HONORS

Academy of Engineering: Dr. Bajcsy
Dr. Ruzena Bajcsy, professor of computing and
information science in SEAS, is one of 85 scientists
in the nation elected this year to the National Academy
of Engineering, which honors important contributions to
theory and practice. Dr. Bajcsy, who directs the GRASP
(General Robotics Active Sensory Perception) Laboratory
in CIS, is cited for "her development of 'active perception'
methods and for leadership in the community"

A Sloan for Dr. Scherer
After publishing on Sloan Awards to Penn members last month,
Almanac learned of a third: Dr. Norbert Scherer, assistant professor
of chemistry, also received the prestigious award this year, joining
Dr. Steven Meyers and Dr. Jordi Miralda-Escudé of physics and
astronomy. Dr. Scherer is an experimental chemist who has also won
Packard and National Young Investigator Awards for his work in chemical
reactions in solution.

Honors in Publishing

Dr. Peter Conn, professor of English, will know March 18 whether he or one of the other three other candidates has won the National Book Critics Circle award for biography. Dr. Conn is nominated for Pearl S. Buck: A Cultural Biography (Cambridge). Reappraising the author who won the the 1932 Pulitzer Prize and the Nobel Prize in 1938 for The Good Earth--but had fallen to virtual obscurity by the time of her death, Dr. Conn has startled the literary community by concluding, "Her erasure from history was a mistake."

Two members of the history and sociology of science have received awards for their recent published work. Dr. M. Susan Lindee, associate professor in H&SS, won a Burroughs Wellcome Fund Fortieth Anniversary Award, one of twenty-one given nationally by BWF for research in the history of medicine or science. Dr. Margaret C. Jacob, professor of H&SS, is the co-recipient of the Watson-Davis Prize, given by the History of Science Society for the best book on science to reach a general audience: Newton and the Culture of Newtonianism (Humanities Press 1995).

Almanac

Volume 43 Number 24
March 4, 1997

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