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Release: May 15, 1995
Contact: Justin Harmon (609/258-5732)


Humanities Faculty Honored

PRINCETON, N.J. -- Bas van Fraassen and Froma Zeitlin have
been honored with Princeton University's Howard T. Behrman
Award for distinguished achievement in the humanities.

Van Fraassen, a professor of philosophy, joined the
Princeton faculty in 1982. His research has focused on
scientific realism and probability, semantics and logic. His
defense of what he calls "constructive empiricism," an
approach to understanding the nature of scientific knowledge
as derived from cumulative observation and experiment, has
affected the thinking of those concerned with theories
postulating the existence of unobservable phenomena, such as
genes, quarks, and electromagnetic fields. Among his books
are _Quantum Mechanics: An Empiricist View_ (1991), _Laws and
Symmetry_ (1989), _Scientific Image_ (1980) and _Formal Semantics
and Logic_ (1971).

Zeitlin, Ewing Professor of Greek Language and Literature,
joined the faculty in 1977. She is an expert on Greek
tragedy, with particular attention to issues of gender and
sexuality, problems of self-identity, the role of society and
locality, and the dramatic function of spectacle and
performance. She has authored two books, _Under the Shield:
Semiotics and Aeschylus' Seven Against Thebes_ (1982) and
_Playing the Other: Gender and Society in Classical Greek
Literature_ (forthcoming). She also teaches a popular course,
Texts and Images of the Holocaust.

Behrman Awards have been made annually since 1975, when
they were established by a gift from the late Howard Behrman,
a physician and book collector. The annual awards dinner was
held at Prospect House on May 6. Award winners each receive
$5,000.

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