Newsmakers

“Worms From Hell!” — a B-movie title? Wrong — it’s the (loose) translation of the name of a half-millimeter worm species discovered by Princeton geoscientist TULLIS ONSTOTT *81 more than a mile underground in South Africa. The species, Halicephalobus mephisto, is the first multicellular organism found at such depths outside of the world’s oceans. The discovery by Onstott and his team, reported in Nature June 1, may indicate what sorts of creatures could survive in inhospitable nooks elsewhere in the galaxy.  

LOCOMOTIVES   Alumni continue to move into top academic jobs: Historian CAROL QUILLEN *91 was named president of Davidson College in North Carolina May 26, becoming the first woman to head the once all-male institution. ... Woodrow Wilson School alum ERIC P. SCHWARTZ *85 will be the dean of the University of Minnesota’s Humphrey School of Public Affairs, after serving as assistant secretary of state for population, refugees, and migration. ... Attorney STEPHEN FERRUOLO *79, who has a Princeton Ph.D. in history, joins the University of San Diego School of Law as its new dean. ... HOLLY MCGARVIE ’09 has received coverage in The Washing­ton Post and by Voice of America for her efforts to bring lacrosse to an inner-city high school in Washington, D.C. ... Two alumni announced plans to run for the U.S. Senate: Massachu­setts Democrat BOB MASSIE ’78 and Texas Republican TED CRUZ ’92. ... Former New Jersey Gov. BRENDAN BYRNE ’49 was inducted into the state Hall of Fame. ... DAN FEYER ’99 won the American Crossword Puzzle tournament in March for the second straight year. Visualthesaurus.com said: “He is, in effect, the crossword Watson, IBM’s Jeopardy!-conquering computer.”