Faculty Achievements and Awards

Nambu Wins Chicago’s 28th Physics Nobel

Yoichiro Nambu, the Harry Pratt Judson Distinguished Service Professor Emeritus in Physics and Enrico Fermi Institute, shared the 2008 Nobel Prize in Physics “for the discovery of the mechanism of spontaneous broken symmetry in subatomic physics.” Nambu is one of the leading figures in the development of modern particle physics, and his work has wide-ranging implications, from the structure of the early universe to the behavior of magnetic material. He is the 82nd person connected with the University as a faculty member, student, or researcher to have received a Nobel Prize.

Music Faculty Members Garner Prizes

The British Academy, Great Britain’s national academy for the humanities and social sciences, elected Philip V. Bohlman, the Mary Werkman Distinguished Service Professor in the Humanities, one of 10 corresponding fellows. The academy also awarded Bohlman its Derek Allen Prize for Musicology for his bookThe Music of European Nationalism: Cultural Identity and Modern History.

Divas and Scholars: Performing Italian Opera by Philip Gossett, the Robert W. Reneker Distinguished Service Professor, won several honors: the Otto Kinkeldey Award for best monograph by a senior scholar from the American Musicological Society; a Deems Taylor Award from the American Society of Composers, Authors, and Publishers (ASCAP); and the Gordon J. Laing Prizefor the book published during the preceding three years that adds the greatest distinction to the University of Chicago Press. Gossett was also elected to the Royal Swedish Academy of Music. He is the world’s leading authority on 19th-century Italian opera—specifically the works of Rossini, Bellini, Donizetti, and Verdi.

Howard Sandroff, Senior Lecturer, received an ASCAPLUS Award in the Concert Music Division for his catalog of original compositions, which often include live or prerecorded electronics. Sandroff is Director of the University’s Computer Music Studio.

American Mathematical Society Honors Kenig

Carlos Kenig, Louis Block Distinguished Service Professor in Mathematics, was corecipient of the 2008 Maxime Bôcher Memorial Prize from the American Mathematical Society for his work in the field of analysis, a major branch of mathematics that includes calculus and other techniques often applied to scientific problems. Kenig was cited specifically “for his important contributions to harmonic analysis, partial differential equations, and in particular to nonlinear dispersive partial differential equations.”

Mustafa Wins Prize for Novel Translation

Farouk Mustafa, the Ibn Rushd Professorial Lecturer in Modern Arabic Languages, was honored for his translation of The Lodging House, the 1999 novel by Egyptian author Khairy Shalaby. A renowned literature teacher and translator at Chicago for more than 32 years, Mustafa received the Saif Ghobash-Banipal Prize, which recognizes “important work of individual translators in bringing…established and emerging Arab writers to the attention of the wider world,” and 2,000 British pounds. Mustafa’s translation of The Other Place, by Egyptian author Ibrahim Abdel Meguid, won the inaugural Naguib Mahfouz Prize for Arabic literature.

Venture Capital Award to Kaplan

Steven Kaplan, the Neubauer Family Professor of Entrepreneurship and Finance in the University of Chicago Booth School of Business, received the Richard J. Daley Medal from the Illinois Venture Capital Association. The award “recognizes a single individual who has given direct and extraordinary support to the Illinois economy through private equity funding.” Kaplan helped start Chicago Booth’s business plan competition, the New Venture Challenge, which has helped launch more than 40 companies that raised more than $100 million in funding. He is also the academic co-dean of the Kauffman Fellows program, which educates and trains emerging leaders in venture capital and high-growth companies.

Tamil Scholar Receives Research Awards

The Deutsche Morgenländische Gesellschaft (German Oriental Society) presented Sascha Ebeling, Assistant Professor in South Asian Languages & Civilizations, with its Forschungspreis (Research Award), Germany’s most prestigious award in the field of oriental studies. He was honored for research that contributed to his forthcoming monograph Colonizing the Realm of Words: The Transformation of Tamil Literature in Nineteenth-Century South India. Ebeling also received the Whiting Foundation Research Fellowship for Excellence in Undergraduate Teaching for his exceptional teaching in the College’s Humanities sequence. The award funds one year of research leave, which he will use to complete several articles and start writing two books: an introduction to the history of the novel in South India for a general literary studies audience and a reassessment of the discipline of comparative literature in a globalized world.

Cosmochemist Dauphas Wins Houtermans Medal

The European Association of Geochemistry awarded the 2008 Houtermans Medal for achievements by a scientist under the age of 35 to cosmochemist Nicolas Dauphas, Associate Professor in Geophysical Sciences. Dauphas, who studies chemical elements and their many atomic variations in meteorites and other materials from Earth and space, also received a 2007 Packard Fellowship for Science and Engineering from the David and Lucile Packard Foundation and the 2005 Nier Prize from the Meteoritical Society.

Pritchard Selected As HHMI Investigator

Jonathan Pritchard, Professor in Human Genetics, has been selected as a Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigator. The institute committed more than $600 million to support 56 of the nation’s top scientists over their first term of appointment. The program employs more than 300 of the nation’s most innovative scientists, who lead laboratories at 64 institutions. Pritchard’s research on human genetic variation ranges widely: He has analyzed the patterns in human DNA created by historical migrations, the consequences of natural selection, and whether modern humans and Neanderthals interbred.