Fall 2011
Around the Quads
In Lumine Tuo
PULITZERS: Eric Foner ’63, ’69 GSAS, the Dewitt Clinton Professor of History, and Jesse Eisinger ’92, a senior reporter at the investigative website ProPublica, won 2011 Pulitzer Prizes for their writing and research.
Foner’s newest book, The Fiery Trial: Abraham Lincoln and American Slavery, already had been lauded by critics and showered with awards when it won the prestigious $10,000 Pulitzer Prize for History, given by the Journalism School. The citation described the book as “a well orchestrated examination of Lincoln’s changing views of slavery, bringing unforeseeable twists and a fresh sense of improbability to a familiar story.”
Eisinger, who also writes a column for The New York Times’ Dealbook blog, shared the National Reporting prize with his colleague Jake Bernstein “for their exposure of questionable practices on Wall Street that contributed to the nation’s economic meltdown, using digital tools to help explain the complex subject to lay readers,” the citation read.
ARTS AND SCIENCES: Seven Columbia professors with expertise in fields ranging from computer science to genetics to literature were elected in May to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, one of the nation’s oldest and most prestigious honorary societies.
The fellows from Columbia in the 2011 class are James S. Shapiro ’77, the Larry Miller Professor of English and Comparative Literature; Maxwell E. Gottesman, the Charles H. Revson Professor of Biochemistry and Molecular Biophysics and Microbiology and the director of the Institute of Cancer Research; Mark A. Mazower, the Ira D. Wallach Professor of World Order Studies, chair of the history department and director of the Center for International History; Shree K. Nayar, chair of the computer science department; Rodney J. Rothstein, professor of genetics and development; Michael Scammell ’85 GSAS, professor in the School of the Arts Writing Program; and Shou-Wu Zhang ’91 GSAS, mathematics professor.
SHAW PRIZES: The Davies Professor of Mathematics Richard S. Hamilton was one of seven scientists at universities and research centers who will share the 2011 Shaw Prizes, three $1-million awards that were announced on June 7 by the Hong Kong-based Shaw Prize Foundation. The awards, to be presented in September, also went to Enrico Costa of Italy’s National Institute of Astrophysics and Gerald J. Fishman of NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center, in astronomy; Jules A. Hoffmann of France’s University of Strasbourg; Ruslan M. Medzhitov of Yale University; and Bruce A. Beutler of the Scripps Research Institute in La Jolla, Calif., in life science and medicine; and Demetrios Christodoulou of the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (along with Hamilton) in mathematical sciences.