William G. Bowen *58

William Bowen, president of Princeton University from 1972 to 1988, died Oct. 20, 2016, of colon cancer. He was 83.

Bowen graduated from Denison University in 1955, where he was an Ohio state tennis champion. In 1958, he earned a Ph.D. in economics from Princeton and was appointed an assistant professor, becoming a full professor in 1965. In 1967, he became provost under President Robert Goheen ’40 *48.

Bowen became president of Princeton in 1972 and strengthened and extended Goheen’s diversifying efforts. He established the residential-college system, created new departments, attracted first-rate professors, and tripled the endowment. Many students got to know President Bowen, such as one whom he visited in the hospital after the student was struck by a car while crossing Washington Road.

After leading Princeton, Bowen was president of the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation from 1988 to 2006, where he created several important new programs and extended his writing and co-writing on higher education to more than 20 books. In 2012, President Barack Obama awarded him the National Humanities Medal “for his contributions to the study of economics and his probing research on higher education in America.”

Bowen is survived by his wife, Mary Ellen, whom he met in the fourth grade; their two children; and five grandchildren (including Sarah ’20).

Graduate memorials are prepared by the APGA.