Scientists Enjoy Their Annual Moment In Limelight As Universities Bestow Honorary Degrees For 1993

Thousands of new college graduates have been rubbing shoulders with some of the science community's heaviest hitters during the past month and a half, thanks to the hallowed tradition of the honorary degree. Adding luster to commencement ceremonies at campuses throughout the United States this year have been such luminaries, for example, as Torsten Wiesel, Anthony Fauci, Walter Massey, Gertrude Elion, Stanley Cohen, D. Allan Bromley, and Maxine Singer. These and dozens of other men and women researchers were honored for their contributions to science and, at the same time, positioned as role models for members of the 1993 class to respect, if not emulate. At some schools, celebrated scientists seized the opportunity to address the graduates, and when they spoke, they tried to hit home with messages appropriately contoured for their young audiences. At the Johns Hopkins School of Public Health commencement ceremonies, for example, Joycelyn Elders--Presi- dent Clinton's surgeon general-designate--emphasized the pres- sing need for much broader disease-prevention measures in communities across the U.S. In doing so, Elders urged her listeners to "market the prevention message like Mr. McDonald markets hamburgers." Although a standard annual practice at most major U.S. schools, the traditional bestowal of honorary degrees to men and women of achievement, celebrity, and sometimes both is not an exclusively American phenomenon. In Ontario, Canada's McMaster University in Hamilton last month, for example, Nobel laureate Baruch S. Blumberg was awarded an honorary Doctor of Science degree. Blumberg, who carries the title of distinguished scientist at Philadelphia's Fox Chase Cancer Center and is master of Oxford University's Balliol College, was honored by McMaster for having "fundamentally changed the practice of medicine with regard to the transmission of viral diseases." Meanwhile, Harvard University entomologist E.O. Wilson--who was awarded an honorary doctorate by the University of Massachusetts--was so honored by Oxford, as well. Despite the widespread tradition of awarding honorary degrees to scientists and other notable achievers, many of the nation's schools decline to embrace this method of adding glitter to their commencement programs--either because it is against their policy, or because they have no policy at all on the matter. At Stanford University, bestowing honorary degrees was discouraged back in 1891 by David Starr Jordan, the university's first president--and himself one of only two honorary degree recipients in the history of Cornell University. Jordan stated that any degree presented "should represent work actually done under the direction of the institution." Texas A&M University had no formalized policy of awarding honorary degrees until Texas resident and then-President George Bush was presented with one in 1989. Alice Wolf, chairwoman of the Committee on Honorary Degrees at Texas A&M, says, however, that the presentation to Bush encouraged the administration to standardize its nomination and presentation processes by creating a permanent board. In the case of state universities, the governing board of regents generally sets policy regarding the awarding of honorary degrees. The University of California system, for example, has long maintained a no- honorary degree policy for its schools. Purdue University and the University of Michigan in Dearborn are two schools that present distinguished alumni and leadership awards in the place of honorary degrees. And while the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, has a long-standing policy of not presenting honorary degrees, according to Glenn Hall, interim vice chancellor for academic affairs, the school does things in its own fashion: Tennessee graduation speakers are often distinguished or retiring faculty members. Hall, a member of Tennessee's administration for 38 years, views the policy as a question of integrity. "It's a matter of, `where do you stop?' he says. "How many politicians are going to get honorary degrees?" For those schools that do present honorary degrees at spring commencement ceremonies, the choice of recipients is the result of a process that usually begins in the preceding fall. At that time, typically, the university faculty is asked by the administration to submit nominations of worthy individuals. At Dartmouth College, the senior class is also encouraged to nominate candidates. "We think it's nice to involve everyone, including the seniors," says Cheryl Reynolds, secretary to the board of trustees, who sits on Dartmouth's Council of Honorary Degrees. "After all, they are the ones who are graduating." At schools like Dartmouth, names and curricula vitae of the candidates are forwarded to a committee on honorary degrees, usually made up of administration officials and selected members of the institution's board of trustees. Finally, after deliberation, a list of recommended candidates is sent either to the president or to the board of trustees of the school, which makes the final decision on degree recipients. Terry Burke, special assistant to the president at the University of Arizona at Tucson, says the nomination process, in most cases, runs smoothly. "I cannot recall an instance where our president departed wildly from the faculty committee's advice," he says, but he recalls occasions when nominees decline the honorary degree "for a variety of reasons." Frequently, refusals are due to scheduling conflicts. --C.M. However, the large number of honorary degrees handed out to scientists at U.S. campuses in recent weeks underscores the high regard that most of the nation's academic institutions hold for the scientific enterprise. And it strongly suggests the important role that researchers--along with philosophers, poets, government officials, and others--are expected to play in influencing the minds of the graduates who, in turn, are expected to shape the future. Achievements of the men and women scientists receiving honorary degrees--most often doctor of science degrees--from U.S. universities this year covered the full spectrum of research disciplines: life scientists such as Harvard's Wilson, the Carnegie Institution's Singer, and the National Institutes of Health's Fauci; mathematicians, such as Paul Erdos, a member of the Hungarian Academy of Science; Princeton University physicist Robert Dicke; and Stanford, Calif., psychologist Gardner Lindzey. The full breadth of scientific enterprise recognized through the awarding of this year's honorary degrees is reflected in the following list of some of the institutions conferring that honor and the individuals they selected to receive it: University of Connecticut, Storrs: Torsten Wiesel, 1981 Nobel laureate in medicine or physiology and current president of Rockefeller University, for "the organization and development of the brain and the mechanisms of myopia"; and Peter H. Raven, director of the Missouri Botanical Garden, for being "the leading salesperson in the United States and worldwide for conservation of biodiversity." University of Wisconsin, Madison: Erwin Neher, who won the 1991 Nobel Prize in physiology or medicine and is now director of the membrane biophysics department at the Max Planck Institute, for his "knowledge of the most fundamental molecular components of cellular communication"; and Gertrude Elion, scientist emeritus at Burroughs Wellcome Co. and the 1988 Nobel laureate in physiology or medicine, for "major conceptual contributions to cancer research." Ohio State University, Columbus: William Herbert Sweet, a professor of surgery and chief of neurological surgery at Harvard Medical School, for "sentinel studies in the areas of brain imaging, the treatment and pathology of pain, and the treatment of brain tumors"; and Frank Ellis, founder of the Sheffield National Radium Shelter in Sheffield, England, for seminal work in radiation oncology. Bard College, Annandale-on-Hudson, N.Y.: Anthony S. Fauci, director, National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, for his work in "delineation of the mechanisms of activation, proliferation, and differentiation of the human lymphoid cells." State University of New York, Stony Brook: Howard Green, George Higginson Professor of Cellular Biology and chairman of the department of cellular and molecular physiology at Harvard Medical School, for "the co-cultivation of epithelial cells with fibroblasts [which was] essential to successfully grow skin in the laboratory." Michigan State University, East Lansing: Louis Sokoloff, chief of the Laboratory of Cerebral Metabolism, National Institute of Mental Health, for advancing the study of neurophysical function. Dartmouth College, Hanover, N.H.: Maxine Singer, biochemist and president of the Carnegie Institution of Washington, D.C., for research that has "enlarged knowledge of DNA and laid a foundation of understanding that may one day support cures for a myriad of genetically related diseases." Singer was also cited for support of "women and minorities to pursue careers in science," and for promoting "the consideration of ethical issues related to genetic research." University of Massachusetts, Amherst: E.O. Wilson, Frank B. Baird Professor of Science at Harvard University, "for his work on social insects, sociobiology, biodiversity and conservation"; Ernst Mayr, Alexander Agassiz professor of zoology, emeritus, at Harvard and G. Ledyard Stebbins, professor, emeritus, of genetics at the University of California, Davis, for their status as "the most important evolutionary biologists of the century." Rutgers University, New Brunswick, N.J.: Wayne Levin, a pharmacologist at the Roche Research Center, for "work on the purification, properties and regulation of multiple cytochrome P- 450 enzymes"; Gardner Lindzey, director emeritus of the Center for Advanced Study in Behavioral Sciences in Stanford, Calif., for having "profound impact on the creation and dissemination of psychological knowledge"; and John S. Mayo, president of AT&T Bell Laboratories, for "accomplishments in high-speed digital transmission, electronic switching, satellite communications, integrated circuits, and photonic devices." Duke University, Durham, N.C.: Sylvia A. Earle, marine biologist at the California Academy of Sciences, for being a "leader of scientific expeditions, a resident of undersea habitats, a pilot of advanced submersible vehicles, and a pioneer of experimental marine equipment"; and David Hamburg, president of the Carnegie Corporation, for advocacy in "nuclear weapons control, emphasizing in particular global ecological risks." Washington University, St. Louis: Stanley Cohen, 1986 Nobel laureate in physiology or medicine and distinguished professor at Vanderbilt University, for work in understanding "the processes governing the growth of tumors and developmental malformations, degenerative changes in senile dementia, and delays in wound healings"; Peter H. Raven, for his continuing advocacy of environmental preservation. University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia: Alfred Gellhorn, director of medical affairs for the New York State Department of Health, for "introducing North America's first School of Medicine to the second half of the twentieth century" at the University of Pennsylvania; and Ralph Landau, chemical engineering entrepreneur and Penn trustee, for "original processes developed to produce key ingredients for polyester fiber, plastics, antifreezes, and other new materials." University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign: Paul Erdos, mathematician and member of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, for "having contributed to more existing fields than any other living mathematician." University of Arizona, Tucson: Robert H. Dicke, professor of physics at Princeton University, for "advances in techniques in quantum physics and electro-optics, and for work that has helped gravity physics and cosmology to become mature sciences"; and Sol D. Resnick, director of the Water Resources Research Center at Arizona from 1966 to 1984 and professor, emeritus, for contributions to the 1980 Arizona Ground Water Management Act and in "water development projects in India, Thailand, Brazil, Israel, and here." New York University, New York: Israel M. Gelfand, mathematician and distinguished professor at Rutgers University, for "contributions to functional analysis, integral geometry, and representation theory." Rockefeller University, New York: Seymour Benzer, professor of neuroscience at the California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, for "elegant experiments [that] revolutionized scientific understanding of the gene"; and George Thorn, chairman emeritus of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute board of trustees and professor, emeritus, at Harvard, for therapeutic applications of a synthetic hormone for Addison's disease, the development of the first dialysis program for kidney failure, and standardizing procedures in the diagnosis and treatment of hypertension.

Scientists Enjoy Their Annual Moment In Limelight As Universities Bestow Honorary Degrees For 1993

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