Kean, Myhrvold win top alumni awards for 2005

Thomas Kean '57 and Nathan Myhrvold GS '83 were chosen Tuesday to be the recipients of Princeton's most prestigious alumni awards for 2005.

Kean, former New Jersey governor and current president of Drew University, was selected for the Woodrow Wilson Award. Myhrvold, co-founder of a computer company and chief technology officer at Microsoft until 2000, will receive the James Madison Medal.

The Wilson Award is given annually to a Princeton alumnus or alumna whose career embodies the message of Woodrow Wilson's speech, "Princeton in the Nation's Service." Wilson served as the president of the University before becoming president of the United States. His speech stressed the importance of public service in fulfilling the needs of the nation.

Kean was a member of the New Jersey Assembly from 1968 to 1977. From 1982 to 1990, he was governor of New Jersey, serving on the President's Education Policy Advisory Committee and as chair of both the Education Commission of the States and the National Governor's Association Task Force on Teaching.

After Sept. 11, President Bush selected Kean to lead the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States. After the release of the committee's report, Bush praised Kean's efforts.

"They've done a really good job of learning about our country, learning about what went wrong prior to Sept. 11, making very solid, sound recommendations about how to move forward," he said.

Kean has also led the American delegation to the United Nations Conference on Youth in Thailand, served as vice-chair of the American delegation to the World Conference on Women in Beijing and been a member of the President's Initiative on Race. He is chair of the National Campaign to Prevent Teen Pregnancy and former chair of the Carnegie Corporation of New York.

Each year, the University also awards the James Madison Medal to an alumnus or alumna of the Graduate School who has had a distinguished career.

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Myhrvold obtained his master's and doctoral degrees in applied mathematics from Princeton in 1981 and 1983.

As a postdoctoral fellow at Cambridge, Myhrvold worked with Stephen Hawking, researching cosmology, quantum field theory in curved space time and quantum theories of gravitation.

A year later, he co-founded Dynamical Systems, whose successful software product was a precursor to the Windows Software system. Myhrvold had a 14-year tenure at Microsoft after it bought Dynamical Systems in 1986.

He has also advanced the field of education, serving on several boards such as the advisory board for Princeton's Department of Physics and the Children's Scholarship Fund, which provides scholarships for low-income families. He has written numerous articles for scientific periodicals and general interest magazines.

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Both Kean and Myhrvold will receive their awards on Alumni Day, Saturday, Feb. 26. Myhrvold will present a speech at 9:15 a.m. followed by Kean at 10:30 a.m. in Richardson Auditorium.