Before Daniel Liu began the freshman seminar "Alchemy, Art and Science," he dismissed the subject as a "pseudoscience characterized by fraud and fruitless endeavors." But he was curious.

His views began to evolve as he explored the course, taught by Jennifer Rampling, an assistant professor of history in her first year at Princeton who is working on two books on alchemy and edits an academic journal on the topic. Read more.

With five tenure decisions, five reappointments, three searches, and several appointments and a promotion on the staff of the Papers of Thomas Jefferson, faculty members in the History Department were fully occupied with personnel matters during the last academic year. The current year promises or seems to promise to be easy in comparison…