Cornell University President Hunter Rawlings announced two key administrative appointments at the Cornell Board of Trustees' final meeting of the academic year May 23.

Rawlings announced the appointment of Nobel laureate Robert C. Richardson, the Floyd R. Newman Professor of Physics, as vice provost for research, and Cutberto Garza, M.D., professor and director of the Division of Nutritional Sciences, as vice provost with responsibility for academic liaison.

"I am delighted to announce the appointment of these two esteemed faculty members, who stand as examples of excellence in their respective fields, to these important administrative positions," Rawlings said. "I am confident that they will play a key role in helping us to enhance our academic mission and to set our directions for the university in the years to come."

The appointments, which are effective July 1, are part of an administrative restructuring announced by Rawlings in January to strengthen the academic mission of the university and streamline its central reporting structures. The new structure concentrates responsibility for the overall operation of the university in the Office of the Provost.

Richardson and Garza will be members of a new academic cabinet that will meet with Rawlings biweekly. That cabinet includes the provost, two college deans (currently Philip E. Lewis, the Harold Tanner Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences, and Daryl Lund, the Ronald P. Lynch Dean of the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences), Walter I. Cohen, vice provost and dean of the Graduate School, Richardson, Garza and another vice provost still to be named.

"This group will ensure that the university's primary academic missions in instruction, research and public service remain consistently central to our thinking at the highest levels of the administration," Rawlings said in announcing the restructuring in January.

Richardson will head the Office of the Vice Provost for Research. That office will focus attention on universitywide research efforts, especially in the sciences, while also continuing local, national and international outreach efforts.

"Bob Richardson brings to the central administration the highest level of scientific talent in someone whose commitment to Cornell, combined with his national and international standing, will help us articulate the university's agenda in research as well as contribute to the shaping of a national agenda for the scientific enterprise," Randel said.

Richardson shared the Nobel Prize in physics in 1996. His fellow winners were David M. Lee, Cornell professor of physics, and Douglas Osheroff (Cornell Ph.D. 1973) a physics professor at Stanford University. The three won the prize for their 1971 discovery that the helium isotope helium-3 can be made to flow without resistance -- a state called a superfluid -- at about two-thousandths of a degree above absolute zero, or minus-273.15 degrees Celsius.

"Cornell's most precious asset is the outstanding quality of its faculty and of its students, both undergraduate and graduate," Richardson said. "I see my job as encouraging faculty to dream their fondest dreams about creative research, and then doing whatever is necessary to make those dreams a reality."

Richardson attended Virginia Polytechnic Institute, earning his B.S. in 1958 and his M.S. in 1960, both in physics. He came to Cornell in 1966 as a research associate after earning a Ph.D. in physics the same year from Duke University. In 1968 he was named an assistant professor of physics at Cornell, an associate professor in 1972 and a full professor in 1975. He has served as the Newman Professor since 1987. In 1990 he also was named director of the Laboratory of Atomic and Solid State Physics, a post he relinquished last year.

Richardson was elected to the National Academy of Sciences in 1986. He was a Guggenheim Fellow in 1975-76 and 1982-83, and was elected as a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in 1981 and as a fellow of the American Physical Society in 1983.

Of Garza's appointment, Randel said: "Bert Garza wonderfully exemplifies the ways in which Cornell faculty members can combine the most distinguished academic achievements with a vigorous role in service to the people of New York state, the nation and the world. I look forward to having him as a colleague in working with the colleges and other units of the university to strengthen Cornell's academic programs in pursuit of our missions in teaching, research and service."

Garza has served on the Cornell faculty since 1988. Before coming to Cornell he was a professor of pediatrics at Baylor College of Medicine, the same school from which he earned his medical degree in 1973. With a bachelor of science degree in chemistry, he graduated summa cum laude from Baylor in 1969. Garza also earned a Ph.D. from the Department of Nutrition and Food Science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1976.

"I am very grateful for the opportunity to help ensure Cornell's standing as one of the world's great universities," Garza said. "Working with our faculty, students, staff, alumni and friends to attain this goal is an exceptional privilege. Cornell's inseparable commitments to teaching, the discovery of knowledge for its own sake and its land-grant missions make this university unique among the Ivies and this new position particularly attractive."

He is a member of the American Institute of Nutrition, the Society for Pediatric Research and the American Society of Clinical Nutrition.