Cixous

Föllmer

Riley

Cornell has appointed three new A.D. White Professors-at-Large to six-year terms through June 2014. The new appointees, in the humanities and physical science, are:

Hélène Cixous, one of the foremost intellectuals and creative writers in France, and a major figure in the emergence of postmodern literary theory, late-20th-century Continental Thought, and women's studies. She is the author of more than 40 novels, 10 plays and 15 volumes of theory and essays. Her work, including the influential "The Laugh of the Medusa" (1975), has been translated into more than 20 languages. Retired since 2006, Cixous teaches under the aegis of the Collège internationale de philosophie.

Hans Föllmer, a renowned German scholar in abstract mathematics and economics whose work helped found a new discipline, mathematical finance theory. He is also a leader in the fields of stochastic calculus and mathematical physics -- in particular, the role of entropy and its connections to time reversal techniques. His contributions to applied probability theory and financial engineering have earned him a reputation as one of the best in his field. Föllmer's honors include the Georg Cantor Medal, the highest award of the German Mathematical Society. He also was invited to Cornell as the Mary Upson Professor in 2004.

Denise Riley, a British poet, feminist philosopher and literary scholar, and a pivotal figure in the development of late 20th-century feminist thought. Her work crosses such fields as language philosophy, psychoanalysis, art, and women's, gender and sexuality studies. She is best known for "Am I That Name?: Feminism and the Category of 'Women' in History," a theoretical and political watershed for the women's movement when it was published in 1988. A professor at the University of East Anglia in the United Kingdom, she has been a scholar-in-residence at Cornell's Society for the Humanities and other humanities centers. Her other publications include "War in the Nursery," "Theories of the Child and Mother," and many poetry collections, articles and commentaries.

Currently, 18 active professors-at-large from around the globe have been invited to enliven the intellectual and cultural life of the university. They visit campus three or four times during their term to present public programs and engage in intellectual exchange with faculty and students in classroom, laboratory and informal settings. Past appointees include filmmaker Michelangelo Antonioni, primatologist Jane Goodall, novelists Toni Morrison and Eudora Welty, poets Octavio Paz and Adrienne Rich, physician Oliver Sacks and actor John Cleese.

Professors-at-large scheduled to visit this fall are as follows:

• Shri Kulkarni, an astrophysicist at California Institute of Technology, will present a public lecture Sept. 17 at 4:30 p.m. at a location to be announced. Kulkarni will stay at the Hans Bethe House for a two-week visit starting Sept. 10.
• Bassam Tibi, an international relations expert known for his views on modern Islam, will visit from Sept. 15-Oct. 1, with a schedule to be announced.
• Okko Behrends, an expert on classical Roman law, will deliver a public lecture Oct. 6 at 9 a.m. at the Law School during a campus visit Oct. 3-15.
• J. Craig Venter, a geneticist whose company's researchers were among the first to complete sequencing of the human genome, will be on campus Nov. 18-20, presenting a public lecture Nov. 19 at 5 p.m. in Kennedy Hall.
• Lakhdar Brahimi, a veteran diplomat and former special adviser to U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan, has recently confirmed a visit to Cornell in early November.

For more information, see http://adwhiteprofessors.cornell.edu.