TILGHMAN PHOTO BY DENISE APPLEWHITE

Tilghman, 54, had been a member of the search committee assembled to fill the position of the retiring president, Harold T. Shapiro. The committee hadn't settled on a final choice, however, and after Tilghman had to leave one of its meetings early, her colleagues decided to ask her to become a candidate.

"My fellow search committee members and I took special care not to be swayed by her having been on the committee," said philosophy professor Mark Johnston in a press statement. "In effect, we held her to a higher standard."

Shapiro has characterized Tilghman as a "scientist of broad interests and exceptional distinction, with a proven capacity for identifying topics that dramatically change our understanding of the fields in which she works." She is "a distinguished teacher and an advocate for women and minorities as scientists." Tilghman, who will become Princeton's 19th president, will be the first woman to fill the position.

At a press conference, Tilghman spoke of her passion for science and teaching. "What allows me to think about leaving that part of my life and moving ahead to a new part is my deep and abiding love for this institution and the thrill of having the chance to lead it," she said.

A native of Toronto, Tilghman earned a B.Sc. in chemistry and biochemistry from Queen's University in Kingston, Ontario, in 1968. She taught secondary school for two years in Sierra Leone, West Africa, then headed to Temple University, Philadelphia, for a Ph.D. in biochemistry and NIH for postdoctoral work.

She began her academic career in 1978 as an assistant professor at Temple's School of Medicine. The following year, Tilghman joined the Institute for Cancer Research in Philadelphia as an independent investigator. She also served as an adjunct associate professor of human genetics and biochemistry and biophysics at the University of Pennsylvania. In 1986, she moved to Princeton as the Howard A. Prior Professor of the Life Sciences, with a focus on mammalian genetics. Two years later, she became a Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigator. And in 1998, she became the founding director of Princeton's Lewis-Sigler Institute for Integrative Genomics.

Tilghman served on the National Research Council committee that outlined the Human Genome Project and was active in NIH's advisory council for the project. She also is a member of the National Academy of Sciences, the Institute of Medicine, and the Royal Society.

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