Institute Professor John Harbison will be one of eight recipients of honorary degrees bestowed by Brown University at its Commencement exercises. Professor Harbison, who will receive an honorary Doctor of Music degree, is "one of the nation's most prominent composers and conductors," with works that include the 1987 Pulitzer Prize-winning The Flight Into Egypt, Brown noted.
Dr. Harbison is also one of five winners of 1997 Heinz Awards in the Arts and Humanities "for his talent as a composer, his generosity as a teacher and his commitment to artistic excellence��������������������������� [whose] music is distinguished by its exceptional and expressive range." The awards in five different categories were established by Teresa Heinz in 1992 in honor of her late husband, H. John Heinz III.
Karin Monsler, a graduate student at the Sloan School from Danville, CA, is one of 17 Luce Scholars for 1998-99 named by the Henry Luce Foundation. Established in 1974, the international fellowship program enables young Americans who are highly qualified academically and professionally&emdash;but have no prior experience in Asia or in Asian studies&emdash;to live and work in nations throughout Asia for one year. Sixty-seven US colleges and universities submitted nominations to the program this year.
Professor Dorothy Hosler of materials science and engineering has been named the Hennebach Visiting Professor in the Humanities at the Colorado School of Mines for 1988-98. The professorship was established by an NEH challenge grant that was met by Ralph L. Hennebach, for-mer head of the American Smelting and Refining Co. who supported Dr. Hosler's MIT doctoral and postdoctoral research on ancient metallurgy. She is currently on sabbatical in western Mexico, where she is investigating the earliest copper smelting and alloy production sites in Mesoamerica.
The American Philosophical Society has elected Schlumberger Professor Emeritus Irwin I. Shapiro as one of 41 resident members. He was one of eight named in the category of mathematical and physical sciences. Founded by Benjamin Franklin in 1743, the Society is the oldest learned society in the United States devoted to the advancement of scientific and scholarly inquiry.
Lotte L. Bailyn, the T. Wilson (Class of 1953) Professor of Management at the Sloan School, will receive a 1998 Graduate Society Medal from the Radcliffe College Alumnae Association on June 5. The medals are given each year to alumnae of Rad-cliffe and Harvard graduate schools and Radcliffe's Bunting Institute who have made outstanding contributions to their professions. Dr. Bailyn, who began her career as a research associate and lecturer in Harvard's Department of Social Relations, studies the relationship of organizational practice to employees' personal lives. She holds the MA (1953) and PhD (1956) in social psychology from Harvard.
Edwin F. Taylor, senior research scientist emeritus in the Department of Physics, was recently awarded the Oersted Medal, the highest award of the American Association of Physics Teachers, for "notable contributions to the teaching of physics." Dr. Taylor has co-authored the textbooks An Introduction to Quantum Physics and Spacetime Physics, taught physics over the Internet and helped develop high school physics curricula at Boston University, among other accomplishments. He was at MIT for 25 years, during five of which he was editor of the American Journal of Physics.
Bengt Holmstrom, the Paul A. Samuelson Professor of Economics, was awarded an honorary doctorate from the Stock-holm School of Economics on May 8. Dr. Holm-strom is a leading micro-economist who has made important contributions in the fields of contract theory and the theory of the firm. He has also shown how these theories can shed light on wage/compensation schemes and organizational structures, and he has contributed to other fields including financial economics, accounting and labor markets in a macroeconomic setting.
Professor Lee Grodzins of physics and the Laboratory for Nuclear Science was one of 19 to receive an honorary doctor of science degree from Purdue University on May 17. He won a 1995 R&D Award for inventing a device that detects lead paint, and he is also an expert in detection of explosives. Dr. Grodzins holds the PhD (1954) from Purdue.
Ralph N. Wedgwood, assistant professor in linguistics and philosophy, has been selected as one of 38 Fellows of the National Humanities Center for 1998-99. Professor Wedgwood will reside at the Center in Research Triangle Park, NC, from September through May to work on his research project, "The Metaphysical Sources of Norms and Values." Funding for the Center's Fellowships comes from, among others, the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation and the National Endowment for the Humanities.
The MIT Women's Ultimate Team qualified for the College National Ultimate Championships in the team's third year of existence. The nationals will be May 29-31 in Blaine, MN. As of May 5, the team ranked 13th in the nation for the 1998 season. See the team's web site for photos.
Dedric Antonio Carter and Valencia M. Joyner have been awarded Citibank Foundation Fellowships for minority graduate students. Both are seniors in electrical engineering and computer science and both expect to receive MEng degrees in June 1999.
Mr. Carter has won a number of other scholarships and is a member of the MIT Corporation Joint Advisory Committee and the Faculty Policy Committee. He is now president of the Committee on the Undergraduate Program. Ms. Joyner was a Trident Data Systems Scholar and a member of the Tau Beta Pi Honor Society in 1996, and the James E. Cunningham Memorial Scholar and an Intel Foundation Scholar in 1997.
A version of this article appeared in MIT Tech Talk on June 3, 1998.
