Five distinguished alumni of Yale's Graduate School of Arts and Sciences and the school's former dean were awarded Wilbur Lucius Cross Medals, the highest honor of the Graduate School Alumni Association, at Commencement this year.
The medal is named for a former dean who served at the Graduate School from 1916 to 1930. Cross was noted as a scholar, editor, university administrator and, after his retirement from Yale, governor of Connecticut for four terms.
The Cross Medalists and their citations follow:
Edward L. Ayers
1980 Ph.D., American Studies
Distinguished scholar, outstanding teacher and pioneer of history on the Web, you have used your many gifts as a writer and teacher to advance our understanding of the Civil War and its legacies for the South. Your first book, a prize-winning study of crime and punishment in the 19th-century American South, offered an original and incisive account of the region's cultural continuities. With characteristic brilliance and rigor, you captured the complex patterns of class and race organizing the administration of justice, the resort to violence, and the vindication of honor in the South. You followed this achievement with "The Promise of the New South," a masterpiece of historical synthesis that balanced a wide-screen panorama of the forces of progress and reaction in the region with a keen, almost kaleidoscopic sense of what that contest looked like, and felt like, at the level of the local.
Nowhere has your commitment to the richness and multiplicity of historical experience been more creatively expressed than in your most recent work, "The Valley of the Shadow: Two Communities in the American Civil War." Bringing together a book-length narrative, a CD-ROM, and an electronic archive, your project does more than break new ground: it literally opens that ground to anyone wishing to click their way from the dramatic wartime story of the Shenandoah/Cumberland Valley to the sources themselves. In recognition of your intellectual leadership, the University of Virginia appointed you Dean of the College and Graduate School of Arts and Sciences in 2001.
For your extraordinary accomplishments as an historian, teacher and innovator in the university, the Graduate School Alumni Association is proud to award you its highest honor, the Wilbur Lucius Cross Medal.
Gerald Brown
1950 Ph.D., Physics
A world leader in nuclear theory, many-body physics, and astrophysics, you have made seminal contributions in diverse areas, from atomic physics and low energy nuclear physics to astrophysics and relativistic heavy-ion reactions. Early on you showed how collective vibrations in nuclei arise from the underlying interactions. Your theory of effective interactions in the nuclear shell model has been widely implemented in modern nuclear structure calculations. Later you invented the "little Brown bag" model to describe the structure of the nucleon. Your in-medium scaling theory of "dropping" masses has explained many aspects of matter under extreme conditions. In the late 1970's and early 1980's you and Nobel Laureate Hans Bethe described the nuclear physics basis of stellar collapse and supernova, initiating a long and fruitful collaboration in astrophysics.
After receiving your Ph.D. at Yale in 1950 with the renowned nuclear theorist Gregory Breit, you went on to hold faculty appointments at Birmingham, Copenhagen and Princeton. In 1968 you were recruited to build the nuclear theory group at Stony Brook, where you have been an outstanding mentor and leader. Your remarkable work has been recognized in numerous awards and honors, including the Bonner and Bethe prizes of the American Physical Society and the Max Planck medal. You are truly an "eagle" in your own right, along with Breit, Peierls, and Bethe, profiled in your autobiography "Fly with Eagles."
As you are one of the most distinguished and creative nuclear physicists worldwide, it is with immense pride that the Yale Graduate School Alumni Association presents to you its highest honor, the Wilbur Lucius Cross Medal.
John Fenn
1940 Ph.D., Chemistry
Creative experimental physical chemist, and professor of chemical engineering at Yale from 1967 until 1987, your love affair with molecular beams has led to many important discoveries and to the development of analytical techniques which you have generously and enthusiastically shared worldwide. This research not only figured prominently in the Nobel Prizes awarded for Chemistry in 1986, it also prepared you for startling new work on the mass spectroscopy of proteins -- the building blocks of life.
In the decade between 1984 and 1994, during which time you also celebrated your 75th birthday, you discovered, then explored, a way of introducing multiply-charged proteins and other bio-polymers into a mass spectrometer for accurate analysis. Your unique electro-spray ionization source has made possible the 'tandem' combination of the liquid chromatograph with the mass spectrometer -- a formidable marriage which now provides the biochemical/pharmaceutical and environmental engineering communities with perhaps THE most powerful analytical tool now available. For this accomplishment, you were named one of the three 2002 Nobel Prize winners in Chemistry -- each of whom in his own way has advanced the analytical chemistry of large biological molecules in a manner destined to have major societal impact, leading to a better understanding of the processes of life.
For these gifts to society, and for your inspiration and guidance to many generations of graduate students at Yale and worldwide, the Yale Graduate School Alumni Association is proud to award you its highest honor, the Wilbur Lucius Cross Medal.
Susan Hockfield
Former Graduate School Dean
Brilliant neuroanatomist, dedicated scientific mentor and inspiring university administrator, you have made dazzling contributions to neuroscience while creating an unprecedented sense of community among Yale's graduate students. As a member of the neurobiology faculty since 1985, you have explored the development of the mammalian brain and have conducted research on proteins that may play a role in the progression of brain tumors. Your accomplishments in science have led to your being named a trustee of the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, a member of the National Advisory Neurological Disorders and Stroke Council of the National Institutes of Health, and a recipient of the Esther A. and Joseph Klingenstein Fellowship in the Neurosciences and the Charles Judson Herrick Award from the American Association of Anatomists.
Your commitment to the academic achievement and nurturing of Yale's graduate students is well exemplified by your eight years of service as the director of Graduate Studies in Neurobiology and, especially, by your recently completed and greatly appreciated term as dean of the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. Under your leadership, Yale's graduate students received unprecedented academic, social, and financial support through programs that you created or enhanced. You also transformed and revitalized the Graduate School Alumni Association.
For a career at Yale that has included an auspicious rise through the faculty ranks and four and one-half years as dean of the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, the Yale Graduate School Alumni Association, with tremendous appreciation for your profound impact as Dean and in celebration of your recent appointment as University provost, awards you its highest honor, the Wilbur Lucius Cross Medal, honoris causa.
Robert D. Putnam
1970 Ph.D., Political Science
Academic innovator and leader, distinguished scholar, dedicated teacher and indefatigable illuminator of the requisites of democratic life, your remarkable career has brought you the highest honors of your profession, and the worldwide recognition that only the few ever attain. Your felicitous writing typically demonstrates how creatively the more arcane tools of science can be handled in ways that make important research findings about polity and society accessible to broad publics. The finest example of this enviable skill is your recent "Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community." That book is itself a reflection of your long-standing interest in explicating democratic life, so stunningly theorized and illustrated in your earlier path-breaking book, "Making Democracy Work," that has now appeared in 20 different languages.
The scope of your knowledge encompasses a multitude of disciplines, as well as the complex processes of government in many parts of the world. You have helped us to understand the paths to power that political elites follow, as well as the dispositions and mental constructs that guide the way power itself is exercised. With good reason and with unbridled admiration, your work has been placed side by side with that of Alexis de Toqueville.
For your outstanding intellectual inventiveness and integrity, for your sustained efforts to bend academic knowledge to the service of democracy and world peace, the Yale Graduate School Alumni Association is proud to award you its highest honor, the Wilbur Lucius Cross Medal.
Charles Yanofsky
1951 Ph.D., Microbiology
Pioneering molecular biologist, compassionate mentor and model citizen in the world of science, you began your path-breaking work on the biosynthesis of vitamins and amino acids while a graduate student at Yale. You were the first to show that an enzyme may consist of dissociable non-identical subunits; you provided the first conclusive proof of the colinearity of a gene sequence and of the polypeptide sequence that it encodes; and you performed studies that led to the verification of many features of the genetic code and the nature of mutational changes. These studies were crucial to the analysis of chromosomes and to the development of the fields of genomics and proteomics. Your studies on the tryptophan operon in bacteria were among the first to elucidate the concepts of gene regulation, including the important discovery of transcription attenuation.
In four decades as a distinguished professor of biology at Stanford University, your work -- characterized by elegance, clarity, and thoroughness -- has set a standard of excellence for three generations of scientists. That your scholarship is highly esteemed by colleagues worldwide is evidenced by your election to the National Academy of Sciences, and by the many prizes awarded to you, including the Albert Lasker Award in Basic Medical Research, and the Louisa Gross Horwitz Prize.
For your brilliant contributions to scientific knowledge, and for your profound effect on students, colleagues and collaborators as a mentor and friend, the Yale Graduate School Alumni Association is proud to present to you its highest honor, the Wilbur Lucius Cross Medal.
C O M M E N C E M E N T
2 0 0 3
Yale Celebrates 302nd Graduation
Baccalaureate Address
Honorary Degrees
Senior Class Day
Teaching Prizes
Scholastic Prizes
David Everett Chantler Prize
Roosevelt L. Thompson Prize
William H. McKim Prize
Athletic Department Awards
Robert E. Lewis Award for Intramural Sports
Wilbur Cross Medals
Reception with President Richard C. Levin
ROTC Commissioning
Other Undergraduate Awards and Honors
Graduate School Awards and Honors
Commencement Photo Gallery
Graduation: The Video
T H I SW E E K ' SS T O R I E S
Yale Celebrates 302nd Graduation
Trip expands Yale ties to South Korea
Koplan elected as alumni fellow
YSN researcher to head state's VA Department
International festival returns June 12-28
Edelson named director of Yale Cancer Center
ENDOWED PROFESSORSHIPS
Alumnus donates first novel by an African-American slave
Reunion events to explore world's public health crises
British Art Center acquisitions honor its founding 25 years ago
'Behold, the Sea Itself' showcases center's collection of marine art
Graduate/Professional International Study Grants
YCIAS offers Summer Institutes for educators
Corrections
Bulletin Home|Visiting on Campus|Calendar of Events|In the News
Bulletin Board|Classified Ads|Search Archives|Deadlines|Bulletin Staff
Public Affairs Home|News Releases|
E-Mail Us|Yale Home Page
