|  Chicago
Journal
For the record
Crown chairs trustees
At its June meeting the University’s Board of Trustees elected
James Crown, the board’s vice chair for two years, as chair.
Crown succeeds Edgar Jannotta, who continues to lead the Chicago
Initiative and is a Life Trustee. Crown, the president of Henry
Crown and Company, a private investment firm, attended Hampshire
College and Stanford law school. Meanwhile Sanford Grossman, AB’73,
AM’74, PhD’75, and Byron Trott, AB’81, MBA’82,
were elected trustees.
Parker’s particles
praised
Eugene Parker, the S. Chandrasekhar distinguished service professor
emeritus in physics, astronomy & astrophysics, and the Fermi
Institute, is one of this year’s three recipients of the Kyoto
Prize, given by the Inamori Foundation for lifetime achievement
in the arts and sciences. Parker’s theory of “solar
wind”—a supersonic flow of charged particles filling
the space between the sun and the Earth—was once criticized
but is now widely accepted.
Porch collapse tragedy
Julie Sorkin, AM’03, and second-year law student Henry “Jay”
Wischerath were two of the 13 victims of a fatal porch collapse
at a June 29 party in Chicago’s Lincoln Park neighborhood.
Sorkin’s fiancé, Chicago law student Ben Bradford,
lived in the third-floor apartment where the party took place. About
a dozen other Chicago law students also attended.
June’s honorees
At a June 13 convocation for professional and graduate students
honorary Doctor of Science degrees were presented to three scholars:
Stanford mathematician Persi Daconis, chemistry professor Ryoji
Noyori of Japan’s Nagoya University, and Harvard applied-astronomy
and applied-physics professor Patrick Thaddeus.
Fama’s e-fame
Robert R. McCormick distinguished service professor of finance Eugene
Fama, MBA’63, PhD’64, is the first author on the Social
Sciences Research Network (SSRN) whose papers have been downloaded
50,000 times. A Web site sponsored by Social Science Electronic
Publishing, SSRN has a total of 89,900 papers. Fama’s 1998
“Market Efficiency, Long-Term Returns, and Behavioral Finance,”
cowritten by former Chicago professor Kenneth French (now at Dartmouth)
and posted in April 1997, was his most frequently downloaded paper.
A chair for Olinto
For the first time in Chicago’s history, the physical-sciences
department is chaired by a woman. Angela V. Olinto, who took the
post in July, specializes in astronomy and astrophysics. Olinto
earned a bachelor’s in physics from Pontifícia Universidade
Católica do Rio de Janeiro in Brazil and a Ph.D., also in
physics, from MIT.
Invited and inducted
Ten University professors became members of national academies this
year. The National Academy of Sciences inducted ecology & evolution
professor Wen-Hsuing Li and physics professor Sidney Nagel. Joining
the American Academy of Arts and Sciences were psychology professor
John Cacioppo, biologist Rochelle Easton Esposito, Social Sciences
Dean John Mark Hansen, history professors Thomas Holt and Friedrich
Katz, astronomy & astrophysics professor Donald Lamb Jr., human-development
professor Tanya Luhrmann, and political scientist John Mearsheimer.
Chicago sweeps the Fulbrights
For the 17th consecutive year, Chicago graduate students have won
more Fulbright fellowships than those from any other U.S. university—18
were announced by June. Their research projects include studying
linguistics in Brazil, computer science in Tibet, and the politics
of film in Poland.
Campus police head north
This fall the University Police Department will extend its coverage
to the North Kenwood and Oakland neighborhoods, just north of South
Kenwood and Hyde Park. Joint University and city patrols have been
in effect in Hyde Park and South Kenwood for more than 40 years
and in the northern half of Woodlawn since 2001.
No small potatoes
The University has signed an agreement with the University of Idaho
and Argonne National Laboratory officially beginning a research
partnership. The agreement will give Idaho professors access to
Argonne, increase student participation in research at both universities,
and permit collaboration between Chicago and Idaho faculty.
Gertrude Stein’s
campus visit
Frank Galati’s musical adaptation of works by Gertrude Stein
and Alice B. Toklas, A Long Gay Book, may have premiered
at Northwestern this May, but its opening is based on a lecture
Stein gave on the nature of narration at the University of Chicago.
Tickets to hear Stein’s 1934 Mandel Hall speech were $0.55
to $1.10. A Long Gay Book tickets ran $11 to $24.
Triple transplant three-peat
A 40-year-old man underwent a heart, liver, and kidney transplant
this May at the University of Chicago Hospitals. Suffering from
a severe form of a rare metabolic disorder known as Forbes’
disease, the patient has improved significantly since the operation,
performed only three times before in the United States, twice at
Chicago. Cardiologist Allen Anderson, cardiac surgeon Valluvan Jeevanandam,
and surgeons David Cronin, PhD’97, and J. Richard Thistlethwaite
were among those involved in the 14-hour transplant.
How to price a Heisman
Senior High School in Dubuque, Iowa, is
struggling to price a 1979 gift from an alumnus, the late Jay Berwanger,
AB‘36. Berwanger donated what is likely a replica of his first-ever
Heisman trophy. Because Heisman sales, which would set the trophy’s
value, are rare, the school has not been able to set an exact figure,
needed in case the trophy requires insurance exceeding the school
district’s $50,000 fine-art cap. The likely original trophy
will be displayed in the University’s Hall of Fame in the
new Gerald Ratner Athletics Center.
|
|
