Recently in Tiger of the Week

This fall, in the peak season for college applications, several high school seniors who attended Princeton’s Summer Journalism Program (SJP) will be getting a little extra help as they try to earn admission to some of the nation’s best universities. SJP staff remain in contact to assist students in the college application process, and if history is a guide, the SJP graduates should fare well: Four program alumni currently are enrolled at Princeton, and others have gone on to elite schools like Harvard, Yale, and Stanford.

The nomination for our Tigers of the Week — the SJP directors, pictured from left, Richard Just ’01, Greg Mancini ’01, Rich Tucker ’01, and Michael Koike ’01 — came from a program alumna, Tasnim Shamma ’11, a Daily Princetonian senior writer who said that without SJP, she never would have applied to Princeton.

Just, Mancini, Tucker, and Koike, four friends who worked together on The Daily Princetonian staff, created SJP after graduation in an effort to diversify college and professional newsrooms by giving students from low-income backgrounds a chance to explore and study journalism in a 10-day summer seminar. All student expenses, including travel costs, are paid by donors (mostly Princeton alumni).

Pianist Robert Taub ’77 has a deep knowledge of Beethoven’s piano sonatas, both as a musician and a music scholar. In the mid-1990s, he performed all 32 sonatas in a three-year span. Earlier this year, he authored a book called Playing the Beethoven Piano Sonatas, which Library Journal called “a close, careful reading of every aspect of performance from fingering to tempo.”

Taub majored in music at Princeton, earned a doctorate from Julliard, and has returned to teach courses on campus in recent years. His latest project is a comprehensive collection of the 32 Beethoven piano sonatas — the first in more than 100 years from the venerable publisher G. Schirmer — that will encapsulate the works in two volumes of annotated sheet music and 10 CDs that feature Taub playing the sonatas. He told James Barron ’77, the secretary for his class, that the new collection sums up many years of playing and studying the sonatas. By citing Beethoven’s own fingerings and markings, Taub said he is attempting “to portray an artistic vision that transcends the little black dots on the page.”

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.

Author Jonathan Safran Foer ’99 earned acclaim for the captivating prose in his first two novels, Everything is Illuminated and Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close. His newest work, the nonfiction book Eating Animals, is drawing a different sort of attention for its controversial, compelling take on, well, eating meat. Foer’s route to vegetarianism is described in an excerpt published in the food issue of The New York Times Magazine earlier this month. (In it, he briefly mentions wrestling with the morality of eating meat during his time as a philosophy major at Princeton.)

Foer shared some of his views during a recent edition of Larry King Live, and The Huffington Post has launched a series of essays responding to Eating Animals. Aaron Gross, founder of the advocacy group Farm Forward, wrote the introduction, describing the book as “part personal journey, part modern muckraking and a surprisingly candid and empathetic book on food.” Actress Natalie Portman followed with a review in which she said the book changed her “from a 20-year vegetarian to a vegan activist.”

(Photo courtesy Wikipedia)

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.

Peter Orszag ’91, director of the Office of Management and Budget, ranked No. 5 on GQ’s list of the most powerful people in Washington, D.C., published last week. (Other Princeton alumni on the list include Robert Mueller ’66, No. 19; Richard Holbrooke *70, No. 21; and Edward Yingling ’70, No. 24). The reason for Orszag’s high ranking, according to GQ: “For every must-have on Obama’s domestic agenda — cap and trade, saner immigration policies, educational reform — the pressure’s on Orszag to make sure it can’t be branded as, er, ‘socialism.’ ” The respect Orszag built while head of the Congressional Budget Office, the magazine added, has made him “extremely influential with centrists” in Congress.

This month, Orszag has been trying to wield a different sort of influence around Washington. The avid runner lauched the OMB Pedometer Challenge, an effort to help his co-workers in the federal government burn off extra calories. Federal employees who volunteer to wear pedometers and out-step the OMB director have a chance to win prizes, including free lunches and a “happy healthy hour” for the winning team. “When you measure something and have a competition surrounding it,” Orszag explained in a White House video, “it creates a strong incentive to do more of it.” Better health, he added, may be the “ultimate prize.”

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.

In soccer, national-team coaches ultimately are judged by how their teams perform at the World Cup, but just getting into the tournament can be a challenging process. This week, head coach Bob Bradley ’80 and the U.S. men’s national team earned its ticket to the 2010 World Cup in South Africa, winning in Honduras Oct. 10 to improve to 6-1-2 in qualifying matches.

For Bradley and his players, the celebration was cut short Oct. 13 when Charlie Davies, a 23-year-old forward on the team, was seriously injured in an early-morning car crash that killed one passenger. “Our thoughts and prayers are with Charlie and his family, as well as the people in the car and the families of the others involved,” Bradley said in a press conference. “As a team, we are relying on each other in a moment that has for sure hit us all hard.”

Bradley, the U.S. coach since December 2006, was a successful player at Princeton and coached the Tigers from 1984 to 1995, leading his team to the NCAA Final Four in 1993. In professional soccer, he coached the Chicago Fire to the Major League Soccer championship in 1998.

(Photo courtesy Wikipedia)

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.

David Goldstein ’84 with daughter Galit ’13

Friday, Oct. 9 will be a big day for David Goldstein ’84, a professor of aerospace engineering and engineering mechanics at the University of Texas at Austin. Goldstein is on the science team of NASA’s Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing Satellite (LCROSS) spacecraft, which will crash into the moon’s Cabeus crater at about 7:30 a.m. Eastern time, kicking up dust that researchers believe contains ice. A second spacecraft will follow, four minutes after the first.

If water ice is present, Goldstein explains, it could be a valuable resource for astronauts at a lunar station. As NASA’s Web site notes, “It will not be practical to transport to space the amount of water needed for human and exploration needs.” (Interested readers can follow the LCROSS spacecraft’s journey on Twitter.)

Goldstein, an expert in fluid dynamics, has worked to model the gas and dust dynamics of the LCROSS impact plumes. His research group also models comet impacts on the moon.

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.

Ralph Nader ’55 has been many things in his five decades of public life — a consumer advocate, an environmental activist, a best-selling author of nonfiction, and a frequent presidential candidate. This month, he added “novelist” to the list. Nader’s fiction debut is a 733-page story of “practical utopia,” titled Only the Super-Rich Can Save Us, in which a cadre of wealthy individuals sets out to solve America’s problems, from big business to the federal government.

The novel, published by Seven Stories Press, has earned kudos from a few high-profile readers. Warren Beatty (in the book, a California gubernatorial candidate) said the story “shows us how good [Nader] thinks things could be,” and Princeton professor Cornel West *80 hailed the book’s “moral substance.” Ted Turner, one of the novel’s super-rich heroes, said he was happy to be included, according to the Washington Post.

Victor Navasky, publisher emeritus of The Nation, told the Associated Press that he was skeptical about the chances of seeing Nader’s vision in the real world. “But Ralph is a prophet,” Navasky added. “He has been right about so many things the rest of us couldn’t imagine.”

(Photo courtesy Seven Stories Press)

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.

(Courtesy The Rockefeller University)

After earning her Ph.D. in biochemical sciences from Princeton in 1977, Elaine Fuchs embarked on a remarkable career in cell biology and molecular genetics. Her work has probed the properties of stem cells and enhanced our understanding of inherited diseases and cancers. She explained her most significant work, on the human skin, in a commencement address at the University of Chicago:

“I explore how [skin] functions at a molecular level to keep microbes out, to keep our body fluids in so we don’t dehydrate, and to protect us from the mechanical and physical stresses of our environment. Through elucidating the normal functions of the skin, my laboratory has been guided to the genetic bases of different types of inherited and acquired disorders of the skin, ranging from severe blistering disorders to skin cancers.”

Fuchs, a Rockefeller University professor, has collected a long list of honors and honorary degrees, and last week, she received word of another: Fuchs will be one of nine recipients of the National Medal of Science, the nation’s highest scientific award. She will be honored Oct. 7 at a White House ceremony led by President Barack Obama.

In a news release, Obama called the honorees “national icons, embodying the very best of American ingenuity and inspiring a new generation of thinkers and innovators.”

Fuchs is not the only National Medal of Science winner with Princeton ties. Astronomy professor James Gunn, best known for mapping the heavens with the Sloan Digital Sky Survey, also will be honored this year.

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.

A look back at our top Tigers

With PAW’s print edition entering its summer hiatus, the Tiger of the Week is taking a short break as well. We will return with new honorees in the fall, beginning Sept. 23. In the meantime, check The Weekly Blog for campus and alumni news updates throughout the summer months. And click on the photos below to see Tiger of the Week honorees that you might have missed. (You can read the names and class years of each alumna or alumnus by scrolling over the photos.)

Tiger of the Week: Frederick Ilchman ’90

Curator Frederick Ilchman ’90's latest work at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, "Rivals in Renaissance Venice," has been described in terms normally applied to summer blockbuster movies: "hot" (The New York Times), "breathtaking" (Newsweek), and "too good to miss" (The Boston Globe).

The MFA exhibition, which runs through Aug. 16, highlights Titian, Tintoretto, and Veronese, three legendary artists from the 16th century who were rivals in the densely-populated and artistically vibrant city of Venice. They often embedded critiques of each other's work in their paintings, including some of the period's best-known works.

Tiger of the Week: Matt Hawrilenko ’04

Matt Hawrilenko ’04 doesn’t really like casinos, which may seem like an occupational handicap for a professional poker player. But Hawrilenko makes his living online, playing high-stakes cash games against some of the world’s top players. A few times each year, he also tries his hand on the tournament circuit, and on July 3, he scored big, winning more than $1 million in the World Series of Poker $5,000 Short-Handed No-Limit Hold’em tournament.

Hawrilenko, our Tiger of the Week, started playing poker in his senior year at Princeton, when the online poker craze was hitting its stride. His first full-time job was at Susquehanna International Group, an options-trading firm that uses poker as a training tool. After two years, Hawrilenko realized that finance wasn’t for him, but he also found that he could make good money playing poker.

Tiger of the Week: Tora Harris ’02

Tora Harris ’02 started June 28 with a simple message on his Twitter feed: “Nice day for jumping.” Five hours later, the former Princeton high-jump star sent a follow-up that verified his first impression: “1st place! National champ again.” Harris had cleared the bar at 2.31 meters (7 feet, 7 inches) to win the high jump at the USA Track and Field National Championships in Eugene, Ore. Along with the national title, Harris earned a bid to the world championships in Berlin this August.

Harris showed remarkable talent at Princeton, winning seven Ivy Heps championships and sweeping the NCAA indoor and outdoor high jump titles as a senior. He has continued to excel after college, competing in the 2004 Olympics in Athens and winning national titles in 2006 (outdoor) and 2007 (indoor).

Harris told USA Track and Field that his latest win, in windy conditions, required making adjustments throughout the competition. He was one of four competitors to clear 2.28 meters (topping the mark on his third and final try), and he made the winning 2.31-meter jump on his second attempt. “I was just hanging in there and staying tough,” he said.

(Photo courtesy USA Track and Field)

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.