April 2008 Archives

Acclaimed writer Jonathan Safran Foer ’99, whose novel Everything is Illuminated grew out of his Princeton creative writing thesis project, reads to an audience at 185 Nassau as part of the Althea Ward Clark W21 Reading Series.

The reading series has featured such past speakers as Paul Auster, Don DeLillo, Oscar Hijuelos, Jhumpa Lahiri, Haruki Murakami, and Salmon Rushdie. This Wednesday, April 30, will feature students from the Spring 2008 Program in Creative Writing, and next Wednesday and Thursday, May 6 and 7, creative writing senior thesis students will present their work.

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Photo: Jon Roemer

In the fall of 1896 the College of New Jersey celebrated its 150th anniversary and officially became Princeton University. To mark the occasion, the town erected this triumphal arch at one end of Nassau Street, emblazoned “From the Town to the University,” while the college erected a matching arch at the other end of the street.

Princeton town-gown relations are celebrated each year during the last weekend of April at Communiversity. The event, co-sponsored by students at the University and the Arts Council of Princeton, promotes cultural awareness on both sides of Nassau Street with fun, food, and festivities.

This year’s event takes place, Saturday, April 26 from noon to 4 p.m.

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Photo courtesy of Princeton University Archives.

Student typing his senior thesis, 1940.

April marks a rite of passage shared by all Princetonians—the senior thesis. “More than any other academic experience, the senior thesis embodies the defining characteristics of undergraduate education at Princeton,” writes Dean of the College Nancy Malkiel in “The Thesis: Quintessentially Princeton,” published by the Office of the Dean of the College.

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Photo courtesy of Princeton University Archives.

Times have really changed in the Physics Department. Hardly anyone wears a tie now to work on their thesis, like these two seniors.

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Photo courtesy of Princeton University Archives.

Interior view of the vacuum chamber of the National Spherical Torus Experiment at the Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory.

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Photo courtesy of Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory.

Fabrication of a modular magnetic field coil for the National Compact Stellarator Experiment under construction at the Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory.

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Photo courtesy of Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory.

In 1952 Lyman Spitzer proposed this design for a “stellerator,” a device for confining and heating ionized hydrogen gas to release fusion energy for the production of power. With the support of the US Atomic Energy Commission as well as the University, he began Project Matterhorn, a program of controlled thermonuclear research effort that was the precursor of the Princeton Plasma Physics Lab. Born in 1914, Spitzer earned his PhD at Princeton in 1938 and joined the faculty in 1947. A giant of 20th-century astrophysics, he died in 1997.

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Photo courtesy of the Princeton University Library.

“Plasma Table” by Elle Starkman and Andrew Post-Zwicker, Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory

This photograph was awarded First Prize in the 2005 Princeton University Art of Science Competition.

The Art of Science Competition is a celebration of the aesthetics of research and the ways in which science and engineering inform art and vise versa.

According to Starkman and Post-Zwicker, “A dust cloud of silica microspheres is illuminated by laser light and suspended in a plasma. The dust cloud is approximately 0.5 inches high and floats in a conical shape between the dust tray and an electrode as long as the plasma is maintained. Fundamental dust cloud properties and dynamics have applications ranging from plasma processing to space plasmas.”

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Photo courtesy of Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory.