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​ "What made it truly thrilling was that the genes were organized in a way that was totally unexpected. So nature took us by surprise." Shirley Tilghman.

Shirley Tilghman was born on September 17, 1946, in Toronto Onartio. She married her husband Joseph Tilghman in 1970, they had one daughter, Rebecca and son Alex. They however divorced in the early 80's with Shirley taking custody of her children. Tilghman has three sisters, Linda who is mentally disabled, Nancy, and Tracey. A molecular biologist well known for her research on how genes regulate the mammalian embryos. A desinger of the Human Genonme Project​, which is working to sequence all the DNA in humans. When Tilghman entered high school she became extremely interested in chemistry. She attended Queen's university, where she recieved her B.S. degree in 1968 with honours. She then spent two years teaching secondary school in Sierra Leone, West Africa. When she finally returned to North America she attended Temple University in Philadelphia where she recieved her Ph.D in biochemistry.

During her time studying at the National Institutes of Health, Tilghman made quite a few discoveries as she was participating in the first cloning of mammalian genes. She also has made scientific breakthroughs as an independent investigator at the Institute of Cancer Research located in Philadelphia. in 1986 Shirley Tilghman came to Princeton as the Howard A. Prior Professor of the Life Sciences. She joined the Howard Hughes Medical Institue two years later as an investigator.Years later in 1998 she was director of Princeton's multi-disciplinary Lewis-Sigler Institue for Integrative Genomics. Tilghman is renowned for her national leadership on behalf of women in science. She also promotes efforts to make the careers of young scientists as meaning as possible.



Shirley Tilghman was elected Princton University's 19th president on the 5th of May, 2001 and assumed office on the 15th of June that same year. She served on the Princeton faculty for 15 years before becoming president. She is Princeton's first ever woman president. Tilghman has chaired Princeton's Council on Science and Technology from 1993 to 2000. In 1996 she recieved Princeton's President Award, and in 2002 she was one of five winners of the L'Oreal-UNESCO international for Women in Science Award. She also receieved the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Society of Development Biology the following year.

She is also a member of the American Phiosophical Society, the National Academy of Science, the Institue of Medicine, and the Royal Society of London. Tilghman has contributed a lot to the world of Science, without her help we could not have gotten very far.