James E. Turner, the founding director of Cornell's Africana Studies and Research Center, was reappointed to the post for a five-year term by the provost, effective July 1. A professor of Africana Studies whose first stint as director lasted 17 years, Turner is a political sociologist specializing in African-American social movements and is a leading expert on Malcolm X.
Nobel Prize winner Hans A. Bethe, Cornell University professor emeritus of physics, has a new award named in his honor established by the American Physical Society (APS). The APS will announce the award at a reception on the occasion of Bethe's 90th birthday on July 2.
A surgeon at Weill Cornell Medical College in New York City and a professor of textiles and apparel at Cornell's Ithaca campus have partnered to create a biodegradable artificial skin for burn victims.
Forty-seven Cornellians from the classes of 1927 to 1971 were honored during Reunion in 1993 at the dedication of the Korean/Vietnam War Memorial in the rotunda of Anabel Taylor Hall at Cornell University. Since then, two additional alumni who were killed during the Vietnam War have been identified. Their names will be added to the memorial at a rededication ceremony June 6 during this year's Reunion events. Members of the rededication committee, chaired by alumnus Joseph Ryan '65, are determined that no alumnus who made the ultimate sacrifice in service to his or her country will be overlooked. With the aid of students in the Reserve Officers Training Corps (ROTC), they are searching alumni lists and contacting Cornellians around the world to ask if they know of any alumni who were killed in service during the Korean War, Vietnam War, the Cold War or Desert Storm. This includes anyone who died even years later of injuries incurred during service. (February 12, 2003)
NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital/Weill Cornell Medical Center has established the Cornell Institute of Robotic Urological Surgery within the Brady Department of Urology. Robotic prostate surgery for prostate cancer patients will be the centerpiece of the new program.
William B. Lacy, director of Cornell Cooperative Extension, has been elected president of the Rural Sociological Society for the 1998-99 academic year, the sixth time a Cornell professor has held the post.
NASA has given the go-ahead for the Cornell University-led Comet Nucleus Tour, or Contour, mission. The agency said the mission has passed a critical review and the building of the spacecraft can begin.
Many of the Cornell students who live off campus call Collegetown home during the academic year. But Collegetown is also home to year-round residents and families, private homes and large apartment complexes, and a bustling business district.
For Cornell biologist John P. Berry, knowing the punch line to the joke, "Where does an 800-pound gorilla eat?" is not enough. Certainly, the mountain gorillas he studies in Uganda's Bwindi impenetrable forest eat wherever they want. Whatever, too.
Cornell President Hunter Rawlings announced Jan. 3 that he will recommend to the Cornell Board of Trustees the appointment of Harold D. Craft Jr. as vice president for administration and chief financial officer, effective Feb. 1.