In Short

PHILIPPE LANÇON, who was wounded in the Jan. 7 terror attack at the office of the satirical weekly Charlie Hebdo in Paris, recently had been selected as a visiting fellow by Princeton’s Program in Latin American Studies (PLAS) and was expected to spend next fall on campus. Lançon, a columnist for the magazine, was shot in the face in the attack that killed 12 people. He has reported extensively on Latin American culture and literature and has been a guest speaker for University courses. Lançon planned to teach a course at Princeton on “Writers and Dictators in Latin America” while researching a book on Cuba. “For now, the plan is to have him on campus in the fall,” Professor Rubén Gallo, director of PLAS, said in mid-January.

Princeton received 27,259 APPLICATIONS FOR ADMISSION to the Class of 2019, the highest total in the University’s history. The number includes 3,850 students who applied for early action; 767 were offered admission in December. Applicants will be notified of admission decisions by late March. About 1,300 students are expected to enroll in the fall.

The University reported that AUDREY DANTZLERWARD ’16 was found dead in her room in Edwards Hall Jan. 12. She was 22. The cause of death was not immediately determined, but the University said that foul play was not suspected. Dantzlerward was a member of the Wildcats a cappella group, the Princeton Women’s Mentorship Program, Princeton Presbyterians, and the Edwards Collective arts group.

CYNTHIA CHERREY will leave the University in August after five years as vice president for campus life. She will become president and chief executive officer of the International Leadership Association. President Eisgruber ’83 praised Cherrey as a “creative and energetic leader” who had recruited outstanding talent and improved Princeton’s residential life.

Finding and downloading documents of Albert Einstein’s — such as his school transcripts, love letters, or violin test results — has become a much simpler task. In December, the Princeton University Press, Caltech, and the Hebrew University of Jerusalem launched DIGITAL EINSTEIN, an online version of the Einstein Papers Project, which includes some 80,000 documents — everything from diary entries to letters to notebooks to postcards. The online documents cover the years up to 1923. Visit the archives at: http://einsteinpapers.press.princeton.edu.

Hollywood actor James Franco brings his love of poetry to the screen in a new film, The Color of Time, in which he portrays Pulitzer Prize-winning poet and retired Princeton professor C.K. WILLIAMS. The small-budget, full-length film, based on Williams’ 1983 book Tar, was written and directed by the 12 students Franco taught in a class on adapting poetry into film at New York University. Williams appears briefly in the movie, which captures snapshots of his life — from his childhood to his struggles to create new work. The Color of Time, which opened in theaters in December, is available online.

Courtesy Naumann family

ROBERT B.A. NAUMANN *53, who briefly counted Albert Einstein among his students during his 39 years on Princeton’s faculty, died Dec. 10 in Hanover, N.H. He was 85. Naumann began teaching in 1953 after earning his doctorate in chemistry and was the University’s only joint professor of chemistry and physics during his tenure. Shortly before Einstein’s death in 1955, Naumann and NYU Professor Henry Stroke visited his home and answered questions about the atomic clock, which Einstein said had puzzled him. Naumann authored many professional articles on nuclear chemistry and spectroscopy, and his work in this field led to the discovery of 21 radioactive isotopes and 12 nuclear isomers. He retired in 1992.