People
Don Schoorman
Spotlight
Name: Don Schoorman.
Position: Technical support specialist at the Princeton Institute for the Science and Technology of Materials. Acting as facilities coordinator for Bowen Hall. Providing technical support for PRISM’s Imaging and Analysis Center. Instructing students in the “Chemical Engineering Laboratory” course on the safe and proper use of equipment.
Quote: “I really enjoy working with students. They sometimes come to me for advice on building a piece of equipment. The students will tell me what the piece needs to do, and I will help them figure out how to make it work.”
Other interests: Playing with his three cats. Doing home repairs. Gardening. Woodworking.
Briefs
The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences has chosen Princeton astrophysicists James Gunn and James Peebles to receive the 2005 Crafoord Prize, a rare honor in their field.
Gunn and Peebles, who were cited “for contributions toward understanding the large-scale structure of the universe,” shared the prize with Martin Rees of Cambridge University. The award, which includes a $500,000 cash prize, has been given annually since 1980 for outstanding contributions in several fields including mathematics, geosciences, biosciences and astronomy. The 2005 award is the fifth given in the field of astronomy.
Gunn, the Eugene Higgins Professor of Astronomy, and Peebles, the Albert Einstein Professor of Science Emeritus, are both longstanding leaders in understanding the origin, development and current structure of the universe.
Gunn received his Ph.D. from the California Institute of Technology in 1966 and joined the Princeton faculty two years later. Among other honors, he received the Gold Medal of the Royal Astronomical Society of London and, earlier this month, the Henry Norris Russell Lectureship, the highest honor of the American Astronomical Society.
Peebles received his Ph.D. from Princeton in 1962 and spent three years as a postdoctoral fellow before joining the faculty. He has received many awards and honors, including the newly established $1 million Shaw Prize in Astronomy in 2004.
Sean Wilentz has received a Grammy Award nomination for his album notes that accompanied Bob Dylan’s two-CD set released in the spring.
Wilentz, the David-Stockton Professor of History and director of Princeton’s Program in American Studies, wrote an essay that accompanied “The Bootleg Series Vol. 6: Bob Dylan Live 1964 — Concert at Philharmonic Hall.”
The historian-in-residence on the musician’s official Web site <www.bobdylan.com>, Wilentz was asked by Dylan’s management to write the album notes. Wilentz, who has written several articles about Dylan, attended Dylan’s Philharmonic Hall concert in New York when he was 13 years old. The 52-page booklet documents Wilentz’s memories of the performance and the musical, historical and social significance of the event held on Halloween night in 1964.
The Grammy Awards are presented by the Recording Academy. The ceremony airs live at 8 p.m. Sunday, Feb. 13, on CBS.
Toni Morrison, the Robert F. Goheen Professor in the Humanities at Princeton, has been named a winner of the 2005 Coretta Scott King Award from the American Library Association.
The award, presented annually by the ALA’s Ethnic Multicultural Information Exchange Round Table, honors African-American authors and illustrators of outstanding books for children and young adults. Morrison is the author of “Remember: The Journey to School Integration,” published in 2004 by Houghton Mifflin. She was honored along with Kadir Nelson, illustrator of “Ellington Was Not a Street.”
“Remember” is Morrison’s first historical work for young people using archival photographs to take the reader on a journey remembering “the narrow path, the open door and the wide road” to integration. The images serve as the inspiration for Morrison’s text — a fictional account of the dialogue and emotions of the children who lived during the era of “separate but equal” schooling.
Robert George, the McCormick Professor of Jurisprudence, has been named one of four recipients of the 2005 Bradley Prize for outstanding achievement by the Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation.
The awards, which carry a $250,000 prize, will be presented at a ceremony Wednesday, Feb. 16, at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, D.C.
Michael W. Grebe, president and chief executive officer of the Milwaukee-based Bradley Foundation, said, “Robert George is being recognized for achievements that are consistent with the mission statement of the foundation, including the promotion of liberal democracy, equality, democratic capitalism and a vigorous defense of American institutions. Professor George is an influential thinker, revered educator and a prolific author.”
A distinguished constitutional scholar, George is the director of Princeton’s James Madison Program in American Ideals and Institutions and is a member of President Bush’s bioethics council. The award winners also include Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist George Will, who earned his Ph.D. in politics at Princeton in 1968.
