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February 28, 2000
Seniors Michael Bosworth, Benjamin Sommers Receive Top Princeton Honor
PRINCETON, N.J. -- Seniors Michael Bosworth and Benjamin Sommers were named winners of the Moses Taylor Pyne Prize, the highest honor conferred on a Princeton undergraduate, at Alumni Day ceremonies held on the Princeton University campus February 26.
Both Bosworth, of Great Neck, N.Y., and Sommers, of Cincinnati, Ohio, have earned numerous honors throughout their careers at Princeton. Bosworth, a history major, will enter Yale Law School after graduation. Sommers is majoring in English and plans to obtain degrees in medicine and in health policy.
The prize they shared is a memorial to Moses Taylor Pyne, a member of the Class of 1877.
Michael Bosworth
Bosworth created and implemented the Princeton Millennium Project, a lecture series with talks by Lech Walesa, historian Doris Kearns Goodwin and writer Toni Morrison, a Princeton professor. "The coming of the new millennium offered the world an extraordinary opportunity to reflect on our past and to imagine the future," Bosworth said. "That was not an opportunity that the Class of 2000 wanted to see pass us by here at Princeton."
He is writing his senior thesis on ideological shifts in the thinking of George Clinton, governor of New York and vice president during Thomas Jefferson's second administration. He has already earned top academic honors, including the President's Award for Academic Achievement, the Carter Kim Combe '74 Prize for the best junior paper in the History Department, and the Koren Prize for the best overall record in History in the junior year. His junior paper centered on Earl Warren's advocacy of the internment of Japanese-Americans during World War II.
Outside the classroom, Bosworth has served as a member of the History Department's Undergraduate Advisory Committee and the Committee on Undergraduate Admission and Financial Aid. He has been a leader in the Center for Jewish Life, chairman of the Forbes College Council and resident adviser in Forbes College. Early in his freshman career, he took the lead in establishing summer scholarships for Forbes freshmen so fellow students could pursue worthwhile but unpaid summer positions.
His off-campus positions included stints as speechwriting intern for Andrew Cuomo, secretary of the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, and for New York City Major Rudy Giuliani.
Bosworth's parents are Dr. Jay and Judi Bosworth.
Benjamin Sommers
Sommers, an English major who also is pursuing a certificate in the Program in Jewish studies, has received no grade lower than A at Princeton -- all while taking an unusually heavy course load spanning subjects such as biochemistry, vertebrate biology and ethics and public policy. Earlier this year he was named Class of 1939 Princeton Scholar, an honor awarded for highest academic standing in all previous years. He received the Manfred Pyka Memorial Physics Prize for exceptional performance in physics in 1998.
At the same time, Sommers has been deeply involved in community work. He was a director of staff for the Princeton Model Congress, which hosts an annual conference on the legislative process for more than 800 high school students. Since his freshman year, he has worked as a tutor and peer educator for the Sexuality Education, Counseling and Health organization on campus.
Off campus, Sommers has taught Hebrew at local synagogues and has worked for the American Jewish Committee. He was chosen to attend a conference at the Health Policy Leadership Institute in Washington D.C. in 1999. During vacations, Sommers has volunteered in the Trauma Division at the University of Cincinnati Hospital and worked in a hematology/oncology practice in Philadelphia.
Sommers' deep interest in the public-policy side of medicine stems from both his community experiences and his Princeton coursework. "I was always interested in science and medicine as a career option, but I came to the realization that there was this other half of health care that I had never thought about," he said. "What affects whether a patient ever gets in the door? What were the larger policy issues that affected who gets access to health care? The notion that everyone gets what is best for them is just not true."
For his senior thesis, Sommers is studying the cultural dialog between Jews and African-Americans in literature. He has been accepted to medical schools and health-policy graduate programs.
Sommers' parents are Dr. Jeff and Dr. Lynn Sommers.