Ronald E. Cape ’53

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Ron died Jan. 3, 2015, in San Francisco.

He graduated summa cum laude in chemistry from Princeton and summa cum laude from Harvard Business School in 1955. He earned a Ph.D. in chemistry from McGill University and received a postdoctoral fellowship at UC, Berkeley. At Princeton, Ron was president of Court Club and coxswain of the 150-pound crew.

Ron was co-founder and CEO of Cetus Corp., the first genetic-engineering company to have a public offering. He was a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and a member of the board of regents of the National Library of Medicine. He served as a trustee at Princeton, the Rockefeller University, the Whitehead Institute, and was on the board of the San Francisco Opera, among others.

He married Libi Pollock in 1956. She was the love of his life. Ron was a devoted father to Jacqueline and Julie ’83 and a devoted grandfather to his six grandchildren. He is survived by them and his brother, Michael.

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The cover of PAW’s January 2025 issue, featuring an illustration of a Princeton locker room with jerseys, a basketball, a football helmet, a hockey stick, etc., and the headline: 25 Greatest Princeton Athletes, ranked.
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