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A New York Times profile of billionaire financier Carl Icahn ’57 asks “Does Icahn still make them tremble?” [New York Times]

Reviewer Douglas Brinkley calls David Remnick ’81’s new biography, The Bridge: The Life and Rise of Barack Obama, a “flawlessly written” exploration of the president. [Los Angeles Times]

Sophie LaMontagne ’00, co-owner of the popular D.C. bakery Georgetown Cupcake, will soon co-star in a TLC reality show, Cupcake Sisters. [Politico]

Headlines from the March 20 Gridiron Club dinner — a Washington tradition in which reporters spoof the nation’s politicians — highlighted the return of former President Bill Clinton, who delivered stories and one-liners as one of the event’s featured speakers. But the club’s 125th-anniversary celebration also included key contributions from three Princetonians: from left, David Wiessler ’64, Kathy Kiely ’77, and Todd Purdum ’82.

Weissler, a retired editor from Thomson Reuters, served as the show’s music chairman. Kiely, a reporter for USA Today, produced the night’s Democratic skit. And Purdum, national editor at Vanity Fair, capped the evening with a musical number called “There is a ’Bama-hood of Man,” to the tune of “Brotherhood of Man” from the musical How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying.

Princeton’s a cappella scene can claim at least partial credit for molding the musical talents of the alumni journalists — Purdum was president of the Katzenjammers as an undergraduate. And, as Kiely quipped in an e-mail to PAW, no Whiffenpoof songs were allowed in this year’s Gridiron program.

(Photo by Julia Malone)

Do you have a nominee for Tiger of the Week? Let us know. All alumni qualify. PAW’s Tiger of the Week is selected by our staff, with help from readers like you.

March 23 marks the 35th anniversary of one of Princeton’s brightest basketball moments — the men’s team’s victory over Providence in the championship game of the 1975 National Invitation Tournament at Madison Square Garden.

Led by captains Armond Hill ’85 and Mickey Steuerer ’76, Princeton went 18-8 in the regular season and won its last nine games, but Penn won the Ivy League, earning a spot to the NCAA Tournament. The Tigers accepted an NIT bid, and while the Quakers made a first-round exit in the NCAAs, coach Pete Carril’s team continued its winning streak, building a following with each successive trip to New York. The championship run was a crowning achievement for Tim van Blommesteyn ’75, left, and Brien O’Neill ’75, who appeared on PAW’s April 15, 1975, cover. Below, read Dan White ’65’s account of Princeton’s improbable postseason.

From PAW, April 15, 1975

‘The Smart Shall Take from the Strong’

Princeton wins the National Invitation Tournament

By Dan White ’65

It was the most unlikely finish of the past decade. Originally picked to win less than half of its games, Princeton’s basketball team went undefeated against its last 13 opponents and captured the National Invitation Tournament championship. In becoming the first Ivy school ever to win a post-season tourney, it triumphed over Holy Cross, South Carolina, Oregon, and Providence. Princeton’s winning streak, currently the longest of any major college, propelled it to 12th place in the national rankings of the Associated Press.

Yet what will be remembered about this season is not so much a single victory (like the upset of South Carolina), or brilliant play (Tim van Blommesteyn racing downcourt with a stolen ball), or frustrating loss (Brown edging Princeton out of the Ivy lead), as the euphoria that caught up everyone, university and town alike, in the end.

Put the ball in the basket. That’s what the game is all about.

There are lots of other skills involved in basketball - rebounding, passing, ball-handling - and the Princeton WOMEN’S BASKETBALL team matched sixth-seeded St. John’s in all of those aspects March 20 in the program’s first NCAA Tournament appearance. The only thing the Tigers couldn’t do was put the ball through the net, as they fell to the Red Storm, 65-47, in Tallahassee, Fla.

Princeton battled St. John’s to a draw on the boards and turned the ball over only four more times than its opponent. But the Tigers made just 28.3 percent of their field-goal attempts and hit one of 10 3-pointers, both season lows. The Red Storm shot 45.8 percent from the floor, pulling away late in the first half and never letting up. Perhaps most frustrating was the fact that Princeton took the attempts it wanted. But all too often the ball would go halfway down and pop right back out.

21 - Consecutive wins. Nationwide, only two teams enter the postseason with longer streaks: No. 1 Connecticut (72 games) and No. 2 Stanford (22).

80 - Assists by versatile forward Niveen Rasheed ’13, a team high. Rasheed also leads Princeton in scoring, rebounds, and steals.

22.4 - Princeton’s average margin of victory in 14 Ivy League games. Its closest contest was a 69-57 win over Columbia at Jadwin Gym.

New book: A User’s Guide to the Universe: Surviving the Perils of Black Holes, Time Paradoxes, and Quantum Uncertainty, by Dave Goldberg *00 and Jeff Blomquist (Wiley)

The author: A physicist who is interested in the interface between science and pop culture, Goldberg has contributed to Slate.com and appeared on WNYC’s Studio 360 to discuss time travel. An associate professor of physics who studies theoretical and observational cosmology at Drexel University and earned a doctorate in astrophysical sciences at Princeton, Goldberg believes — contrary to its popular reputation — that physics can be fun.

The book: Goldberg and Blomquist, an engineer at Boeing Aerospace, gives nonphysicists an overview of popular physics topics in this accessible, irreverent, and humorous book. They answer questions such as “Are black holes real, or are they just made up by bored physicists?” “How empty is space?” “Where do atoms come from?” and “Is it possible to build a Star Trek-type transporter or a working time machine?”

By Giri Nathan ’13

Research on the human genome will forever change the way scientists think about race, President Shirley Tilghman said at the annual James Baldwin Lecture March 9.

“Sequencing of the human genome has revealed that the proxies we have historically used to define race — physical characteristics, geographical origins — are not irrelevant,” she told an audience at Richardson Auditorium, but they do “need to be much more nuanced.”

In her talk, “The Meaning of Race in a Post-Genome Era,” Tilghman approached race from her own vantage point: that of a premier molecular biologist. Having done significant work with the Human Genome Project, she used insights from her academic field to examine the fraught issue of race.

Princeton (26-2, 14-0 Ivy) vs. St. John’s (24-6, 12-4 Big East)

(Photo by Beverly Schaefer)

March 20, 12:21 p.m.

Donald L. Tucker Center, Tallahassee, Fla.

TV: ESPN2, ESPN 360 (online)

Radio: WPRB, 103.3 FM

For Princeton, 2009-10 has been a record-setting season. The Tigers have won more games (26) and scored more points (71.6 per game) than any women’s basketball team in school history. Their current 21-game winning streak is a program best. They are the first Tiger team to post a perfect 14-0 record in Ivy games, and their NCAA Tournament seed — No. 11 in the Dayton Region — is the highest in league history. Not bad for a team that was picked to finish third in the Ivy’s preseason poll of media and sports information directors.

In the NCAA first round, Princeton will face another high-scoring team that outperformed expectations this season. St. John’s flipped its 4-12 Big East record in 2008-09 to a 12-4 finish this year, tying for fourth place in the conference and posting the program’s best record in 26 years. Five of its six losses this year were against NCAA Tournament teams. (The two teams that beat Princeton, Rutgers and UCLA, also reached the tournament.)

History

Twenty-eight years have passed since the Tigers and Red Storm met on the hardwood. (In fact, the last meeting, in 1981-82, predates the Red Storm nickname by more than a decade.) St. John’s holds a 3-0 advantage in the all-time series. St. John’s has played in the NCAA Tournament five times, advancing to the second round twice (1988 and 2006). Princeton is making its first NCAA Tournament appearance. Ivy League teams have played 18 NCAA Tournament games, winning just once — in 1998, when Harvard, a No. 16 seed, shocked top-seeded Stanford in Palo Alto.

Strengths and weaknesses

Both Princeton and St. John’s appear in the national rankings in several team categories. The Tigers had the No. 5 defense in Division I and ranked No. 41 in scoring offense. Starters Devona Allgood ’12, Niveen Rasheed ’13, and Lauren Edwards ’12 were each among the country’s 50 best shooters, based on field-goal percentage. Even in its weakest categories, Princeton ranks among the top third of Division I teams. The Red Storm is in the top 50 for scoring offense, scoring defense, fewest turnovers, assist-to-turnover ratio, and 3-point defense. Their most prominent flaw is free-throw shooting (61.5 percent, which ranks 316th among 332 Division I schools).

Last week, the National Science Foundation selected Subhash Khot *03 to receive the Alan T. Waterman Award, a prestigious grant of $500,000 over three years that supports one outstanding researcher under the age of 36. Khot, who earned a Ph.D. from Princeton’s computer science department and now works as an associate professor at New York University’s Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences, joins UCLA professor Terence Tao *96 as the second Princeton alumnus to win the honor in the last three years. (Past winners also include Edward Witten *76 and Charles Fefferman *69.)

Khot is a theoretical computer scientist whose interests include the fundamental phenomenon of “computationally intractable” problems — computational problems that cannot be solved quickly. “He courageously tackles some of the most challenging computational problems, all the while advancing computer security, with vast consequences for the broader security of our personal identities, commercial interests, societal institutions … even for national security as a whole,” said Arden L. Bement Jr., director of the National Science Foundation.

(Photo by Beverly Schaefer)

The 26-2 Princeton women’s basketball team earned a No. 11 seed in the NCAA Tournament and will face No. 6 seed St. John’s in the opening round Saturday, March 20, in Tallahassee, Fla. ESPN2 will broadcast the game, which begins at 12:21 p.m. EDT. Players, coaches, and friends of the program — including President Tilghman — gathered to watch the selection show March 15 at Triumph Brewing Co. in Princeton.

Co-captain Tani Brown ’10 said the NCAA bid is “the cherry on top of a sundae that’s taken four years to make.” For some on the team, the wait has not been quite as long, but the experience is still sweet. Freshman Niveen Rasheed, the Ivy League Rookie of the Year, called Princeton’s record-breaking run “something that’s so much bigger than all of us.”

This photograph of Lima at night is one of eight images in a solo exhibition of Carlos Jiménez Cahua ’08’s latest work on exhibit in the James S. Hall ’34 Memorial Gallery at Butler College through April 9.

In this series of photographs, titled Ciudad de los Reyes, Jiménez Cahua explores Peruvians’ relationship to their landscape. The people of Lima “don’t sculpt the land,” he wrote in a statement on his Web site. “The earth remains visible if not nearly unaltered despite their development. … The people of Lima quite literally merely scratch the surface — their relationship to the ground is not one of dominance, but of acquiescence.”

A native of Peru, Jiménez Cahua had his first solo exhibit in New York last summer at Anastasia Photo gallery space. It featured images of towns springing up in and around Lima’s desert landscape.

By Samantha Pergadia ’11

Harvard Professor Henry Louis Gates Jr. spoke to a packed audience in the Carl A. Fields Center March 5, explaining his current project on ancestry and his goal to implement genetics testing into history and science curricula for inner-city schools.

He began his talk by showing clips of African American Lives 2, the second PBS miniseries hosted by Gates. The series traces and reveals the lineage of several prominent African-Americans, including Chris Rock, Maya Angelou, and Tina Turner.

A renowned race theorist known for his book The Signifying Monkey, Gates has maintained an underlying interest in genetics and lineage. Gates said that humanists face a challenge of inserting themselves into discussions increasingly based on biological data. He said it will be difficult for them to “stop just saying stupid stuff about the social construction of race and figure out what that really means at the molecular level.”