Sterling Professor
Sterling Professor is the highest academic degree at Yale University, named after John William Sterling, who has left the University a great foundation.
Foundation
John William Sterling, even Yale graduate of 1864 and wealthy American lawyer, the University left at his death in 1918 an endowment of 15 million U.S. dollars - a sum which would amount to approximately 150 million U.S. dollars today and the then highest private devotion, ever leave a university. In his will, Sterling decreed among other things that 5 million dollars from the Foundation ( a sum which was almost doubled by the trustees of the foundation over time ) must be earmarked for equipment of the most prestigious departments of the university.
Many universities offer foundation funded professorships, often it is common among professors to retire from teaching in favor of research. However, precisely this is not common at Yale - the appointment of the Sterling Professor does not imply exemption from teaching. Nobel Prize - winner and Sterling Professor of Biology Sidney Altman said: " I did not expect to be excused from teaching - nor did I want to be " ( "I had not expected or intended to be exempted from teaching ").
Appointments
1920, the chemist John Johnson was appointed the first Professor Sterling. Since then received 159 more Chair this highest academic award, which is open to all faculties, although the foundation in 1958, the number of simultaneously teaching professors Sterling was limited to 27 - a rule of but exceptions are occasionally made .
Known Sterling Professors
Were among the professors Sterling and include some of the most famous scientists of various disciplines. Among them are, for example, the Nobel Laureate Sidney Altman and James Tobin, the mathematician Øystein Ore and Benoît Mandelbrot, the literary critic Harold Bloom, the sinologist Jonathan Spence, the economists William Nordhaus, the philosopher and political scientist Bruce Ackerman, the political scientist James C. Scott, Robert A. Dahl and Ian Shapiro, the literary theorist Paul de Man, the historian Charles Seymour, Donald Kagan and Jaroslav Pelikan, the Pulitzer Prize-winner David Brion Davis, the medical historian John Farquhar Fulton, the Orientalist Franz Rosenthal as well as the lawyer and international law expert Myres Smith McDougal.
As the first woman Marilyn Farquhar was 1987-1989 Sterling Professor of Medicine. It was followed in 1991 Carolyn Slayman, Sterling Professor of Genetics and Vice - dean of the medical faculty. Marie was Borroff 1992-1994 Sterling Professor of English and Joan Steitz 1998 was appointed Professor of Molecular Biophysics and Biochemistry for Sterling.