Rigoe Koe 1874 is believed to be the first Asian student matriculated to Princeton University. Of Japanese nobility and cited as “a popular and able man” in the Daily Princetonian, the Japanese government, his primary financial benefactor, voted for his return without degree completion.

Hikoichi Orita 1876, a founder of Japan’s prestigious Kyoto University, was the first Japanese and Asian student to graduate. One of the last members of the fading samurai caste, he was a polymath and avid bibliophile. His correspondences with Japanese friends and his diary highlight his unique experiences - and his loneliness.

Henry Goloknath 1882 joined the Princeton Theological Seminary, was baptized by President McCosh himself, and became a Presbyterian minister in 1885. Returning to India as a missionary, he became Princeton’s “Senior Alumnus” in 1956, praised as an “outstanding man with a lifetime record of unselfish service” in this announcement.

Kiu Beung Surh (aka Sŏ Pyŏng-gyu) 1899 has been identified by Princeton’s Korean Studies Librarian Hyoungbae Lee as Princeton’s first Korean student. The transliteration of his name made it difficult to identify his Korean heritage.

Dong Seung 1905 arrived in the United States in 1895 courtesy of a Rev. Hule Kim. A native of Quantong (Guangdong) province, Seung was an honorsman and Whig Clio nominee. Initially aspiring to be a clergyman, he would eventually return to China to teach.

Syngman Rhee *1910 was the first Korean student to graduate with a doctorate from an American university, the Theological Seminary’s first Korean student, and the first president of the Republic of Korea (South Korea). He completed his doctorate in only two years whilst supplementing an atypical graduation workload with summer courses at Harvard. He leaves behind a controversial legacy, leading an autocratic regime marred with corruption. Nonetheless, members of the Korean Princeton community contributed funds to dedicate Bowl 16 in Robertson Hall as Syngman Rhee 1910 Lecture Hall.

The Boxer Rebellion Indemnity Scholarship Program strengthened educational ties between Chinese students and American universities, and Hsu Kun Kwon 1914, a Shanghai native, was among Princeton’s most notable recipients. Believed to be the first Asian student on the Daily Princetonian editorial board, he was also a member of the Whig Society and the now-defunct Key and Seal Club. He was the founder of the Princeton Chinese Students’ Club, among the first of Princeton’s many cultural organizations.

Yoshio Osawa 1925, the eventual president of both the trading and huge integrated film companies of Toho, was described as “one of the best-liked men in the class”. A major inspiration for the Class of 1925’s Japanese P-Rade theme for their 10th reunion, his repeated invitations for the class to come to Japan helped facilitate a well-documented 1956 mini-reunion trip. This kickstarted the eventual establishment of the Osawa Fellowships in 1958, funding increased collaboration between the University and its Japanese alumni and community.

Dr. Supachai Vanij-Vadhana 1929 h1960 appears to be the first Princeton student from Thailand. He became secretary-general of Chulalongkorn University, Bangkok and received an honorary doctorate from Princeton in 1960. His citation stated “he has since become one of the most resolute representatives of Princeton in Asia. A biologist by profession, an educational administrator by recent inclination, he reveres life and assiduously fosters the life of the mind.”

Habib Yusufji *1930

Chi-Yu Wu *1933 g*91 g93 was recruited from Yenching University, and upon returning to China, Wu became a Yenching professor, first counselor of the Supreme National Defense Committee of the Kuomintang, and political prisoner after the Chinese Communist revolution. Wu was unable to return to Princeton until 1986 thanks to the efforts of Sir Gordon Wu 1958. His life highlights how prior generations of Princeton Asian student expatriates found camaraderie amongst each other and experienced immense hardships if they returning home.

Masahiko “Mark” Ralph Takami 1934, born from an elite class of Japanese immigrants, is believed to be the first Asian-American Princeton student. He attended the famed Lawrenceville Prep School before attending Princeton, with his brother Suyehiko Takami ‘40 joining Tiger Inn in 1940.

Yelichi “Kelly” Kuwayama 1940 received his “Kelly” nickname in the military. Drafted before the attack on Pearl Harbor, he endured the dual horrors of war and discrimination as a medic in the famed 442nd Regimental Combat Team during WWII. Noting the difficulties of finding work and cultural acceptance after the war, Kuwayama would work for the Office of Foreign Direct Investments and the SEC. He was one of the founders of A4P, a class agent for the Class of 1940, and as of his passing, was the longest-living Asian-American alumnus.

Chien-Shiung Wu h*1958, the proclaimed “first lady of physics” by her colleagues, was the first woman hired as a faculty member by the Princeton physics department in 1940 and the first woman with an honorary doctorate from Princeton. She did not stay at Princeton for long, however, as she is (believed to be) the only person of Chinese-American descent to work on the Manhattan Project. A world-renowned expert on beta decay and experimental design, her namesake Wu Experiment redefined nuclear physics by disproving symmetry within weak interactions.

Kentaro Ikeda 1944 moved to the United States in 1938 to attend boarding school. Ikeda was the University's sole Japanese student in World War II and was subjected to immense communication and travel restrictions during World War II as he worked for the federal government and Princeton University. Praising the “kind attitude” of the University community toward him, Ikeda and would ultimately remain in the United States. Lockhart Hall’s archway was named after Ikeda in 2022.

Ikeda’s story is incomplete without Richard Eu 1944, the only other Asian student on campus during WWII. Born in Singapore and of Chinese descent, Eu forged a lifelong friendship with Ikeda despite the then-ongoing Sino-Japanese War. Eu returned to Asia after his education and was a leading figure for Princeton in Asia in Singapore.

Dr. Wen Fong 1951 *1958, the Edward S. Sanford Professor of Art History at Princeton, co-founded the first American Ph.D programs in Chinese art and archaeology in 1959. Studying under renowned calligrapher Li Jian in his youth, Fong earned his B.A. and M.F.A. studying European and medieval art history and earned his Ph.D for a dissertation about Chinese art history. Serving as a special consultant and eventual consultative chairman of the Department of Asian Art at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Fong was also the faculty curator for the Princeton University Art Museum’s Asian art collection and founder of the Far Eastern Seminar Archives in 1958.

Sir Gordon Wu 1958, founder and former CEO of Hong Kong-based engineering and construction firm Hopewell Holdings Limited, has left groundbreaking developments everywhere from Pakistan to Guangzhou and Old Nassau. His donation of $100 million to Princeton University was unprecedented, then the largest singular amount any alum has given the University and any foreigner to an American University. A champion of continued collaboration between Princeton, international students, and engineering studies, Sir Gordon’s contributions to Princeton include the Wu Dining Hall and several professorships. He is the 2018 inaugural recipient of the A4P Distinguished Alumni Award.

Nguyễn Ngọc Bích 1958 fled from Hanoi to Saigon in 1947 to avoid communism, joining Princeton as a Fulbright Scholar as a junior. Proud of his Vietnamese heritage, he served as deputy and acting director of the Office of Bilingual Education and Minority Languages from 1991 to 1993 in the H.W. Bush administration and was the first director of Radio Free Asia’s Vietnamese Service.

Sau-Hai (Harvey) Lam *1958 was a professor of Princeton’s MAE Department for over forty years, serving as department chair from 1983 to 1989. The Edwin Wilsey ’04 Professor Emeritus of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, he was the recipient of the Princeton University Engineering Council teaching Award in 1993 and elected to the National Academy of Engineering in 2006. His legacy lives on not only through his theories in fluid mechanics and plasma dynamic but also through the Sau-Hai Lam *58 Prize in Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, annually awarded for graduating seniors for outstanding academic achievement.

Chang-Lin Tien *1959 was a former Princeton University trustee and the first (and as of now, only) Asian-heritage recipient of the James Madison Medal in 2000, which highlights graduate alumni accomplishments. Tien was one of the National Academy of Engineering's youngest members, studying thermal radiation, insulation, and microscale thermal phenomena. He was the first Asian-American to head a major research university (UC Berkeley 1990-1997), listed as “one of Berkeley’s most popular and charismatic administrators” on the University website whilst pioneering a successful fundraising campaign amidst budgetary challenges.

Born to a working-class family in Hawaii, Franklin S Odo 1961 *1975 initially received his B.A. in History and his M.A. in East Asia regional studies. Odo, inspired by the anti-war and civil rights movements of the 1960s and 1970s alongside his personal struggles to fit in at Princeton, became one of the foremost experts and advocates for Asian American studies. Odo served as president for the Association for Asian American Studies, the first Asian American curator of the Smithsonian National Museum of American History, and was the founding director of the Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center. He was a 2021 recipient of the A4P Distinguished Award.

T’sai-Ying Cheng *1963 *1964, from Taiwan, was the first woman to receive not only any Princeton degree (her master’s degree in 1964), but also a Princeton PhD. Cheng, a former cancer researcher at Johns Hopkins University, the Institute for Cancer Research, and Brookhaven National Laboratories, believed that discrimination excluded women from faculty position consideration. Cheng, who shifted her work towards botanical biology and genomics, landed a head research position about plant genetics with the Oregon Graduate Institute in 1974 and after retirement from academia would found a specialty nursery, TC Gardens.

Leighton Chen 1966 was inspired to attend Princeton due to not only his father’s extensive educational background but due to Bill Bradley’s basketball exploits. Chen would himself become a prolific Princeton athlete as a member of the 1966 National Intercollegiate Champion cyclist team. His Princeton perspectives summarizing campus life during the turbulent mid-1960s are highlighted on the oral history tour, praising Princeton’s “race-blind” atmosphere and academic rigor. Chen would work for Bell Labs after the 1983 breakup of the Bell system, where he would serve as the official Bell labs campus recruiter for Princeton.

Hisashi Kobayashi *1967, Sherman Fairchild University Professor in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, Emeritus, was a multifaceted engineering pioneer. He was the founding director of the IBM Tokyo Research Laboratory, is the listed inventor/co-inventor on 14 U.S. patents, and his research on PRML (Partial Response and Maximum Likelihood) earned him the 2005 Technology Award of the Eduard Rhein Foundation by expediting data storage capabilities. He was also the first Asian dean of the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, and under his leadership (1986 to 1991), sponsored research totals grew by 60 percent and corporate gifts by 150 percent.

Gordon Chang 1970 is the Olive H Palmer Professor of humanities and senior associate vice provost of undergraduate education at Stanford University. Chang was just one of six students of Asian descent in his class. Chang’s research focuses on the histories of American foreign policy and ethnoracial intersectionality, especially in regards to China and Chinese Americans. Chang is the co-director of the Chinese Railroad Workers in North America project, a topic covered by his most recent book Ghosts of Gold Mountain: The Epic Story of the Chinese Who Built the Transcontinental Railroad. Chang, a leading member of Asian American studies, is a 2020 recipient of the A4P Distinguished Alumni Award.

Chang’s fellow 2020 A4P Distinguished Alumni Award recipient, Hong-Kong-born, and Class of 1970 peer William Fung 1970 is the current Group Deputy Chairman of Fung Limited. Fung was the group chairman of Li & Fung, one of Hong Kong’s largest trading companies, until 2020, spearheading supply chain infrastructure efforts. Fung is a former Princeton University Trustee, particularly involved with Princeton’s financial aid program during his tenure. The namesake sponsor for the Fung Global Fellows Program, Fung is a continued advocate for globalization and international cooperation.

Helen Zia 1973 is an award-winning author, activist, and former journalist renowned for her outspokenness against anti-Asian racism and LGBT+rights. Zia is a founding board co-chair of both the NAPAWF (National Asian Pacific American Women’s Forum) and the Women’s Media Center, as well as a former Executive Editor of Ms. Magazine. Zia has authored three books, with her first, Asian American Dreams: The Emergence of an American People being a Kiriyama Pacific Rim Book Prize finalist and quoted in multiple White House speeches. Decades after her Princeton education, she remains a consistent and strong A4P contributor, receiving the A4P Trailblazer Award in 2013 and the A4P Distinguished Alumni Award in 2023.

Elaine Chan 1973 was the only Asian American among the first cohort of women to spend all four years of undergraduate education at Princeton. Chan was an assistant at the then-Third World (now Carl A. Fields) Center and is one of the founders of the Asian American Student Association. When discussing her Princeton experiences, Chan has highlighted the social isolation she faced as a public school-attending Asian American women. A biology major, Chan worked for the US Department Homeland Security as a policy advisor and general attorney. (Reunions link)

Dat Duthinh 1973 is the first Vietnamese student to complete four years of undergraduate study after outbreak of the Vietnam War. Arriving on campus in 1969, he was enthralled by and engaged with ongoing discussions about the War. Raised a Buddhist, Duthinh would marry a Quaker and inspired by their steadfast support of peace, convert himself. Before his recent retirement, Duthinh worked on the Hibernia Gravity Base Structure and was a Research Structural Engineer for the National Institute of Standards and Technology, receiving the Department of Commerce Silver Medal for Scientific/Engineering Achievement in 2007.

Senior US circuit judge Hon, Denny Chin 1975 is the first Asian American District Judge appointed outside of the Ninth District. Chin has been a part of numerous influential American judicial decisions, from the panel upholding the Deflategate suspension to presiding over U.S. v. Madoff. Chin, the 2011 recipient of the Woodrow Wilson award, is a former Princeton University trustee and an advocate for Asian American justice and judicial participation. A painting of Chin is located near McCosh 50.

Anthony H.P. Lee 1979, a Sydney-based investor, is the chairman of the investment committee of Television Broadcasts Limited. A Princeton University Trustee since 2014, Lee has previously co-chaired the Capital Leadership Committee and is a prominent university financier. Lee is an avid supporter of the Lewis Center of the Arts, serving on its advisory council and creating the Anthony H. P. Lee ’79 Fund for the Study of Jazz. Other recent contributions include an endowment for a professorship in the Department of Mathematics, a research computing fund, and a new scholarship.

Eating Club Trivia: The first woman to join an eating club, Lynn Tsugie Nagasako 1970, and the first female student to lead a Princeton eating club, Eva Lerner-Lam 1976, were both of Asian descent. Both joined Campus Club, as bicker clubs’ restrictive nature initially dissuaded minorities and women from joining. Lerner-Lam was the sophomore class president in 1974, organizing a bicker process she

Youngsuk “Y.S.” Chi 1983 is a former trustee and avid Princeton patron, creating the Chi Family Fund for Excellence and Inclusion as well as serving on the Princeton Schools and Campaign Executive Committees. As the Chairman of Elsevier, former president of the International Publishers Association, and the longest serving member of Princeton University Press’s Board of Trustees, Chi is a prominent figure in the publishing world, receiving the 2024 London Book Fair Lifetime Achievement Award.

Passionate about Asian American history, Chi is one of the co-founders of the modern A4P, a member on the A4P Board of Advisors, and is a recipient of the 2023 A4P Distinguished Alumni Award.

Jamie “Jm” Ayala 1984 is a social entrepreneur dedicated to aiding rural communities in the Philippines. Ayala is the founder of Hybrid Social Solutions, which has been building a gridless solar electricity network since 2010, providing PPE equipment during the Covid-19 pandemic, and supporting recovery and protection from natural disasters. Ayala is a 2024 recipient of the A4P Distinguished Alumni Award.

Timothy Wu 1984, the president of his senior class, was the first Asian American Young Alumni trustee alumni and the youngest elected at that time. Wu is committed to philanthropy nationwide, especially within the San Francisco Bay Area as the current Executive Director of The Battery Powered Foundation. Wu was the deputy director of the September 11th Fund, where he helped distribute over $500 million to victims of the 9/11 terrorist attacks. (A4P Reunions brochure 2024) (co chair of 2024 Every Voice Conference)

Maria Ressa 1986, a recipient of the 2021 Nobel Peace Prize, is the co-founder, CEO, and president of Rappler, a Filipino news organization that has withstood backlash and censorship from the Filipino government. Born and initially raised in Manila, Ressa would move to New Jersey at the age of 10, where she grappled with her identity and graduated from Princeton with an AB in English and certificates in theater and dance. Her book How to Stand Up to a Dictator: The Fight for Our Future was selected as the Princeton pre-read for the Class of 2027. Ressa is a 2021 recipient of the A4P Distinguished Alumni Award.

Chief Creative Officer of DC Comics Jim Lee 1986 is a renowned comic book artist and publisher. Earning initial acclaim and shattering sales records for his illustrations on Marvel’s X-Men, Lee would co-found Image Comics and WildStorm Productions, the latter of whom he would sell to DC to return to creative work. At DC Comics, Lee is praised for his artistry and spearheading The New-52 DC reboot. (started at Princeton as pre-med, struggles to get parents to agree on comics).

The impact James Yeh 1987 has left at Princeton is most obviously evident with Princeton’s seventh residential college, Yeh College, but this is far from his only contribution. Yeh, the recently retired President and Co-Chief Investment Officer of Citadel Investment Group, is a former Charter Trustee and a co-leader of the university’s Venture Forward campaign. Yeh is the 2022 recipient of the A4P Distinguished Alumni Award.

Christopher P. Lu 1988 is the current US Ambassador to the United Nations for Management and Reform and served as Deputy Secretary of Labor in the Obama Administration. Mr. Lu was the first Asian American Baccalaureate speaker at Princeton and ranks among the highest ranking Asian Americans to serve in the federal government.

Sumir Chadha 1993, co-founder and managing director of India’s WestBridge Capital Partners, provided the gift that established the M.S. Chadha Center for Global India at Princeton University, named in honor of his grandfather. Chadha is a former member of the advisory councils of both President Eisgruber and the Princeton Institute for International and Regional Studies (PIIRS), as well as being a former trustee of Princeton University.

Rajiv Vinnakota 1993 became the first Asian-American Woodrow Wilson Award recipient in 2009 for his work as co-founder and former CEO of the SEED Foundation, a network of public, college-preparatory boarding schools for underserved children. As a SEED Foundation board member, the current President of the Institute for Citizens and Scholars (formerly known as the Woodrow Wilson National Fellowships Program), and volunteer co-chair of the U.S. Semiquincentennial Commission’s Civics & Civic Engagement Task Force, Vinnakota remains committed towards expanding educational access and civic development.

Anu Vedantham *1994 is the Assistant University Librarian for Teaching, Research and Social Sciences and Liaison for Indigenous Studies at Princeton, holding prior library leadership positions at Harvard and the University of Pennsylvania. She has also prior served as Grants Program Officer at the Telecommunications Opportunities Program of the U.S. Department of Commerce. The Intergovernmental Panel of Climate Change (IPCC) recognized Vedantham’s aviation emissions research with a Nobel Prize certificate in 2007. Vedantham is a current board member for A4P.

David S. Lee *1999 was the first Asian-heritage provost of Princeton University (2013 to 2017). The current Chemical Bank Chairman’s Professor of Economics and Public Affairs as of 2024 and the leader of Princeton’s Industrial Relations Section (2009 to 2013), Lee founded IDEAS (Initiative for Data Exploration and AnalyticS), an internal data analytics consulting service for the University. His research interests include labor economics, electoral analysis, and experimental econometric methodology.

Fei-Fei Li 1999 is the Co-Director of Stanford University’s Human-Centered AI Institute and the Inaugural Sequoia Professor of the Stanford Computer Science Department. Li is the inventor of ImageNet, a large-scale image dataset used in recognition software, and the co-founder and chairperson of nonprofit AI4ALL dedicated to increasing inclusivity and diversity within AI. A former Vice President at Google, Chief Scientist of AI/ML (Machine Learning) of Google Cloud, special advisor to the UN Secretary General, and member of the National Artificial Intelligence Research Resource Task Force, Li is committed to ensuring and expanding responsible technology usage. Li is a 2024 recipient of the A4P Distinguished Alumni Award.