Contents • Total pleasure • Evnin gift endows professorship • Do brain cells regenerate? • History professor to be next Behrman fellow • Math major wins Churchill Scholarship • Culture of coffee, "syrup of soot" • Coach leads chess team to victory • 100 years in Asia • Nassau Notes • Athletics • Employment • Calendar

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April 5, 1999 Volume 88, number 22 | Prev | Next | Index      Joyce Carol Oates (photo by Mary Cross)    Total pleasure Oates says teaching provides "a privileged space" in her demanding life as a writer I always wanted to be a teacher," says Joyce Carol Oates, Berlind Professor in the Humanities. Happily for Princeton students, she has managed to realize that "earliest dream" of teaching, while at the same time becoming one of America's most celebrated writers.      She has taught creative writing here since 1978 to students she characterizes as "industrious, bright, imaginative and inventive."      In her creative writing workshops, she says, "My pretense is that all of us are editors for a magazine that publishes high quality fiction. more... Evnin gift endows professorship Trustee Anthony Evnin '62 has made a $2.5 million gift to endow the Evnin Professorship in Genomics.      The Anthony B. Evnin '62 chair is the first to be created for the new Institute for Genomic Analysis, which will take a multidisciplinary approach to examining how genes control the activities of living organisms. more...     Do brain cells regenerate? New discoveries about neurogenesis prompt reevaluation of cerebral development For the past several decades, scientists believed that brain cells were a finite resource; that unlike other cells in the body, those in the brain did not regenerate. But psychology professor Elizabeth Gould recently proved such is not the case for the hippocampal formation of the brain in Old World monkeys, primates closely related to man. more... History professor to be next Behrman Fellow Laura Engelstein, professor of history, has been named Behrman Senior Fellow in the Humanities for a four-year term, 2000-04.      As Behrman fellow, she will spend half her time in the Humanities Council, creating and teaching courses in Humanistic Studies and other interdisciplinary programs. She intends to develop a series of new courses, beginning next spring with Ideology and Indignation: Protest Literature of Modern Europe. Another new seminar will focus on European diaries and memoirs, exploring issues of memory, war, gender, colonialism, ethnic diversity and prejudice. more... Culture of coffee, "syrup of soot" The 1990s coffeehouse boom is nothing new -- its roots go back to the 1600s, according Brian Cowan, who is researching London's 17th-century versions of Starbucks and Small World Café for his dissertation in history.      In studying the origins of coffee's popularity and the complexity of London's coffee trade and its coffeehouse culture, he examines the cultural processes that shaped early modern capitalism into a complex global system of market exchange.      The coffeehouse "was a London phenomenon. London had more coffeehouses than all of Europe, except Constantinople," says Cowan. more... Coach leads chess players to victory By Sally Freedman Under the direc tion of "Coach Macauley," Princeton's Littlebrook School took first place in the Elementary division of the NJ Scholastic Championship Chess Tournament.      The event drew 700 students in grades K through 12 to the Double-Tree Hotel in Somerset on March 6 and 7.      Sophomore Macauley Peterson has been coaching Littlebrook's after-school chess program since he came to Princeton last year. more... Math major wins Churchill Scholarship Math major Ron Fertig '99 has won a Winston Churchill Scholarship for 1999-00. These scholarships, of which about 10 are awarded nationally in the United States, fund a year of graduate study at Churchill College, Cambridge University, for students in mathematics, the physical and natural sciences, and engineering.      "Many people see math as formulaic -- cut and dried," says Fertig, "but, in fact, it truly allows one to think creatively." He is writing his thesis on "a problem in number theory, namely that of excess rank in families of elliptic curves."      At Cambridge Fertig will enroll in a one year master's course that culminates in a certificate of advanced study in mathematics. The program, he says, "has a wide variety of options, including courses in math, physics and computer science."      At Princeton, Fertig has been active with the Student Volunteers Council and volunteered in the emergency room of the Princeton Medical Center.      Among the qualifications for the scholarship are "capacity for original, creative work" and "character, adaptability and a demonstrated concern for the critical problems of society." • Athletics Lacrosse. The Tiger men defeated Rutgers 13-3 on March 27; and the women beat Columbia 16-1 on March 24 and Penn State 9-8 on March 26 but lost to Georgetown 10-4 on March 28. Cristi Samaras '99 scored five goals against Penn State, bringing her career total to 164, breaking the record for career goals, male or female, at Princeton, held by Jesse Hubbard '98. (Men: 1-3; women: 5-2, 1-0 Ivy) Softball. Princeton defeated Rutgers 2-0, 11-0 on March 25, Hofstra 9-3 on March 27 and UConn 3-2 on March 28. (8-13 overall) Water polo. The Tigers defeated Richmond 14-0, James Madison 21-0 and Maryland 7-5 on March 27 and Georgetown 16-0 on March 28. (18-5-1, 8-0 CWPA)   top