Biologist becomes first woman to lead Princeton - Nature Medicine

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Shirley Tilghman

Princeton University has appointed Shirley Tilghman as the first female president in its 254-year history. Tilghman, a molecular biologist, has been a professor at Princeton for 15 years and will become only the second ever woman president of an Ivy League University when she takes office on 15 June. Judith Rodin, a Professor of Psychology, Medicine and Psychiatry, was inaugurated as president of the University of Pennsylvania in 1994 and Ruth J. Simmons will become president at Brown University, on 1 July.

Tilghman, who has headed Princeton's Institute for Integrative Genomics for the past two years, recently appeared before Congress to argue on behalf of continued funding for stem cell research despite the vocal objections of pro-life suporters. A lifelong advocate of female leadership within the scientific community, she obtained her Ph.D. in biochemistry from Temple University and embarked on a research career studying mammalian embryonic development at the US National Institutes of Health.