Woodrow Wilson, of the Class of 1879, 28th president of the United States won the Nobel peace prize for 1919.
Arthur H. Compton, B.S. College of Wooster, 1913, Ph.D. (physics) Princeton 1916, shared the physics award in 1927, while professor of physics at the University of Chicago, for his discovery of the change in wave length of scattered X-rays -- the Compton effect.
Clinton J. Davisson, B.S. University of Chicago 1908, Ph.D. (physics) Princeton 1911, shared the physics award in 1937, while a research physicist at the Bell Telephone Laboratories for his part in the diffraction of electrons by crystals, which furnished the first experimental proof that the electron, previously conceived of as a material particle, could also manifest itself as a wave. At Princeton he prepared his dissertation under the direction of Professor O. W. Richardson.
Edwin M. McMillan, B.S. California Institute of Technology 1928, Ph.D. (physics), Princeton 1932, shared the 1951 prize in chemistry, while professor of physics at the University of California, Berkeley, for his part in the discovery of transuranium elements.
John Bardeers, B.S. University of Wisconsin 1928, Ph.D. (mathematical physics) Princeton 1936, shared the physics award in 1956 for his part in the invention and development of the transistor at the Bell Telephone Laboratories, where he was a research physicist, and in 1972 shared his second Nobel physics prize for his work in superconductivity while professor of physics and electrical engineering at the University of Illinois. At Princeton he wrote his dissertation under the guidance of Professor Eugene P. Wigner.
Robert Hofstadter, B.S. City College of New York 1935, Ph.D. (physics) Princeton 1938, shared the physics prize in 1961, while professor of physics at Stanford University, for his determination of the size and shape of atomic nucleons. At Princeton he did his dissertation under the direction of Professor Walker Bleakney.
Eugene Paul Wigner, Dr. Ing. Technische Hochschule, Berlin 1925, who joined the Princeton faculty in 1930 and became Thomas D. Jones professor of mathematical physics in 1938, shared the physics prize in 1963 for his contributions to the theory of the atomic nucleus and elementary particles.
Richard P. Feynman, B.S. Massachusetts Institute of Technology 1939, Ph.D. (physics) Princeton 1942, shared the Physics award in 1965, while professor of physics at California Institute of Technology, for helping to solve the difficulties in carrying out quantitative calculations of the interplay between charged particles -- a contribution that opened up the field of quantum electrodynamics. At Princeton Feynman worked on his dissertation under the guidance of Professor John A. Wheeler.
Philip W. Anderson, A.B. Harvard University 1943, Ph.D. 1949, previously professor of theoretical physics at Cambridge University, England, and currently Joseph Henry Professor of Physics at the University and consulting director of the physical research division of Bell Laboratories, shared with two other physicists the physics prize in 1977 for their ``fundamental theoretical investigations of the electronic structure of magnetic and disordered systems.''
Princeton takes pride, if no credit, in three other Nobel awards.
Owen W. Richardson, a professor of physics at Princeton from 1906 to 1913 who left a strong mark on the department before his return to England, won the Nobel Prize in 1928.
Eugene O'Neill, who spent a year at Princeton as a member of the Class of 1910, received the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1936.
Edward C. Kendall, B.S. Columbia 1908, Ph.D. 1910, who shared the Nobel Prize in physiology and medicine in 1950 for his part in the discovery of cortisone at the Mayo Clinic, joined Princeton in 1951 as Visiting Professor of Chemistry at the Forrestal Research Campus, where he served until his death in 1972.