X-rays (seen here as bright white light). The remnants of the explosion cool (the white light gets smaller), and then the visual light from the supernova glows (seen as yellow clouds). The fading white dot in the middle of the animation represents a newly born neutron star.
Correction: An earlier version of this post misstated the frequency at which supernovae occur in a galaxy. It is about once every 100 years.
Down and up, 1,000 times
On May 5, with his hands pressed against the hardwood of the Princeton Seminary gym, Ryan Bonfiglio ’01 completed 1,000 push-ups in 20 minutes and 50 seconds, besting a mark from The Guinness Book of World Records set by fitness guru Jack LaLanne on the national television show You Asked For It in 1956.
The high-speed push-ups, completed in sets of 25, were recorded by a digital camera that also captured Bonfiglio’s “official timer” - a wristwatch positioned on the floor.
Bonfiglio, a former Princeton wrestler, is not new to breaking world records. In 2004, he set the record for most pull-ups in one hour: 507. That record was broken when a competitor chinned-up over 600 times in 60 minutes. Bonfiglio contested the mark, arguing that chin-ups and pull-ups use different muscles and therefore are different exercises, but the Guinness Book officials were firm in their refusal to differentiate.
LaLanne’s “quickest completion of 1,000 push-ups” category has been retired by the The Guinness Book of World Records, so Bonfiglio is looking to challenge a related mark: most push-ups in one hour. Record-holder Roy Berger, a Canadian who was proclaimed “Mr. Push-up” by Muscle & Fitness Magazine, completed 3,416 push-ups in an hour in 1998.
Photo courtesy of Benjamin Robinson
Names in the News
With the Boston Celtics rolling toward the NBA’s Eastern Conference finals, ESPN told the story of how Celtics CEO Wyc Grousbeck ’83 came back home to Boston and stepped into one of the most cherished corner offices in town. … Wendy Kopp ’89’s Teach for America continues to grow, according to a recent AP report, and Kopp expects even more expansion in the next two years, as the group aims to increase its corps of first- and second-year teachers from 5,000 to 8,000. … Princeton musicologist Simon Morrison *97 is helping to revive Prokoviev’s ballet “Romeo and Juliet” for a series of July performances at Bard College. … Two hundred years ago, China was the world’s greatest economic power, Princeton economics professor Burton Malkiel *64 told CFAs at a recent conference. Malkiel expects that China will regain that position in the next 20 years. … William Zinsser ’44 wrote a May 18 New York Times essay about the most peculiar Manhattan office he ever occupied and its most memorable perk: a fireman’s pole that connected the fifth and fourth floors.
Reunions 2008 promises to combine annual favorites, like the P-rade, alumni-faculty forums, and fireworks, with a few new additions. The Class of 1983 will host the first reunion at Whitman College, alumni musicians will face off in friendly competition at the first Battle of the Bands, and University officials will talk with alumni about plans for the renovated Princeton Campus Club, scheduled to open in the fall.
PAW’s 2008 Reunions Guide, available at registration desks, includes brief previews of the major reunions, a feature about the comfort foods that fuel students’ study breaks, profiles of alumni Ward Chamberlin ’43 and Kelly Alford ’83, a crossword puzzle from Graham Meyer ’01, a story about David Rieff ’78’s latest book, an article about a successful alumni ice hockey squad, and more. UPDATE [May 29]: The 2008 Reunions Guide is now available online.
The P-rade begins Saturday, May 31, at 2 p.m. Reuners can check this year’s route and find the meeting places for the major classes on the interactive map below.
Leaders from government, law, the sciences, and other fields will talk about hot topics and answer questions at panel discussions and presentations during Reunions. Notable alumni scheduled to speak include White House Chief of Staff Joshua B. Bolten ’76 (“The Executive Office of the President: Theory and Practice,” May 30, 2 p.m., Robertson bowl 16); Hong Kong entrepreneur Sir Gordon Y.S. Wu ’58 (“What to Do About Free Trade and China,” May 30, 2:30 p.m., McCosh 50); and Georgetown men’s basketball coach John Thompson III ’88 (“Is There an Honor Code in Sports?,” May 30, 9:15 a.m., McCosh 50). To read detailed daily calendars of Reunions events from the Alumni Association, follow these links: Thursday, May 29 | Friday, May 30 | Saturday, May 31 | Sunday, June 1
PAW-litics 101: The reading list
On Friday, May 30, PAW will host its first Reunions panel discussion, “PAW-litics 101,” at 1:30 p.m. in the Frist Campus Center’s air-conditioned Film/Performance Theater (room 301). The event will provide an insider’s look at the 2008 presidential campaign from alumni journalists. To read some of what the panelists have been writing about this year’s candidates, follow the links below.
Todd Purdum ’82, the national editor at Vanity Fair wrote a feature story about John McCain in February 2007 and another about Barack Obama in March 2008. Purdum also talks politics on the VF Daily blog.
Reporters Kathy Kiely ’77 and Juliet Eilperin ’92 each have written extensively about the campaign. Click here for a list of links to Kiely’s USA Today stories and here for links to Eilperin’s Washington Post articles.
PAW-litics panelists also have published their insights on blogs, including ABC News’ The Note, written by Rick Klein ’98; Newsweek’s Stumper, written by Andrew Romano ’04, and Achenblog, the home page of PAW-litics moderator and Washington Post reporter Joel Achenbach ’82.
Two years ago, Ann Herendeen ’77 was featured in a PAW story about alumni authors who had decided to self-publish books. Herendeen marketed her novel, Phyllida and the Brotherhood of Philander, with advertisements and press releases, but she told PAW that she did not have the “thick skin” required to sell books through those channels. As it turns out, she didn’t need it.
2. This display containing skeletons of a modern and a prehistoric tiger?
5. This parking garage, which won a design award from the American Institute of Architects?
8. This stained-glass window, called the “Seven Liberal Arts Window”?
10. This word carved into the pavement?
Inside PAW-litics
Reading period
