R. Howard Bloch has come to Yale as the Augustus R. Street Professor of French.
Professor Bloch's teaching and research have spanned many aspects of French culture, from a study of the principal romance forms of the 12th and 13th centuries, to an analysis of the Old French language and primary genres of the 14th and 15th centuries, to an examination of comic forms and theories of comedy in literature, to an exploration of 17th-century French theater. He has written several books on French literature and culture.
Professor Bloch received his undergraduate degree from Amherst College in 1965 and his doctorate from Stanford University in 1970. That same year he began teaching at the State University of New York at Buffalo as assistant professor. He joined the University of California at Berkeley, (UC Berkeley) in 1973 and served as chair of the French department 1985-90. He was promoted to full professor there in 1994. A year later he accepted an appointment at Columbia University as chair of its department of French and romance philology. While at both UC Berkeley and Columbia, Professor Bloch came to Yale several times as a visiting professor. The Street appointment marks the beginning of his tenure at Yale as a member of the permanent faculty.
Among Professor Bloch's awards and honors are a Fulbright Fellowship, Bibliothèque Nationale, Paris; a Guggenheim Fellowship; and the James Russell Lowell Award of the Modern Language Association. He also is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and an officer in the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres.
Thomas E. Crow has joined the Yale faculty as the Robert Lehman Professor of the History of Art.
Professor Crow is an expert on how art is integrated into, and reflects the values and beliefs of, the society in which it is created. His latest book, "Modern Art in the Common Culture," has met with critical acclaim and is described by one reviewer as a "stimulating" work which presents a "new and fresh kind of cultural theory." Professor Crow is the author of several other books, as well as dozens of articles and reviews.
In 1969, Professor Crow graduated magna cum laude from Pomona College, where he was a member of Phi Beta Kappa. He subsequently pursued graduate studies in art history at the University of California, Los Angeles, earning a master's degree and a doctorate from that institution in 1976 and 1978, respectively.
He taught at several renowned institutions -- including Princeton University and the University of Sussex in the United Kingdom -- before coming to Yale in 1996 as a visiting faculty member.
He has served in an editorial capacity for the journals Artforum, Art History, The Art Bulletin and the Yale Journal of Law and the Humanities.
Among his awards are several for his book "Painters and Public Life in Eighteenth-Century Paris," including the Charles Rufus Morey Book Award of the College of Art Association for "most distinguished book in the history of art published in 1985." The book also garnered a Yale University Press Governor's Award.
John Lewis Gaddis has come to Yale from Ohio University as the Robert A. Lovett Professor of Military History.
Much of Professor Gaddis' research in contemporary history focuses on the Cold War period. He has written dozens of articles and several books on the subject, including "The United States and the Origins of the Cold War, 1941-1947," "The Long Peace: Inquiries Into the History of the Cold War" and "We Now Know: Rethinking Cold War History," published this year by Oxford University Press. He currently is working on a biography of George F. Kennan.
Professor Gaddis was educated at the University of Texas, Austin, receiving his bachelor's degree in 1963, his master's degree in 1965 and his doctorate in 1968. In 1969, after a year as assistant professor of history at Indiana University Southeast, he joined the Ohio University faculty. He was named full professor there in 1976, and in 1983 he was appointed Distinguished Professor of History. Professor Gaddis also was director of Ohio University's Contemporary History Institute as well as its John and Elizabeth Baker Peace Studies Program. He has held visiting appointments at Oxford and Princeton universities, the University of Helsinki and the U.S. Naval War College, where he was visiting professor of strategy.
Among Professor Gaddis' awards and honors are a Guggenheim Foundation Fellowship and a Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars Fellowship. He was a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences Committee on International Security Studies 1985-90, and was elected a fellow of the academy in 1995.
Andrew D. Hamilton, formerly of the University of Pittsburgh, has joined the Yale faculty as the Irénée duPont Professor of Chemistry.
Professor Hamilton's work in organic and biological chemistry involves devising novel synthetic routes to molecules that mimic critical biological functions such as molecular recognition and catalysis; and the design of new structures to interact with key proteins in such cellular processes as signal transduction and cell cycle control, leading to novel anti-cancer agents. His more than 100 articles have appeared in numerous scholarly publications.
In 1974 Professor Hamilton received a bachelor's degree in chemistry, with 1st Class honors, from Exeter University, Devon, England. Two years later he earned a master's degree from the University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada. After receiving a Ph.D. in organic chemistry from the University of Cambridge, England, in 1979, he undertook postdoctoral work at the University of Strasbourg, France.
Professor Hamilton is in the 16th year of a teaching career that began at Princeton University, where he was assistant professor 1981-88. He then joined the University of Pittsburgh faculty as associate professor. He was named full professor there in 1992 and chair of Pittsburgh's chemistry department in 1994.
Among Professor Hamilton's awards and honors are a Mobil Young Faculty Award and an Exxon Education Foundation Fellowship. He has served on the editorial boards of journals and other academic publications, and has helped organize several professional meetings, including the 1995 NATO Advanced Research Workshop on Biomimetic Catalysis in Pittsburgh.
Patrick H. Vaccaro has been appointed the Milton Harris, '29 Ph.D. Associate Professor of Chemistry, effective through June 30, 1999.
Professor Vaccaro's teaching and research interests include state-selective preparation and characterization of energetic molecular species; state-to-state studies of reaction dynamics and relaxation phenomena; and the development and application of multiple-resonance laser techniques to problems of molecular spectroscopy and dynamics. The work expands on interests Professor Vaccaro developed as a student.
At the University of Pennsylvania, where he earned a bachelor's degree in chemistry summa cum laude in 1980, he conducted independent research which utilized spectroscopic probes to examine chemically reactive intermediates isolated in a cryogenic matrix. He earned a Ph.D. from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1986. For his thesis research, he developed novel laser techniques for state-selective preparation and state-specific detection of molecules in regions of extreme rovibrational excitation.
Professor Vaccaro came to Yale in 1990 as assistant professor of chemistry and was promoted to associate professor in 1993.
Professor Vaccaro's research has been supported by grant awards from several agencies, including the National Science Foundation (NSF). His other many honors include a Yale Junior Faculty Fellowship in the Natural Sciences and a NSF Presidential Young Investigator Award.