Faculty, Alums Back Iran Deal

Five Princeton faculty members were among the 29 top scientists who signed a letter supporting the proposed Iran nuclear deal in August. The two-page letter was released as both opponents and proponents were lobbying Congress, which was expected to vote on the agreement in mid-September.

The letter was co-written by astrophysics professor Robert J. Goldston *77, former director of the Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory and an expert on nuclear energy. Other faculty members who signed were Nobel laureate Philip W. Anderson (physics); Christopher Chyba (astrophysics and director of Princeton’s Program on Science and Global Security); Harold A. Feiveson *72 (Program on Science and Global Security); and Frank von Hippel (physics and public affairs), who was assistant director for national security in the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy during the Clinton administration.

Other signers with Princeton University ties are Nobel laureates Frank Wilczek *75, at MIT, and emeritus professor David Gross, now at the University of California, Santa Barbara; Sidney Drell ’47, deputy director emeritus of the SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory and a 2011 National Medal of Science honoree; MIT professor R. Scott Kemp *10; and John F. Ahearne *66, director of the ethics program at Sigma Xi, the Scientific Research Society. Freeman Dyson, professor emeritus at the Institute for Advanced Study, and Rush Holt, a physicist who represented the Princeton area in Congress until this year, also signed the letter.