Category Archives: Princeton University Archives

A Princeton Degree For a Yalie: George H.W. Bush Visits Princeton, 1991

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On May 10, 1991, Pres­i­dent George H.W. Bush came to Princeton’s cam­pus to receive an hon­orary Doc­tor of Laws degree and ded­i­cate the University’s Social Sci­ence Com­plex. This $20 mil­lion dol­lar project included the newly con­structed Bend­heim and Fisher Halls, as well as a ren­o­va­tion of Cor­win Hall. This Reel Mudd blog post includes video of both of these events, along with other scenes related to the President’s visit.

Pres­i­dent Bush’s visit was notable for sev­eral rea­sons. This cer­e­mony was Bush’s first appear­ance out­side of Wash­ing­ton DC after suf­fer­ing atrial fib­ril­la­tion while jog­ging at Camp David. In addi­tion, Bush’s speech (begin­ning at 00:50:26) was expected to be a major pol­icy speech, though a report indi­cates that the pres­i­dent rewrote the address en route to Prince­ton in order to tone down direct attacks on Con­gress (Daily Prince­ton­ian, Vol­ume 115, Num­ber 65, 13 May 1991). While still pep­pered with crit­i­cism of Con­gress, the President’s talk was mainly a dis­cus­sion of the Exec­u­tive Branch’s pol­icy mak­ing role com­pared to that of the Leg­isla­tive, and Bush’s per­sonal oppo­si­tion to cre­at­ing new bureau­cra­cies. The speech is also pep­pered with humor about the Princeton/Yale rivalry and the President’s place within it (51:42), as well as Bush’s health(50:39), the Nude Olympics (51:22), John F. Kennedy (52:02), and the Prince­ton alle­giances of Sec­re­taries of State George Shultz ’42 and James Baker ‘52  (52:28).
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Bush Receives his hon­orary degree from Pres­i­dent Shapiro *64.
His­tor­i­cal Pho­to­graph Col­lec­tion, Indi­vid­u­als Series, Box MP2

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Lobby Case Exhibition on Moe Berg

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moeberg.jpgPri­mar­ily known as a Major League catcher and coach, Mor­ris “Moe” Berg was also a spy for the Office of Strate­gic Ser­vices (OSS) in World War II, as well as a lawyer, lin­guist, and Prince­ton grad­u­ate. As a mem­ber of the class of 1923, Berg excelled scholas­ti­cally and ath­let­i­cally by grad­u­at­ing with hon­ors in Mod­ern Lan­guages (he stud­ied Greek, French, Span­ish, Ital­ian, Ger­man, and San­skirt), and play­ing first base and short­stop for the Prince­ton Tigers. While his bat­ting aver­age was low– Berg inspired a Major League scout to utter the phrase, “Good field, no hit”- he was known at Prince­ton for his strong arm and sound base­ball instincts.[i]

The exhibit high­lights the var­ied roles of Berg in its pre­sen­ta­tion of Prince­ton mem­o­ra­bilia from the class of 1923, Berg base­ball cards, and other mate­r­ial culled from Mudd’s two col­lec­tions on Moe Berg: The Moe Berg Col­lec­tion (1937–2007), and the newly acquired Dr. and Mrs. Arnold Bre­it­bart Col­lec­tion on Moe Berg (1934–1933). Also on dis­play is a 1959 base­ball signed by Berg and other Major League play­ers, on loan from Arnold Bre­it­bart. The Moe Berg exhibit can be located in the lobby of the See­ley G. Mudd Man­u­script Library, and will be on dis­play until August 31.
[i] Dasid­off, Nicholas. The Catcher Was a Spy: The Mys­te­ri­ous Life of Moe Berg. New York: Pan­theon, 1994.

Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory, An Overview

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Since 1951, the Prince­ton Plasma Physics Lab­o­ra­tory (PPPL) has con­ducted research aimed at devel­op­ing con­trolled nuclear fusion as an energy alter­na­tive to fos­sil fuels. Founded by Lyman Spitzer *38, the PPPL is a joint project of Prince­ton Uni­ver­sity and the US Depart­ment of Energy, located on Princeton’s James For­re­stal Cam­pus. This 1989 pub­lic­ity film high­lights the PPPL’s his­tory, projects, and progress toward its mis­sion of devel­op­ing sus­tain­able nuclear fusion.

The film’s focus is the PPPL’s main exper­i­ment in the 1980s and 1990s, the Toka­mak Fusion Test Reac­tor (TFTR). This device used mag­netic fields to con­tain a plasma made of hydro­gen iso­topes which were heated to a tem­per­a­ture so high that their nuclei fuse together into a new mol­e­cule, gen­er­at­ing energy as a byprod­uct. TFTR’s goal was to develop a process of gen­er­at­ing more energy through the fusion than the amount of elec­tric­ity required to power the reac­tor con­tain­ing the plasma. By 1989, TFTR’s suc­cesses included achiev­ing a then record-temperature of  200 mil­lion degrees Cel­sius and con­firm­ing exis­tence of a so-called “boot­strap cur­rent” within plasmas.

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