[3][4] Notable individuals affiliated with the department include John Nash, former faculty member and winner of the 1994 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences; Alan Turing, who received his doctorate from the department; and Albert Einstein who frequently gave lectures at Princeton and had an office in the building.

The first courses in mathematics were offered in 1760 when undergraduates enrolled in classes such as algebra, trigonometry, geometry, and conic sections.

"[7] President Woodrow Wilson appointed Henry Burchard Fine as dean of the faculty in 1903 and later as the first chairman of the Department of Mathematics in 1905.

Research in the field of mathematics also continued to thrive when the Institute for Advanced Study (IAS) was founded in Princeton, New Jersey in 1930.

[7] Although the IAS and Princeton remain separate, they have continued to maintain close relations and collaborative projects thanks to their proximity to one another.

Others worked with both the then School of Mathematics and the Institute for Advanced Study to immigrate to the United States, including Albert Einstein, Hermann Weyl, Oskar Morgenstern, John von Neumann, Eugene Wigner, and Paul Erdős.

[10] Albert Einstein, although never holding a position at the university, delivered a series of lectures on his theory of relativity in 1921 and continued to hold an office within the Department of Mathematics' building, Fine Hall, named in honor of the first faculty teacher and Princeton's first dean of science, Henry Burchard Fine.

[7] The fireplace in the professors' lounge was surmounted by a famous Einstein quote: "God does not play dice with the universe."

[21] Sun-Yung Alice Chang, the previous chairperson and first female chair, has taken a personal interest in attracting more women into the field.

candidates at Princeton, students are required to complete a senior thesis based on original and independent research.

[32] The department encourages those interested in pursuing careers to participate in the Principia: The Princeton Undergraduate Mathematics Journal.

Notably, students must demonstrate proficiency in one foreign language (French, German, or Russian), proving their ability to work with mathematical texts from scholars around the world.