Longtime Yale faculty member Roger E. Howe has been appointed as the Frederick Phineas Rose Professor in Mathematics by vote of the Yale Corporation.
Professor Howe is the first incumbent of the Rose chair, which was endowed by alumnus and longtime Yale benefactor Frederick P. Rose to honor scholars of distinction who are also exceptional teachers. The new chair will rotate among members of the Yale College faculty and may be held for no more than five years by any single incumbent.
The creation of the Rose Professorship is just the latest of many gifts to the University by Mr. Rose, who earned a B.C.E. in 1944 from the Yale Engineering School. His generosity has also helped establish scholarships at the Schools of Architecture and Music, as well as the Association of Yale Alumni's (AYA) Community Service Fellowships. He has supported the Humanities in Medicine program at the School of Medicine as well as the University's Habitat for Humanity housing projects. With other members of his family, he funded the creation of Rose Alumni House and Rose Walk, the pathway that replaces the block of High Street between Elm and Wall streets.
A builder and real estate executive who has headed Rose Associates Inc. in New York City since 1980, Mr. Rose served as successor trustee on the Yale Corporation 1989-94, chaired the AYA's board of governors 1972-75 and was a member of the University Council 1976-81. He was awarded a Yale Medal for his outstanding service to the University in 1976 and a Patron of Art Award from the Yale Science and Engineering Society in 1991. His philanthropic associations also include the Federation of Jewish Philanthropies of New York, Rockefeller University, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the American Museum of Natural History, the New York Public Library and the Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts, among numerous other organizations.
"Once again, I thank Fred Rose for his continuing dedication and support for Yale," said President Richard C. Levin, in announcing the new Rose chair. "I continue to be amazed and delighted by the breadth of his interests at this University."
Professor Roger Howe's major research interest is in the applications of symmetry, particularly harmonic analysis, group representations, automorphic forms and invariant theory.
Described as a "patient and dedicated teacher," Professor Howe was awarded The Yale College/Dylan Hixon '88 Prize for Teaching Excellence in the Natural Sciences at the University's Commencement in May. His citation read, in part: "[I]f mathematics is a language, you certainly speak it beautifully. Fortunately for those who are not themselves native speakers, you have demonstrated a gift for making fundamental concepts in the structure of mathematics become familiar and intelligible ..."
The Yale mathematician holds a bachelor's degree from Harvard University and a doctorate from the University of California at Berkeley. He taught at the State University of New York in Stony Brook 1969-74 and, during that time, was also a member of the Institute for Advanced Study and a research associate at the University of Bonn, Germany. He joined the Yale faculty in 1974 as a professor, and has served as director of graduate studies in the mathematics department 1982-83 and 1986-87, and as chair of the department 1992-95.
Professor Howe has held visiting professorships at the Ecole Normale des Jeunes Filles in Paris and at Rutgers University and was a Phi Beta Kappa Visiting Fellow in 1996-97. He is a member of the National Academy of Science, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the Connecticut Academy of Science and Engineering, and he has been a fellow of the Japan Society for the Advancement of Science and the Institute for Advanced Studies at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.