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Date: January 11, 1999
Hercules Corp. Endows Research Fund at Princeton University
PRINCETON, N.J. -- The Hercules Corporation has pledged $750,000 to the University in honor of Robert G. Jahn, a Princeton professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering and member of the Hercules board of directors. The Hercules gift will endow a fund to support novel research at the university. Jahn, a member of Princeton's Class of 1951, was dean of Princeton's School of Engineering and Applied Science from 1971 to 1986.
The newly created fund will be called the PEAR Fund, in recognition of the Princeton Engineering Anomalies Research Program that Professor Jahn established in 1979 and has directed over the past two decades. Created through the auspices of the Hercules Director's Charitable Awards Program, this fund will be used for annual awards to Princeton faculty or students in any discipline who are pursuing research topics that are not yet sufficiently developed to attract conventional funding sources. The new program will be administered by the University Research Board, which will select recipients based on the quality of their work and its potential benefits.
"We are grateful to Professor Jahn and to the Hercules Corporation for this generous gift," said Princeton President Harold T. Shapiro, "which will encourage thoughtful curiosity and the exploration of new ideas."
"Freedom of scholarly inquiry is a vital tradition of this University," Jahn said. "My hope is that this fund will provide support for those daring scholars whose research interests fall outside the box."
Jahn, a professor of aerospace sciences, has taught such subjects as gas dynamics, aerophysics, plasma dynamics and electric propulsion during his career at Princeton, which spans more than 40 years. A specialist in space propulsion research, he holds a BSE in Mechanical Engineering and a doctorate in physics from Princeton and has published hundreds of papers in noted research journals. Jahn has been a member of several NASA advisory committees on space technologies, and he is currently a vice president of the Society for Scientific Exploration. He is also a Fellow of the American Physical Society and of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics, and a member of numerous other professional organizations.
Since 1985, Jahn has served on the board of Hercules Corp., headquartered in Wilmington, Delaware, and for several years has been chairman of its Technology Committee. Hercules, which has offices around the world, manufactures chemical specialty products used in the home, office and industry. Its core products include thickeners for such products as latex paint, fiber for use in hygienic products and automotive textiles, food gums, pulp, paper and resins.
The gift creating the PEAR Fund is part of the Anniversary Campaign for Princeton, launched in 1995 to celebrate the 250th anniversary of the signing of the University's charter. The Campaign, which now has raised some $687 million, is seeking to raise a total of $900 million by the year 2000 to strengthen the University's programs of teaching, scholarship and research.