Curated playlist

Princeton University faculty

James M. McPhersonHistorian James M. McPherson helped lobby against a Disney theme park near the Manassas battlefield.
Andrew Fleming WestA stranger's 1910 death left Princeton $800,000 for a graduate college. Andrew Fleming West had long fought for one.
Woodrow WilsonWoodrow Wilson ordered his own supporters to vote against his League of Nations treaty.
David A. BellHistorian David A. Bell argues nationalism was built, not natural. He traces it in France from 1680 to 1800.
John Archibald WheelerJohn Archibald Wheeler spent decades calling a dying star a "gravitationally completely collapsed object."
Roger SessionsComposer Roger Sessions won a Pulitzer Prize for a whole career, then another for one concerto.
Joseph StiglitzJoseph Stiglitz explained why wages stay high in recessions even when workers are desperate for jobs.
Ben BernankeBen Bernanke, an American economist, used the alias Edward Quince during the 2008 financial crisis. One email from Mr. Quince reads: "We think they are days from failure. They think it is a temporary problem. This disconnect is dangerous."…
John von NeumannJohn von Neumann's father asked Theodore von Kármán to talk his son out of mathematics.
Paul KrugmanPaul Krugman turned to economics because psychohistory was fiction. Asimov's novels inspired him.
Arthur MendelColleagues recognized Arthur Mendel as the foremost American Bach scholar of his day.
Angus DeatonIn 2024, Nobel economist Angus Deaton said he had changed his mind on much of mainstream economics.
Eugene WignerPhysicist Eugene Wigner found that neutron radiation could make the graphite in a reactor swell.
John Forbes Nash Jr.John Forbes Nash Jr., an American mathematician, once mailed letters to embassies in Washington, D.C., announcing that he was founding a government. He signed them John Nash, Emperor of Antarctica, a title he believed he was in line to…
Daniel KahnemanDaniel Kahneman won the 2002 economics Nobel without ever taking an economics course.
Oskar MorgensternOskar Morgenstern was born on the 24th of January 1902 in Görlitz, a town in the Prussian Province of Silesia. According to a rumor, his mother was a daughter of Emperor Frederick III. Whatever the truth of that story, the child grew up…
Alfred EinsteinAlfred Einstein said Mozart's last three symphonies were never played in his lifetime. Later evidence showed otherwise.
Peter Brown (historian)Peter Brown argued that the late Roman world was a time of invention, not decline.
Hannah ArendtHannah Arendt's name is printed on journals, schools, scholarly prizes, humanitarian prizes, think-tanks and street signs. It also appears on stamps and monuments. She was born Johanna Arendt, and she grew into one of the most influential…
Walter Kaufmann (philosopher)At eleven, Walter Kaufmann converted from Lutheranism to Judaism. He later learned all four grandparents were Jewish.
Hilary PutnamHilary Putnam invented a leading theory of the mind, then spent years taking it apart.
Leopold InfeldPhysicist Leopold Infeld left Canada in 1950 after being accused of communist sympathies.
Elliot ForbesElliot Forbes, known to those around him as "El", was an American conductor and musicologist who lived from the 20th of August 1917 to the 9th of January 2006. Late in life, he made a habit of turning up at undergraduate performances.…
John RawlsJohn Rawls, an American philosopher, wrote a book of roughly 600 pages that protesters held up in front of government officials at Tiananmen Square in 1989. It was a dense academic treatise called A Theory of Justice. More than 300,000…
Kurt GödelIn 1931, Kurt Gödel proved that any sufficiently powerful math system contains true statements it cannot prove.
Yves BonnefoyYves Bonnefoy refused to call himself a poet. He said he was a critic or a historian.
Cornel WestYale punished Cornel West for a protest arrest by canceling his 1987 spring leave. He then commuted to Paris to teach.
John McCarthy (computer scientist)John McCarthy coined the term "artificial intelligence" in the summer of 1956. He also created the language Lisp.
Erwin PanofskyIn 1934, Erwin Panofsky argued a famous Flemish painting was really a legal contract.
George SteinerGeorge Steiner was born Francis George Steiner on the 23rd of April 1929. He was a literary critic, essayist, philosopher, novelist and educator, and he is described as both French and American. Harriet Harvey-Wood, a former literature…
Paul ErdősPaul Erdős, the Hungarian mathematician born in 1913, spent most of his adult life living out of a suitcase. Time magazine called him "The Oddball's Oddball". His biographer Paul Hoffman went further and described him as "probably the most…
Peter SingerPeter Singer is an Australian moral philosopher who holds the title of Emeritus Ira W. DeCamp Professor of Bioethics at Princeton University. Fellow philosopher Helga Kuhse judged him almost certainly the best-known and most widely read of…