Shirley Tilghman
About
Shirley M. Tilghman is Professor of Molecular Biology and Public Affairs and President Emerita at Princeton University. An exceptional teacher and a world-renowned scholar and leader in the field of molecular biology, she served on the Princeton faculty for 15 years before being named president in 2001.
Dr. Tilghman received her Bachelor of Science degree in chemistry from Queen’s University in Kingston, Ontario, in 1968. After two years of secondary school teaching in Sierra Leone, West Africa, she obtained her doctoral degree in biochemistry from Temple University in Philadelphia. During postdoctoral studies at the National Institutes of Health (NIH), she made a number of groundbreaking discoveries while participating in cloning the first mammalian gene. A member of the National Research Council’s committee that set the blueprint for the U.S. effort in the Human Genome Project, Tilghman also was one of the founding members of the National Advisory Council of the Human Genome Project for the NIH.
She is renowned not only for her pioneering research, but for her national leadership on behalf of women in science and for promoting the early careers of young scientists.
An Officer of the Order of Canada, the recipient of a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Society for Developmental Biology, the Genetics Society of America Medal, and the L’Oreal-UNESCO Award for Women in Science, Dr. Tilghman is a member of the American Philosophical Society, the National Academy of Sciences, the National Academy of Medicine and The Royal Society of London. She serves as a trustee of Amherst College, the Institute for Advanced Study, and the Simons Foundation, and is a director of The Broad Institute and a Fellow of the Corporation of Harvard College.