Index
Scholarships
The Edward and Virginia Taylor Scholarship
The Edward and Virginia Taylor Scholarship was established in 2011 through an initial grant from the Sunup Foundation as recommended by Edward C. Taylor ’46 and his wife, Virginia Crouse Taylor.
Edward “Ted” C. Taylor was born in Springfield, Massachusetts. He entered Hamilton in 1942, where he planned to major in English, but immediately fell in love with chemistry after taking an introductory course. He was a member of the Psi Upsilon fraternity, the varsity swimming and tennis teams, Honor Court, band, and brass choir. In 1944, after exhausting the chemistry courses at Hamilton and on the recommendation of an influential faculty member, Ted left Hamilton to continue his studies at Cornell University, where he met Virginia "Ginnie" Crouse.
Ted graduated from Cornell in 1946, and he and Ginnie married soon after. In 1949, he received his PhD from Cornell and in 1954 he became a member of the Princeton University faculty, where he is currently an Emeritus Professor of Chemistry. Ted received an honorary Doctor of Science degree from Hamilton in 1969, an American Chemical Society Award for Creative Work in Synthetic Organic Chemistry in 1974, and an Alexander von Humboldt Senior U.S. Scientist Prize in 1982. In 1987, he and a colleague discovered a compound that they developed into Alimta, which, after only five years on the market, became the most prescribed new cancer drug in history.
In 2011, Hamilton officially dedicated its science building as The Edward and Virginia Taylor Science Center. Ted offers these words of wisdom to young Hamilton students, "Don't base your course selection on your prior limited experience. Spread your wings. Experiment! Other vistas will open if you have an open mind."
August 2014
Please note: The named scholarships profiled on these pages support the College’s generous need-based financial aid commitment. These donor-funded scholarships help ensure the Hamilton promise of keeping education affordable through meeting a student’s full demonstrated financial need.
