Celebrating Wilbur Cross medalists
Five distinguished alumni received the Wilbur Lucius Cross Medal -- the
Graduate School's highest honor -- on October 12. Since the first medal was
presented to Edgar Stephenson Furniss by the Graduate School Alumni Association
(GSAA) in 1966, these awards have generally been given at Commencement. This
year, the Graduate School and the GSAA decided to shift the celebration to
October, allowing the medalists to interact with students and faculty on a
substantial intellectual level. Each presented a talk or hosted a conversation
with current graduate students.
Eva Brann ’56PhD (classics) has inspired students at St. John's College
in Annapolis, Maryland -- known for its "great books" curriculum -- as a
tutor since 1957 and as dean (1990-97). She is author of more than a dozen
books, including Homeric Moments: Clues to Delight in Reading the Odyssey
and the Iliad (2002), What Then,
Is Time? (1999), and Open
Secrets/Inward Prospects: Reflections on World and Soul (2004). In 2005, she was awarded a National
Humanities Medal from the National Endowment for the Humanities.
Richard Brodhead ’68, ’72PhD (English), became the ninth president of
Duke University in 2004 after 40 years at Yale as a student, faculty member,
and administrator. He was an extraordinarily effective and popular dean of Yale
College for 11 years. Author or editor of more than a dozen books on Hawthorne,
Melville, Faulkner, and other American writers, Brodhead is considered one of
the leading scholars of American literature of his generation.
Although the Seattle Art Museum (SAM) has some 23,000 objects in its
collections, Mimi G. Gates ’81PhD (history of art) has been called the museum's
single "greatest treasure." She was curator of Asian Art at Yale (1975-1986)
and director of the Yale University Art Gallery (1987-1994) before
becoming director at the SAM. At Yale and in Seattle, she reexamined and
expanded the collections, improved conservation and security, and developed
educational and social roles for the museum in the community.
Lewis E. Kay ’88PhD (molecular biophysics and biochemistry) is
professor of medical genetics, biochemistry, and chemistry at the University of
Toronto. An innovator in the field of nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR), he has
a rare understanding of both spin quantum mechanics and the capabilities of the
instrumentation. His research involves a new technique for identifying the
biochemical constituents of complex proteins -- those with molecular weights
too high to be analyzed by conventional methods.
Richard A. Young ’79PhD (molecular biophysics and biochemistry), a
member of the Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research in Cambridge,
Massachusetts, and professor of biology at MIT, is a leader in the study of
gene transcription, the process by which cells read and interpret the genetic
instructions embedded in DNA. He has helped develop new technologies, including
DNA arrays and state-of-the-art genomic tools, which his lab at the Whitehead
Institute has used to study infectious diseases and to map the circuitry of
living cells.
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