William G. Bowen


William Gordon Bowen was President Emeritus of The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation where he served as President from 1988 to 2006. He was the president of Princeton University from 1972 to 1988.

Early life

William Bowen was born on October 6, 1933 in Cincinnati, Ohio. He was the son of Albert and Bernice Bowen. Albert Bowen was a calculator salesman and Bernice Bowen worked as a dorm mother at the University of Cincinnati. Bowen graduated from Wyoming High School. He attended Denison University, where he played championship tennis and was initiated into the Sigma Chi fraternity. He graduated from Denison in 1955 and from Princeton University in 1958, where he earned a PhD.

Career

Bowen joined the Princeton faculty in 1958, specializing in labor economics. In 1967 he became the university's provost, and served as the seventeenth president of the university from 1972 to 1988. In 1988, Bowen left Princeton to become president of The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, where he created a research program to investigate doctoral education, collegiate admissions, independent research libraries, and charitable nonprofits in order to ensure that the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation's grants would be well-informed and more effective.
William Bowen was also partially responsible for JSTOR, the Mellon International Dunhuang Archive, ARTstor, and Ithaka Harbors, Inc..
Bowen authored 19 books, including the Grawemeyer Award-winning The Shape of the River: Long-Term Consequences of Considering Race in College and University Admissions. One of his books, Equity and Excellence in American Higher Education, was coauthored with Eugene M. Tobin and Martin A. Kurzweil. Bowen's study of graduation rates at public universities in the United States culminated in the book Crossing the Finish Line: Completing College at America's Public Universities that was coauthored with Matthew M. Chingos and Michael S. McPherson.
Duke University President Richard H. Brodhead appointed him and Julius L. Chambers to evaluate the performance of Duke University's administration in handling the 2006 lacrosse team case.
Bowen died on October 20, 2016, fourteen days after his 83rd birthday, in Princeton, New Jersey, United States. He is buried in the Presidents' Plot at the Princeton Cemetery.

Positions held

In 2013, he received a 2012 National Humanities Medal from President Barack Obama.
In 2008, he received the José Vasconcelos World Award of Education for his lifetime's work creating educational opportunities.
In 2001, he received the University of Louisville Grawemeyer Award for his book written with Derek Bok, The Shape of the River: Long-Term Consequences of Considering Race in College and University Admissions.