Newsmakers

Top health care executives named fellows at Malcolm Weiner Center

Harris A. Berman, CEO of Tufts Health Plan, and David M. Lawrence, who served as chairman of the board and CEO of Kaiser Foundation Health Plan Inc. until his retirement last May, have been named spring 2003 fellows at the Kennedy School of Government’s Malcolm Weiner Center for Social Policy. As fellows, Berman and Lawrence will interact with Kennedy School and Harvard Medical School faculty and students, focusing on the current crisis in state and national health care.

Liu awarded DoD grant

The Department of Defense (DoD) has awarded a grant to David Liu, assistant professor of chemistry and chemical biology, for work on the synthesis of long-chained sequence-controlled polymers. Liu’s grant is part of the DoD Multidisciplinary University Research Initiative (MURI) program. The average award is $1 million per year over a three-year period with the possibility of two additional years of funding.

Risk magazine honors Robert C. Merton

The 15th anniversary issue of Risk magazine has included Robert C. Merton, the John and Natty McArthur University Professor, in its Risk Hall of Fame. The magazine honored Merton as one of 50 “pioneers in risk management.”

Power wins J. Anthony Lukas Book Prize

Kennedy School of Government Lecturer in Public Policy Samantha Power has been named a recipient of the 2003 J. Anthony Lukas Book Prize. Given annually, the prize recognizes superb examples of nonfiction that exemplify a commitment to serious research and social concern. Power received the award for “A Problem from Hell: America and the Age of Genocide” (Basic Books, 2002).

“Samantha Power writes with passion and precision about America’s response to genocide in the 20th century,” the prize jurors noted, adding that the book “compels a re-examination of American foreign policy in the murderous 20th century and invites reflection upon the complex conflicts that are already defining the new one.”

The $10,000 award, co-administered by the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism and the Nieman Foundation at Harvard, will be presented May 8 at Columbia.

Eisenberg named SRCD award winner

Leon Eisenberg, Maude and Lillian Presley Professor of Social Medicine and Professor of Psychiatry Emeritus, will be presented with the 2003 Award for Distinguished Contributions to Public Policy for Children by the Society for Research in Child Development (SRCD) at its upcoming meeting on April 25. The award, given every two years, will be presented by the society’s president Sir Michael Rutter. Professor of Social Medicine Felton Earls will accept the prize on behalf of Eisenberg, who will be taking part in a symposium at the Institute of Psychiatry in London at the time of the ceremony.

GSD team named finalist in urban design competition

A team from Harvard’s Graduate School of Design (GSD) has been named one of the four finalists for the ULI (Urban Land Institute) Gerald D. Hines Student Urban Design Competition. Charged with the redesign of a transitional portion of South Capitol Street in Washington, D.C., the GSD team submitted “City Beautiful and City Real.”

The other finalists – the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the University of Pennsylvania, and the University of Southern California – were selected from 45 submissions from 26 universities across the United States and Canada. The winning team will be announced on April 25.

‘Thematic Origin of Scientific Thought’ hits 30

This year marks the 30-year anniversary of Gerald Holton’s book “Thematic Origin of Scientific Thought” (Harvard University Press, 1973). Beginning today (April 3) through April 5, an international group of scholars will present their current work based on Holton’s idea of the thematic analysis of scientific thought at the University of Rabat, Morocco, as part of the International Conference on History and Philosophy of Science. Holton is the Mallinckrodt Professor of Physics and Professor of the History of Science Emeritus. – Compiled by Andrew Brooks