A world in a grain of sand

Paul Steinhardt’s long, improbable search for a natural quasicrystal

By Mark F. Bernstein ’83

With apologies to William Blake, who once urged us to “see a world in a grain of sand,” the speck that Paul Steinhardt is holding — glued to the point of a glass needle because you’d never find it again if it weren’t — is barely visible to the naked...

Warfare under the radar

Peter W. Singer ’97 explains how we can be at war and hardly notice

By Christopher Shea ’91

Peter W. Singer ’97’s job is to track and forecast trends in military affairs and war-related technology. To drive home how fast things are moving...

Princeton trails Ivy peers in enrollment of veterans

By Jennifer Altmann

In many respects, Joshua Haecker ’13 is like most Princeton undergraduates. As he rushes to Frist Campus Center on recent Tuesday, he’s thinking...

Senior thesis moves into the digital era

By Fran Hulette

No additional bound volumes of senior theses will join the 63,000-plus that are stored in Mudd Library’s basement. In a leap into the ­digital age,...

Upping the rigor in class

Nick Ehrmann *10

By Hilary Levey Friedman *09

Before enrolling Princeton’s Ph.D. program sociology and demography 2003, Nick Ehrmann *10 taught fourth grade through Teach for America...

Democracy: Will Arab countries follow?

By W. Barksdale Maynard ’88

Since the fall of the Soviet Union, democracy has blossomed worldwide. From 69 nations that were electoral democracies in 1994, the number has...