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B R I E F S
• A book by Michele Lamont, professor of sociology, has won two awards. "The Dignity of Working Men: Morality and the Boundaries of Race, Class and Immigration," published by Harvard University Press and the Russell Sage Foundation in 2000, was selected by the Society for Comparative Research for its Mattei Dogan Award for the best comparativist book. The book is "an extraordinarily sensitive, highly original interview-based study of the lives and times of working men, both white and black, and American and French," according to the citation. "What it does, to excellent effect, is to explain the ways in which a moral economy, rather than material wealth, provides the currency in which success is measured among working men." In addition, the Society for the Study of Social Problems chose the book for its C. Wright Mills Award. The award is given annually for the best sociological book that epitomizes the work of Mills, a sociologist who lived from 1916 to 1962. Among other qualifications, the winning study must discuss innovatively a contemporary public issue, use empirical methods to advance the social science of that issue and suggest courses of action. • Chemistry professor Giacinto Scoles has won the 2002 American Chemical Society's Peter Debye Award in Physical Chemistry, the highest honor for physical chemistry given by the ACS. The prize recognizes outstanding experimental and theoretical research in physical chemistry, a field that combines aspects of chemistry and physics to build models and empirical studies. Past recipients of the prestigious honor, first given in 1962, include several Nobel Prize winners. • Simon Levin, the George Moffett Professor of Biology, has been appointed to a new advisory commission of the Smithsonian Institution. The panel will advise the institution on the direction of its future scientific research. The commission will offer suggestions to the Smithsonian on setting research priorities, raising public awareness of Smithsonian activities, and measuring and optimizing research performance, among other topics. Its findings will be submitted to the Smithsonian's Board of Regents for consideration. The 18-member commission comprises a range of experts in many fields of science and scientific education. • Andrew Wiles, the Eugene Higgins Professor of Mathematics, has been elected to Honorary Membership of the London Mathematical Society. Wiles joined the faculty in 1982 and is widely celebrated for his proof of Fermat's Last Theorem. • Sociologists for Women in Society has selected Sara Curran, assistant professor of sociology, to receive the group's mentoring award. The award is presented annually to a sociologist who offers outstanding academic, professional and personal mentoring to colleagues and students. The honor recognizes mentoring as work that "frequently goes unnoticed but that is crucial to the success of individual sociologists, to the strength of specific departments and to the vitality of the discipline as a whole," according to the award committee. Curran was nominated by graduate students at Princeton. |
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