In response to: The Senior Thesis at 100: Back to the Future
Current issue
November 2024
Princetonians lead think tanks; the perfect football season of 1964; Nobel in physics.
As the author of an unapologetically desultory thesis on the picaresque hero 53 years ago, I have utmost admiration for engaging theses which slipped the bonds of the Mudd Manuscript Library. Be forewarned that your list is incomplete without Scott Berg ’71’s thesis, which became Maxwell Perkins: Editor of Genius and garnered the National Book Award for biography (1980).
If Dean Eisenhart had prevailed with a senior thesis requirement a dozen years or so before 1925, we might be reading theses of nascent literary (or maybe callow) genius by the likes of F. Scott Fitzgerald 1917, Eugene O’Neill 1910, or in neuroscience, Wilder Penfield 1913. (OK ... the first two never made it to senior year, but it’s nice to speculate.)
If we can keep LLMs/ChatGPT at bay, I think Princeton has got a good thing going.