Shirley M. Tilghman

Shirley M. Tilghman (born September 17, 1946, Toronto, Canada) is a Canadian molecular biologist and the first woman to serve as president of Princeton University (2001–13). Tilghman is also known for her research into genomic imprinting and gene regulation during embryonic and fetal development, which helped advance understanding of mammalian genomic development.

Early life

Caldwell was born the second of four siblings in a middle-class family in Toronto. When she was in elementary school, her family relocated to various parts of Canada, owing to her father’s position in the army; they eventually settled in Winnipeg. From her youth, Caldwell’s parents encouraged her passion for learning, and her academic potential garnered attention. She won several awards for academic achievement in high school, where she cultivated her love of science. After finishing high school, she attended Queen’s University in Kingston, Ontario, from which she graduated in 1968 with a B.Sc. degree in chemistry, having minored in mathematics.

Career

After graduating from Queen’s, Caldwell spent two years working for the Canadian University Service Overseas as a secondary-school chemistry teacher in Sierra Leone. There she met Joseph Tilghman, and the two married in 1970 (divorced 1983). Upon returning to North America, Tilghman enrolled at Temple University in Philadelphia, where she received a Ph.D. in biochemistry in 1975. She subsequently carried out postdoctoral research at the U.S. National Institutes of Health (NIH) in Maryland, where she contributed to the first successful cloning of a mammalian gene. From there she proceeded to work as an assistant professor at Temple before serving as an investigator at the Institute for Cancer Research at the Fox Chase Cancer Center in Philadelphia. While at Fox Chase, she also held a position as an adjunct associate professor at the University of Pennsylvania in the departments of biochemistry and biophysics and human genetics.

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In 1986 Princeton University hired Tilghman as the Howard A. Prior Professor of the Life Sciences. While on the faculty, she served as the first director of Princeton’s Lewis-Sigler Institute for Integrative Genomics, which aims to advance approaches to biology through the application of genome sequencing. In 1988 she became an investigator with the Howard Hughes Medical Institute in Maryland. Her research focused on mammalian developmental genetics, particularly gene regulation during different developmental stages and the role of genomic imprinting, in which a gene is differentially expressed depending on whether it is inherited from the mother or the father. As a professor, Tilghman devoted extensive time to the mentorship of students in science. In addition, she was a founding member of the NIH’s National Advisory Council of the Human Genome Project Initiative.

In 2001 Tilghman was elected president of Princeton, marking the first ever selection of a woman as president of the institution. During her tenure, she encouraged diversity within the Princeton community and oversaw the founding of several new institutes of study, including the Andlinger Center for Energy and the Environment and the Princeton Neuroscience Institute. In 2013, at the end of her term, Tilghman rejoined the Princeton faculty. Her appointment as president is thought to have been a catalyst for the nomination of women to serve as presidents at other universities.

Accolades

Tilghman has been honored with numerous awards for her academic achievements. For example, in 2002 she earned the L’Oréal-UNESCO Award for Women in Science. That same year, Discover Magazine named Tilghman one of the 50 most important women in science. In 2007 she received the Genetics Society of America Medal, and in 2022 she received the organization’s George W. Beadle Award, which recognized her involvement with the genetic research community through her work on the Human Genome Project Initiative. The journal Science selected Tilghman as the Science Careers Person of the Year in 2014, citing her “significant and sustained contribution to the welfare of early-career scientists.” The following year she earned the distinction of being named an Officer of the Order of Canada, an honor bestowed upon Canadian citizens for their achievements and service to the country.

Tilghman was a member or trustee of many scientific organizations, including the National Academy of Sciences, the King Abdullah University of Science and Technology, the Institute for Advanced Study, the Royal Society of London, and the Institute of Medicine.

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