are awarded to two scientists
Two scientists -- Robert Adair, Sterling Professor Emeritus of Physics, and Robert Dunne, senior lecturer in computer science and co-director of Yale's Center for Internet Studies -- were awarded this year's William Clyde DeVane Medals, the oldest and highest-ranking award for undergraduate teaching and scholarship at Yale.
Conferred since 1966, the medal is named for William Clyde DeVane, dean of Yale College 1938-1963, who served as president of both the Yale and United chapters of Phi Beta Kappa. DeVane was also a member of the Phi Beta Kappa Senate.
A committee of faculty from the Yale Graduate Board of Advisers to Phi Beta Kappa elected Adair as its medalist. Dunne was chosen by Yale College seniors who have been elected to Phi Beta Kappa.
The awards were presented at the annual banquet of the Yale chapter of Phi Beta Kappa held on Feb. 20 in the Presidents Room of Woolsey Hall. Mary E. Miller, the Vincent Scully Professor of the History of Art, master of Saybrook College and graduate president of the Yale chapter of Phi Beta Kappa, hosted the event along with the other graduate and undergraduate officers of Phi Beta Kappa.
Yale senior Alexander Nemser -- who recently won a Marshall Scholarship for study at Oxford University -- was this year's Phi Beta Kappa poet -- the first student to hold that distinction. A published poet, Nemser's "The Encyclopedia of the Dead" was read at the Phi Beta Kappa banquet.
Robert Adair
In his introduction of Adair, Jack Sandweiss, the Donner Professor of Physics, called his colleague an "outstanding scientist, original and dedicated teacher and citizen of Yale." He outlined the physicist's career, noting that Adair volunteered to serve in the Army during World War II, earning a Purple Heart and Bronze Star after being wounded in the European theater. Following the war, Adair completed his bachelor's degree and went on to earn a doctorate in experimental nuclear physics from the University of Wisconsin at Madison. He worked at Brookhaven National Laboratory on Long Island, and then joined the Yale faculty in 1959, serving over the years as chair of the Department of Physics, director of the Division of Physical Sciences and head of numerous committees.
While conducting cutting-edge research, he taught "almost all subjects in physics, at all levels from introductory classes to graduate specialties. He was especially interested in and challenged by the teaching of modern physical science to students with no special background," Sandweiss said.
Retiring from teaching in 1994, Adair turned his attention to studying the effects of weak electromagnetic fields on human health and -- at the request of former Yale President A. Bartlett Giamatti -- to the physics of baseball. Giamatti, then president of the National Baseball League, wanted to know the scientific significance of "corking" a bat, wetting a ball and similar issues. Adair obliged, eventually producing a book on the subject in 1990 that has gone into several editions, most recently in 2002.
"The book is written from a quantitative point of view but has no equations although it has 41 graphs and figures. Its success is a tribute to Bob's ability and interest in explaining and teaching physics. It is an example of the combination of rigor, clarity, humor and skill at exposition that make Bob Adair so fitting a DeVane Medalist," said Sandweiss.
Robert Dunne
Two undergraduates, Julia Pudlin and Todd Schneider, presented Dunne with his medal. According to Pudlin, Dunne's subject is "the nebulous field of technological law, where doctrines are constantly evolving and solutions are never clear-cut." Although Dunne instructs more than 600 students a year in lecture and seminar courses, she said, he reads all of their papers and meets individually with virtually every student.
He "embodies unmatched accessibility and enthusiasm for teaching," Pudlin said, noting that Dunne has achieved "celebrity status on campus and on the Internet."
Schneider added, "Professor Dunne's classes leave a lasting impact on his students," who find the material he teaches "so intriguing that they continue to study it after having completed the necessary coursework." He lauded Dunne's "dedication to teaching us about the legal implications of the technologies that we love and crave," citing TiVo, iPods and videogames among others.
In addition to his formal teaching, Dunne assists undergraduates who produce copyrightable material. Schneider said, "Without Professor Dunne's guidance, we students would have less of an idea how to deal with our own developing legal issues."
Phi Beta Kappa, the nation's oldest undergraduate honors organization, was founded in 1776 at the College of William and Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia. Four years later, the original Phi Beta Kappa Society was abruptly forced to cease operations as the British army advanced on the city. The year before, however, the society had already granted charters to Yale and Harvard, making them the second and third chapters of the organization, respectively.
Other DeVane Medalists have included Benjamin Polak, Jules D. Prown, Fred Strebeigh, Wayne Meeks, Edmund S. Morgan, Howard R. Lamar, Jonathan Spence, John Gaddis, Marie Borroff and former Yale College Dean Richard Brodhead, who is now president of Duke University.
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