Letter

To the editor:

I noticed with interest your stories this week [Cornell Chronicle, Sept. 26, 2002] on two major awards given to Cornell faculty -- the MacArthur Fellowship to Paul Ginsparg and the Howard Hughes Medical Institute Professorship to Ronald Hoy. That faculty from one university should receive these two awards in the same year is noteworthy.

I thought you should note, however, that in addition to the two Cornell alumni who also received MacArthur awards this year, three of the HHMI professors were Cornell undergraduates: biology majors Manuel Ares, on the faculty of the University of California at Santa Cruz, and Tim Stearns, at Stanford, and agronomy major Jo Handelsman, from the University of Wisconsin. This is an impressive record of training of which Cornell should indeed be proud.

Sincerely yours,

Peter J. Bruns, Vice President,
Grants and Special Programs,
Howard Hughes Medical Institute