Five faculty members in the Krieger School of Arts and Sciences have been named to Krieger-Eisenhower Professorships in recognition of their scholarly achievement and devotion to the academic life of the university.

The Krieger-Eisenhower Professorships recognize outstanding members of the faculty and honor prominent Baltimorean Zanvyl Krieger's close friendship with Milton Eisenhower, the ninth president of Johns Hopkins. The professorships were established in 1992, at the time of Krieger's $50 million commitment to the School of Arts and Sciences, then the largest gift in Johns Hopkins history.

"Holders of the Krieger-Eisenhower chairs are intended to embody the ideal of the scholar working within the academy, engaging in research of the highest quality while simultaneously enriching the intellectual lives of students and colleagues, both within the university and without," said Daniel Weiss, James B. Knapp Dean of the Zanvyl Krieger School of Arts and Sciences.

The five faculty members honored with Krieger-Eisenhower Professorships are Jonathan Bagger, Department of Physics and Astronomy; William Connolly, Political Science; Michela Gallagher, Psychological and Brain Sciences; Gabrielle Spiegel, History; and Michael Williams, Philosophy.

An international leader in the field of theoretical particle physics, Jonathan Bagger has spent the past 20 years in the study of the theory and phenomenology of supersymmetric extensions of the Standard Model of particle physics. Bagger is an author of the first widely read introduction to the field of supersymmetry, and his work has had a significant impact on the field. In addition to his scientific contributions, Bagger is currently chair of the Division of Particles and Fields of the American Physical Society and one of five Americans on the World-Wide Coordinating Committee for a Linear Collider Collaboration.

Bagger has a long record of service to Johns Hopkins, including being chair of the Krieger School Postdoctoral Committee, member of the editorial board of the Johns Hopkins Press and currently chair of the Department of Physics and Astronomy.

William Connolly, a scholar of international renown, has helped to reshape the field of political theory. His work has argued that political thinking cannot be divorced from the philosophy of being itself. He is the author of 12 books; Terms of Political Discourse, published some 30 years ago, in 2000 was awarded the Benjamin Lippincott Prize by the American Political Science Association, a distinction reserved for books that continue to have a significant impact in their fields at least 15 years after they were originally published. The high regard in which he is held by his peers is reflected also by his having served as editor of Political Theory, the premier journal in his field.

Connolly's service to Johns Hopkins has been long and distinguished, including his recent responsibility as co-chair of the Homewood schools' Tenure Policy Review Committee and six years as chair of the Department of Political Science.

Among the most eminent people in the field of behavioral neuroscience, Michela Gallagher has for nearly three decades worked to advance our understanding of the neurobiology of learning and memory. Gallagher served for six years as editor in chief of the journal Behavioral Neuroscience and has been a member of the governing board of the American Psychological Society. Currently chair of the Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences, Gallagher has had a transformative influence on the intellectual direction of the department, including the development of new initiatives with neighboring disciplines, represented at Johns Hopkins by the Krieger School's Mind/Brain Institute and the School of Medicine's Department of Neuroscience.

Recently, Gallagher was the recipient of an unrestricted neuroscience research grant from Bristol-Myers Squibb Co., which recognizes exceptional contributions to the field.

Internationally recognized as one of the most creative and imaginative medievalists working today, Gabrielle Spiegel has had a transformative impact on the study of historical writing methods in 12th- and 13th-century France. Her essays on the writing of chronicles and histories are among the most widely read and influential in the field of medieval history. Spiegel has served the wider historical community in a variety of important ways, including membership on the board of editors of the American Historical Review and as vice president of the Research Division of the American Historical Association.

At Johns Hopkins, she has served with distinction as chair of the Department of History and as a member of the Academic Council.

Michael Williams is one of the leading epistemologists of his generation. His considerable reputation has been built on his books Groundless Belief: An Essay on the Possibility of Epistemology (1977, reissued in 1999) and Unnatural Doubts: Epistemological Realism and the Basis of Scepticism (1992). In his rich, imaginative and wide-ranging work, Williams has explicated and defended the continuing interest of fundamental skeptical challenges to human knowledge while developing his own distinctive diagnosis of how and why those challenges ultimately fail. Through his many books and articles, Williams has had a fundamental impact on the terms of inquiry and debate in the field of epistemology.

Since coming to Johns Hopkins in 2000, Williams has served with distinction as chair of the Department of Philosophy.