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Faces
Summer
2002
On
three consecutive Mondays in April at the University Theater,
humorist Garrison
Keillor spun stories about "A Life in Comedy."
On the first night, the Wobegonian
said he wouldn't mention his stint at Yale on his resume:
"It's the dummies who sit on the dais -- the smart people
sit in the dark, near the exits." Keillor read of love
and loss from photocopied book pages, dropping them on the
stage as he went and grinning widely at his own punchlines.
Then he led a singalong of Elvis Presley's "Can't Help Falling
in Love" before telling the audience, "I love you. Goodnight." |
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Electrical engineering professor Jerry
Woodall is one of five winners of this year's
National Medal of Technology, awarded annually by the president
of the United States. Woodall was cited for inventing the light-emitting
diode (LED)
devices seen in consumer products, high-speed transistors for
cell phones and satellites, and a weight-efficient solar cell.
He came to Yale in 1999 after spending much of his career at
IBM's Thomas J. Watson Research Center and at Purdue University. |
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The
crowd that filled Woolsey Hall, the Law School Auditorium,
and part of Beinecke Plaza on April 13 wasn't there for a
rock star, but for neurosurgeon and Yale Corporation fellow Benjamin
Carson '73. In a frank, funny talk about his
own rise from poverty, Carson told the audience, composed
mainly of New Haven schoolchildren and their families, to
stick to the books and avoid excuses. Each student who attended
received a copy of Carson's autobiography, Gifted
Hands. |
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A
director (Bowfinger) and actor (The
Blues Brothers), Frank
Oz is best known as a puppeteer and as the voice
of such puppets as Miss
Piggy and Yoda.
At a Morse College master's tea on April 23, Oz charmed the
crowd by speaking briefly in each of his famous characters'
voices. He said that after Muppets founder Jim
Henson convinced him to forgo journalism in favor of puppetry
at the age of 17, it took him four years to try doing voices.
"I was frightened, but Jim pushed me," Oz said. "I won't have
a relationship like that ever again." |
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Stuart
Schwartz, a history professor who specializes
in the study of colonial Brazil, has been named master of
Ezra Stiles College. His wife Maria Jordan, a senior lector
in Spanish, will serve as associate master. Schwartz and Jordan
will be on leaves of absence in the next academic year and
will take up residence in Stiles in 2003. In the interim,
English professor Traugott
Lawler and his wife Peggy will reprise their roles as
master and associate master, respectively. |
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Carl
Bauer, who was general manager of Mory's
for 17 years, died of cancer on May 27, just two months after
resigning his post. He was 71 years old. Bauer got his start
in Germany at age five, drawing beers in his father's establishment
while standing on top of a cake box. He came to the United
States in 1950 and got a job in a Horn
& Hardart Automat. He worked his way up through a
number of positions in private clubs before coming to Mory's
in 1985. He is survived by two sons and a sister. |
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Close-Up
The
Peabody Museum
of Natural History has had a mere 17 directors in its 136-year
history, and next January, botanist Michael
J. Donoghue will join that elite company. Donoghue,
the G. Evelyn Hutchinson Professor of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology
and the current chairman of EEB, succeeds Richard Burger, a professor
of anthropology who has been Peabody director since 1994.
"I'm
certainly no stranger to museums," says Donoghue, who directed the
Harvard Herbarium from 1995 to 1999 and made extensive use of its
collection in wide-ranging research on plant evolution, biogeography,
and the best way to classify biological creation.
Since
coming to Yale two years ago, Donoghue has mined the Peabody's holdings."There
are a number of world-class collections here," he says, "and taken
together, the material in museums like the Peabody is invaluable
because it represents our baseline knowledge of everything there
is in the world."
The
move of specimens into better storage facilities in the Class of
1954 Environmental Science Center (see May)
and new technologies mean that collections can yield unexpected
secrets, says Donoghue. He plans to continue Burger's efforts to
train area teachers and revamp exhibits, even the venerable Hall
of Dinosaurs. "A key role is to inform and educate people," he says.
"In many ways, the Peabody is well positioned to be a world leader." 
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