Princeton

Town and borough in Mercer County, west-central New Jersey, USA, 80 km/50 mi southwest of New York; population (2000 est) 14,200. It is the seat of Princeton University, fourth oldest university in the USA, which was founded as the College of New Jersey at Elizabethtown in 1746, and relocated to Princeton in 1756. The town is a centre for business and research.

Settled in 1696 by Quakers, and called Stony Brook, it was renamed Princes Town in 1724 to honour William III of Orange–Nassau.

During the American Revolution, the British were defeated here by George Washington in 1777; the site is now commemorated by the Princeton Battlefield State Park, one of 17 entries on the national register of historic places. Another is the home of Grover Cleveland, US president 1885–89 and 1893–97, as well as university buildings. Princeton was briefly the capital of the USA, from June to November 1783.

Other educational institutions include Princeton Theological Seminary 1812, a Presbyterian college and Westminster Choir College (1926). After emigrating to the US in 1933, Albert Einstein (1879–1955) became professor of mathematics and a permanent member at the Institute for Advanced Study in 1930.

Princeton University contains Nassau Hall (1756), meeting place of Congress in 1783, the University Art Museum, and a chapel built in 1925, which was based on Kings College, Cambridge in England.