Dartmouth to Confer Honorary Degrees

By Matthew Kenney | Wednesday, May 29, 2002

Marilyn Hughes Gaston (Doctor of Science)

Marilyn Hughes Gaston has dedicated her professional career to the health of our nation. She has focused on delivery of quality primary patient care, especially to poor and otherwise underserved communities. Also, she has focused on clinical research, medical education to young clinicians, and the administration of local and federal programs. Presently, she is the Director of the Bureau of Primary Care within the Health Resources and Services Administration, which is responsible for a budget of $5 billion and serves over twelve million people, with services at over 4000 sites across the country.

Gaston received her medical degree in pediatrics in 1964 from the University of Cincinnati College of Medicine. Prior to her appointment of Bureau Director, she worked at the National Institute of Health to improve the treatment of children with sickle cell disease. Her work greatly reduced the morbidity and mortality in young children around the world suffering from this disease, for which she has received international recognition.

Gaston is a member of the Institute of Medicine of the Nation Academy of Sciences, has received an honorary degree from the University of Pennsylvania, has received a Lifetime Achievement Award from the National Medical Association, numerous awards from the Public Health Service, has received the American Medical Association's Dr. Nathan Davis Award, and is honored yearly on Marilyn Hughes Gaston Day in the cities of Lincoln Heights and Cincinnati, Ohio, where a building named after her.

Gaston is the co-author of the book Prime Time: The African American Women's Complete Guide to Midlife Health and Wellness published by Random House.
Yuan T. Lee (Doctor of Science)

Yuan T. Lee was born November 19, 1936 in Hsinchu, Taiwan. He started his education living under Japanese occupation of the island of Taiwan. His education was interrupted by the Second World War, when the town he lived in was moved to the mountains to avoid the daily bombing runs made by Allied forces. After the war, he was about to resume school as a third year grade school student, when Taiwan was returned to China. His early education was marked by many activities modern school children would recognize—he was the second baseman on the school baseball team, and he was on the ping-pong team that won the little league championship in Taiwan. In high school he played the trombone in the school marching band and was a member of the tennis team. The work of Marie Curie led him to decide to become a scientist.

Lee was admitted to National Taiwan University in 1955 without having to take the entrance exam due to his high academic standing in high school. Lee was drawn to chemistry by the end of his freshman year. Although the lab facilities were less than ideal, the free and exciting atmosphere and the feelings of camaraderie helped to make his college years enjoyable. Lee's B.S. thesis was completed on the separation of the elements Sr and Ba using paper electrophoresis under professor Hua-sheng Cheng.

After graduating in 1959, Lee attended National Tsinghua University for his graduate work in chemistry. He received his master's degree based on studies done on the natural radioisotopes contained in Hukutolite, a hot springs mineral. Upon receiving his degree, he stayed on at National University as a research assistant to Professor C. H. Wong and determined the structure of tricyclopentadienyl samarium through X-ray crystallography.

For his Ph.D. degree Dr. Lee traveled to the US in 1962 to attend the University of California at Berkeley. Working under the late Professor Bruce Mahan, Dr. Lee studied the chemiionization processes of electronically excited alkali atoms. It was in the process of this work that he developed an interest in ion-molecule reactions and the dynamics of molecular scattering, specifically the reaction dynamics of crossed molecular beams.

He received his Ph.D. in 1965 and stayed at Berkeley to continue work with Dr. Mahan. Along with Dr. Mahan and Ron Gentry, he started work on ion molecular reactive scattering experiments using ion beam techniques, which allowed the scientists to measure energy and angular distributions. After about a year Dr. Lee was proficient at designing and constructing very powerful scattering apparati which allowed him to successfully carry out experiments on N2 + H2 · N2H + H and obtain a compete reaction product distribution contour, a remarkable achievement at the time.

Dr. Lee has built upon this knowledge base for the past 25 years. He has worked at Harvard and the University of Chicago since. At the University of Chicago he constructed state-of-the-art crossed molecular beams apparati, enabling him to carry out numerous exciting and groundbreaking experiments with his students. He was promoted to Professor in January of 1973. He returned to Berkeley in 1974 as a professor of chemistry and the principal investigator at the Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory of the University of California. He became an American citizen the same year.

His world-leading laboratory now contains seven molecular beam apparati specially designed to pursue problems associated with reaction dynamics, photochemical processes, and molecular spectroscopy. His laboratory draws the best and the brightest from around the world, and fifteen of his former associates now serve as professors at major universities.

Yuan-Tseh Lee received the Nobel Prize for Chemistry in 1986 with Dudley Herschbach of Harvard University and John Polyani of the University of Toronto for contributions to the field of chemical reaction dynamics. Today, he is the president of Academia Sinica, the highest government-sponsored academic research institution in Taiwan.
Gerda Lerner (Doctor of Letters)

Gerda Lerner was born in 1920 in Vienna, Austria. She experienced the Nazi rise to power and became involved in the resistance movement. She was captured and imprisoned by the Nazis, and her family was forced into exile. In 1938 she escaped to America.

She arrived in America during the Great Depression. She became a naturalized citizen, married Carl Lerner, and had two children. Filled with strong convictions, Mrs. Lerner participated in a number of grassroots and community movements, fighting for better schools for New York City, for peace and social justice, and against McCarthyism.

In 1958 Lerner returned to college and in 1966 graduated from Columbia University with a Ph. D. Drawing on her community experiences, her scholarly work focused especially on challenging long-held assumptions about women and their significance in history, becoming on of the foremost pioneers in the field of women's history. 'When I started working on women's history about thirty years ago, the field did not exist,' she wrote. 'People didn't think that women had a history worth knowing.'

Today, she can look back on work that has spanned four decades. She has published ten books including The Grimke Sisters—about two upper-class Southern white women who went North to fight against slavery—The Creation of Patriarchy, The Creation of Feminist Consciousness, and the current best-seller Why History Matters. She will publish Fireweed, an autobiography, later this year. Lerner founded the first U.S. graduate program in women's history at Sarah Lawrence College, where she taught from 1968-1980. In 1981 Lerner was elected president of the Organization of American Historians.
Arthur Mitchell (Doctor of Arts)

Arthur Mitchell is know worldwide as a dancer, choreographer, educator, and director. He has been a pivotal figure in the dance movement for more than five decades. Born in 1934, Mitchell began his dance training at New York City's High School for the Performing Arts, where he was the first male student to win the annual dance award. He attended the School of American Ballet, after receiving a scholarship. In 1955 Arthur Mitchell became the first African-American male dancer to become a permanent member of a major ballet company. He joined New York City Ballet, debuting in the fourth movement of George Balanchine's Western Symphony.

He rose quickly to the position of principal dancer for the New York City Ballet company, and worked with them for 15 years. He also performed in film, television, nightclubs, and on Broadway, being a popular guest artist at many locations in the U.S. and abroad.

Upon learning of the death of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., Mitchell decided to give the children of Harlem the same opportunities that he had received, and started giving ballet lessons in a church basement. In 1969, with assistance from the Ford Foundation and his teachers and mentors, Mitchell and Karel Shook, he founded and formally incorporated the Dance Threatre of Harlem. After 31 years, the Dance Theatre of Harlem has grown into an institution of world renown, teaching students from the United States and abroad.

Mitchell has received numerous awards, including 'Living Landmark' status by the New York Landmark Conservancy, and the 1987 National Medal of Arts, the highest honor awarded by the President of the United States in the arts and humanities. Arthur is currently a member of the Council of the National Endowment for the Arts, was inducted into the NAACP's Image Hall of Fame, and was inducted into the Cornelius Vanderbilt Whitney Hall of Fame at the National Museum of Dance in Saratoga, NY.
Evelyn Stefansson Nef (Doctor of Humane Letters)

Nef was born in New York City in 1913. As a young woman she created marionettes, museum dioramas, and World's Fair exhibits using her art training. She was also an accomplished puppeteer.

In 1939 she began working for the Arctic explorer Vilhjalmur Stefansson, whom she married in 1941, as a researcher, special assistant, and librarian of his polar library. Traveling extensively in Alaska, Iceland, Greenland, Siberia, the Hudson Bay, the Polar Sea, and the Antarctic. In 1951 she moved the 25,000 books and 40,000 reprints to Dartmouth College, creating what became known as the Stefansson Collection in Baker Library, and continued her work as a librarian. She remained active in the Polar Studies Program and taught the Arctic Seminar for two years. Her first book, Here is Alaska, was a bestseller, and was in print for 45 years. She was also editor-in-chief of the Great Explorer Series of books on the exploration of the world.

Following Stefansson's death, Nef married the historian John Ulric Nef in 1964. At age 64, she then went back to school in order to become a psychotherapist specializing in psychosomatic illnesses. Her autobiography, Finding My Way: The Autobiography of an Optimist, was published in Icelandic in November 2001 and will be republished in English in May.
E. John Rosenwald Jr. (Doctor of Laws)

E. John Rosenwald Jr., Dartmouth '52, Tuck '53, has been an active member of the Dartmouth community for over fifty years. He served as a member of the Board of Trustees form 1986-1996, serving as chair from 1993-1996. He also chaired Dartmouth's 'Will to Excel' capital campaign launched in 1991.

Upon graduating from Tuck in 1954, Rosenwald worked as an investment banker out of New York with the Bear Sterns Companies Inc. He was elected a General Partner there in 1962, and soon after was elected to the Bear Stearns Executive Committee. Rosenwald was elected Member of the Office of the President when the company went public in 1985, and served as Vice Chairman of the company in 1988.

As a philanthropist Mr. Rosenwald has raised nearly $2.3 billion as chair or co-chair of such organizations as the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Environmental Defense Fund, the New York University Medical Center, and Dartmouth College. The New York Times named him 'Philanthropist of the Year' for New York City in 2000. Rosenwald has endowed a Dartmouth professorship, funded the construction of a Tuck school classroom, and a chemistry lab among numerous donations to the College.

Rosenwald is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and the Council on Foreign Relations. He also sits on the board of many non-profit organizations including Carnegie Hall, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and the New York School of Medicine.

Dartmouth to Confer Honorary Degrees

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