Shirley M. Tilghman

Tilghman was the 19th president of Princeton University; she was the first woman to hold the position and the second female president in the Ivy League. Tilghman was also the first biologist to hold the Princeton presidency. She is the fifth foreign-born president of Princeton, and the second academic born in Canada to be elected to the position.

The 19th president of Princeton University has received more than 19 honorary academic degrees:

Tilghman also continues to hold leadership positions in the global scientific community. She was the 2015 president of the American Society for Cell Biology.

In 2013, Tilghman was elected to serve as the 2015 president of the ASCB

On how she hoped to spend her time during her sabbatical before returning to the faculty in 2014, Tilghman said, "I’m going to be an attentive grandmother." (In The Daily Princetonian article "Princeton’s biggest fan, Princeton’s biggest critic" by Luc Cohen, May 30, 2013.)

In August 2012, Tilghman was subpoenaed in her dual capacities as Princeton's president and as a member of Google's board, as part of a suit to block a board approved 2-for-1 Google stock split that the complaining party claimed would represent "an unfair effort to diminish its voting power while reserving voting rights for the company’s founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin". All members of the Google board received subpoenas. In the case of Tilghman, "records of donations, contribution pledges or promises made by Tilghman or the university to any charities, organizations, foundations or educational institutions that have any affiliation with Page, Brin, Schmidt or Google" were demanded.

On September 21, 2012, Shirley informed the Princeton Board of Trustees that she planned to step down as the 19th president of Princeton University at the end of the 2012 academic year. On April 21, 2013, it was announced that Christopher L. Eisgruber would succeed Tilghman as Princeton's president, effective July 1. Notable Princeton alumnus Peter Lewis 1955 said at the time, "Ideally, she'd be remembered for grooming a terrific successor."

The establishment of Whitman College, together with the reconstruction of Butler College, accompanied a significant reconfiguration of Princeton's residential college system, which now incorporates upperclassmen as well as freshmen and sophomores, providing new residential options and increasing opportunities for social interaction across the student body. In addition, an effort has been made to strengthen the relationship between the university and Princeton's independent eating clubs, where most upperclassmen take their meals, with the goal of enhancing the undergraduate experience of all students. In 2009, she appointed a committee chaired by Nannerl O. Keohane to review undergraduate women's leadership at Princeton.

During her presidency, Tilghman was embroiled in a court case pitting her against the family of a major donor to the university, the Robertsons. The children of the original donors, who were themselves Princeton alums, alleged that the university failed to apply the funds donated by their parents to the intended purpose, and asked for the funds to be restored to the family for use elsewhere. The donated funds had become joined with the university's general endowment, resulting in efficiencies and benefits in fund management and performance, which were not the subject of the Robertsons' complaints. The case was settled in 2008 with a payment to the family of $40 million in legal fees and another $50 million, plus interest, to a new foundation to support education for government service. Princeton retained the remainder of the money for the Wilson school.

On explaining the thinking that led her to found a backup day-care option for Princeton employees introduced in 2007, an idea that reflected her own career management while raising two children, Tilghman said, "For years, I had said that when I retired, I would start a company that hired retired people to sit for working mothers..."

In 2006, Tilghman was one of three sitting university presidents who served on the Duke University President's Council that investigated the university's wide-ranging actions after the lacrosse players scandal wherein members of the Duke lacrosse team were charged with various types of inappropriate and allegedly illegal off campus behavior.

While serving as president of Princeton, Tilghman accepted membership on the board of directors of Google, and served in that capacity from October 2005 to February 2018. As compensation for joining the board, she received 6,000 shares of stock that by 2005 were worth in excess of her Princeton compensation package that by 2003 had reached $533,057.

The women she has hired to senior positions include Amy Gutmann as provost, the second-most-powerful administrative position in the university, Anne-Marie Slaughter as Dean of the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs as well as her successor Christina Paxson, Maria Klawe as Dean of the School of Engineering and Applied Science, and Janet Lavin Rapelye as the Dean of Admission. Gutman would go on to lead the University of Pennsylvania as their president in early 2004; Klawe was chosen president of Harvey Mudd College in 2006. Slaughter took a leave from the university to serve as Director of Policy and Planning at the U.S. State Department, reporting to the Secretary of State at the time, Hillary Clinton. Paxson became president of Brown University in 2012.

Tilghman orchestrated an orderly transition from her other Princeton roles after being named president. David Botstein succeeded Tilghman as the Director of the Lewis-Sigler Institute of Integrative Genomics in 2003. Ned S Wingreen succeeded her as the Howard A Prior Professor of Life Sciences. She eventually closed her lab to dedicate her time fully to the presidency; in doing so, she assured that all students who had begun with her as adviser were able to successfully complete their degrees and associated research before the lab closed.

Tilghman succeeded Harold Tafler Shapiro and became the 19th president of Princeton University in 2001. She was elected Princeton's first woman president on May 5, 2001, and assumed office on June 15, 2001. Under her administration, the university built a sixth residential college, named in honor of alumna Meg Whitman, to accommodate an 11 percent expansion of the undergraduate student body (an increase of some 500 students), as recommended by a special committee of the Board of Trustees chaired by Paul M. Wythes. In 2012, Tilghman announced that she would step down from her presidency in June 2013. She was succeeded by the university's then-provost, Christopher L. Eisgruber.

Beginning in 2001, she served for a time on the Queen University's Chemistry Innovation Council in order to help the development of the Chemistry program at Queen's, which is based in Kingston, Ontario, Canada.

In 1998, she took on additional responsibilities as the founding director of Princeton's multi-disciplinary Lewis-Sigler Institute for Integrative Genomics, while continuing to study how male and female genomes are packaged and the consequences of the differences for regulating embryo growth.

She serves as a trustee of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and the Saudi Arabia’s King Abdullah University of Science and Technology. From 1993 through 2000, Tilghman chaired Princeton's Council on Science and Technology, which encourages teaching science and technology to students outside the sciences. In 1996, she received Princeton's President's Award for Distinguished Teaching.

Tilghman went to Princeton University in 1986 as the Howard A. Prior Professor of the Life Sciences. Two years later, she also joined the Howard Hughes Medical Institute as an investigator. She was a leader in the use of mice to understand the behavior of genes by researching the effect of gene insertion in embryonic cells.

During postdoctoral studies at the National Institutes of Health, Tilghman made a number of discoveries while a member of the team which cloned the first mammalian gene. She went on to demonstrate that the globin gene was spliced, a finding that helped confirm some of the revolutionary theories then emerging about gene behavior. As an independent investigator at the Fox Chase Cancer Center in Philadelphia from 1980 to 1986 and adjunct associate professor of Human Genetics at the University of Pennsylvania Tilghman continued to make scientific breakthroughs.

She married Joseph Tilghman in 1970. This marriage ended in 1983, leaving Shirley Tilghman with custody of their young daughter (Rebecca) and infant son (Alex). She attributes her successful balancing of a scientific career and caring for her family to organization and focus. Her goal was to not feel guilty while at work or at home, instead focusing on the task at hand.

Tilghman was born in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. As a young child, her father encouraged her interest in math. She graduated from Kelvin High School in Winnipeg, Manitoba and received her honours B.Sc. in chemistry from Queen's University in Kingston, Ontario, in 1968. She was a secondary school teacher in Sierra Leone, West Africa, in the Canadian University Services Overseas (CUSO) Program. Tilghman earned her Ph.D. in biochemistry from Temple University in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania under Richard W. Hanson. Tilghman was Hanson's first graduate student. Her PhD Dissertation was entitled "The Hormonal Regulation of Phosphoenolpyruvate Carboxykinase."

Shirley Marie Tilghman, OC FRS (/ˈtɪlmən/; née Caldwell; born 17 September 1946) is a Canadian scholar in molecular biology and an academic administrator. She is now a professor of molecular biology and public policy and president emerita of Princeton University. In 2002, Discover magazine recognized her as one of the 50 most important women in science.

Nineteen Princeton graduating classes, from 1941 to 2005, have made President Tilghman an honorary member.