May 18, 1998
VOL. 27, NO. 35
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Ten Ceremonies To Mark The End Of Hopkins' 122nd
Academic Year
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At a university-wide commencement ceremony beginning at 9:30
a.m. on Thursday, May 21, in the Gilman Quadrangle at Homewood,
President William R. Brody will confer
an estimated 4,865 degrees
on Johns Hopkins students, marking the end of the university's
122nd academic year.
Diplomas await Commencement Day in the
Registrar's Office.
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Brody, who took office as Hopkins' 13th president on Aug.
26, 1996, will deliver the address. The nine other diploma
ceremonies (see schedule below) will feature their own speakers,
some of whom are profiled here.
Arts and Sciences and Engineering Undergraduate Ceremony:
Elizabeth Dole, president of the American Red Cross
Elizabeth Dole, who will receive an honorary degree in
recognition of her public service, is a native of Salisbury,
N.C., and graduated with distinction from Duke University, where
she was elected to Phi Beta Kappa. She received her law degree
from Harvard University, from which she also holds a master's
degree in education and government. [For details of her career,
see the May 18 Gazette story: "University to
recognize six with honorary degrees."]
School of Hygiene and Public Health:
Harold E. Varmus, director of the National Institutes of
Health
Harold Varmus has been since 1993 the director of the
National Institutes of Health, the first Nobel laureate appointed
to that position.
Varmus began his academic career studying
Elizabethan poetry
at Amherst College, and after earning a master's degree in
English literature at Harvard, he launched his medical career. He
received his M.D. degree in 1966 from Columbia University and
completed his residency in internal medicine at
Columbia-Presbyterian Hospital. He then served as a clinical
associate at the National Institute of Arthritis and Metabolic
Disease.
In 1970, Varmus joined the faculty at the
University of
California Medical Center in San Francisco and began his studies
of retroviruses and the genetic basis of cancer. He became a
professor in the departments of Microbiology and Immunology as
well as Biochemistry and Biophysics before becoming the American
Cancer Society Professor of Molecular Virology.
It was at UCSF that Varmus and his research
partner, Michael
Bishop, discovered that cancer-causing genes (oncogenes) can
arise from normal cellular genes. Their research has had major
implications to the diagnosis and treatment of a variety of
cancers. For their contributions to the understanding of
oncogenes, Varmus and Bishop were awarded the Nobel Prize in
physiology or medicine in 1989.
Among Varmus' numerous other honors are the
Albert Lasker
Basic Science Award, the Passano Foundation Award, the Armand
Hammer Cancer Prize, the Alfred P. Sloan Prize, the Gairdner
Foundation International Award and the American College of
Physicians Award.
School of Medicine:
Daniel Nathans, medical pioneer and former interim president of
the university
Daniel Nathans is a 1978 recipient of the Nobel Prize and a
1993 recipient of the nation's highest scientific award, the
National Medal of Science. University Professor of Molecular
Biology and Genetics at the School of Medicine, where he has been
a faculty member for more than three decades, Nathans also is
senior investigator of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute at
Hopkins and served as interim president of the university from
June 1995 until August 1996.
The research for which Nathans shared the Nobel
Prize in
medicine or physiology is a basis for much of today's genetic
research at Hopkins and elsewhere. He used the restriction
enzymes discovered by his colleague Hamilton O. Smith as
"biochemical scissors," showing that they cut DNA at specific
sequences and thus could be used to analyze DNA.
As the Nobel Prize committee rightly predicted,
the
techniques developed by Nathans in working with animal tumor
viruses opened up new avenues to study the organization and
expression of genes of higher animals and to solve basic problems
in developmental biology. Increased knowledge made possible by
his focus on genetic mechanisms has helped in the understanding,
prevention and treatment of birth defects, hereditary diseases
and cancer.
Restriction enzymes have allowed researchers to
assemble
genes in new combinations, thus giving birth to the entire field
of genetic engineering and allowing development of such products
as synthetic human insulin, growth hormone and interferon. The
use of restriction enzymes to construct maps of the genome of
viruses laid the groundwork for the present worldwide effort to
map the human genome.
A molecular biologist, Nathans first focused
his research on
viruses that cause tumors in animals and then on cellular
responses to growth factors, the mechanisms that cause cells to
grow and multiply. In 1969, while Nathans was studying SV40, a
virus that created cancers in apes, Smith came forward with
interesting news: He had isolated a protein that could cut a
piece of DNA, the material containing the "blueprint" of
life.
Nathans applied the restriction enzyme to SV40
DNA and
discovered that it cut the DNA in 10 distinct places, creating 11
well-defined fragments. He found ways to use this cutting to help
determine where genes began and ended in SV40 DNA, and this
helped him locate a gene in the virus that gives the order for
production of a tumor-making protein.
One morning in 1978, Nathans, Smith and Werner
Arber, the
Swiss scientist who first predicted the existence of restriction
enzymes, were awakened by the call from Sweden that so many
scientists dream about. More honors followed. In 1979 Nathans was
elected to the National Academy of Sciences, in 1985 to the
American Philosophical Society and from 1990 to 1993 served on
the Presidential Council of Advisors on Science and
Technology.
Born in Wilmington, Del., the youngest of eight
children,
Nathans received his bachelor of science from the University of
Delaware in 1950 and earned his M.D. at Washington University
School of Medicine in 1954. Following his residency at
Columbia-Presbyterian Medical Center, he served as a clinical
associate at the National Cancer Institute and as a guest
investigator at the Rockefeller University.
His first faculty appointment was as a Hopkins
assistant
professor of microbiology in 1962, and he stayed at Hopkins for
the rest of his career. He became a full professor in 1967,
director of the Department of Microbiology in 1972 and director
of the Department of Molecular Biology and Genetics in 1981.
Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies:
John Browne, group chief executive, The British Petroleum
Co.
As head of one of the world's largest corporations, John
Browne, group chief executive of the British Petroleum Company,
has become a pioneer in defining the social responsibilities of
private industry and championing the need for corporations to
protect the environment.
Browne joined BP in 1966 as a university
apprentice. He
holds a degree in physics from Cambridge University and a master
of science degree from the Stanford Graduate School of Business.
He is a fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering, a fellow of
the Institute of Mining and Metallurgy and an honorary fellow of
St. John's College Cambridge.
Between 1969 and 1983, Browne held a variety of
exploration
and production posts in Anchorage, New York, San Francisco,
London and in Canada. In 1984, he became group treasurer and
chief executive of BP Finance International and, in 1986,
executive vice president and chief financial officer of the
Standard Oil Company. Following the BP/Standard merger in 1987,
Brown was appointed chief executive officer of Standard Oil
Production Company, in addition to his position as executive vice
president and chief financial officer of BP America.
In 1989, Browne was made managing director and
chief
executive officer of BP Exploration based in London. In 1991 he
was appointed to the board of the British Petroleum Company as
managing director. Browne became group chief executive of the
company on July 1, 1995.
Brown is a non-executive director of SmithKline
Beecham and
the Intel Corporation and a member of the supervisory board of
Daimler-Benz, a trustee of the British Museum and a member of the
governing body of the London Business School. He is also emeritus
chairman of the advisory board of the Stanford Graduate School of
Business, a trustee of the Conference Board, a vice president and
member of the board of the Prince of Wales Business Leaders Forum
and a board member of SAIS.
The Peabody Institute:
Anne Brown, teacher, performer and originator
of the role of Bess in Gershwin's Porgy and Bess
Anne Wiggins Brown is a native Baltimorean who was the first
Bess in Gershwin's opera Porgy and Bess. In fact, it was Brown
who put the Bess into the title of an opera that Gershwin was
intending to call just Porgy. While still a student at Juilliard,
she auditioned for the composer, who was so overwhelmed by the
beauty of her voice that he expanded the role and gave Bess some
of the most memorable music in his opera, including the haunting
"Summertime." Brown was only 23 years old when she premiered the
role at the Alvin Theatre in New York on October 10, 1935,
singing opposite Todd Duncan in the role of Porgy. With the death
of Duncan earlier this year, Brown is now the last surviving
member of the original cast.
Growing up in a fiercely segregated Baltimore,
where she
could not even apply to the Peabody Conservatory of Music, Anne
Brown also made her mark as an early activist for what would
later be called the Civil Rights movement. When Porgy and Bess
played the National Theatre in Washington, D.C., she courageously
refused to perform unless the house was desegregated for the run
of the show.
In the post-war years, a concert tour of Europe
led her to
meet a Norwegian Olympic skier whom she married in 1948. Since
that time she has made her home in Oslo, Norway. The award to
Brown of the George Peabody Medal for Outstanding Contributions
to Music in America (which was also given, in 1984, to Todd
Duncan) marks the first time that Brown has been honored in her
home town.
Commencement 1998 At A Glance
The university and each of its eight degree-granting
divisions will hold commencement events at which students will
receive their diplomas.
University-wide Commencement Ceremony
May 21, 9:30 a.m.
Gilman Quadrangle, Homewood
Speaker: President William R. Brody
The president of the university will confer university
degrees on all graduates from the Zanvyl Krieger School of Arts
and Sciences, the G.W.C Whiting School of Engineering, the School
of Continuing Studies, the School of Public Health, the School of
Nursing, the School of Medicine, Peabody Institute and the Paul
H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies. Only doctoral
recipients (Ph.D.'s only from the School of Medicine), will
receive their diplomas on stage.
This ceremony will also recognize the new members of the
Society of Scholars and is the occasion at which the university
will confer honorary degrees of doctor of humane letters.
Arts and Sciences and Engineering
Undergraduate Diploma Award Ceremony
May 21, 2:30 p.m.
Gilman Quadrangle, Homewood
Speaker: Elizabeth Dole, president of the American Red
Cross
Seniors from the schools of Arts and Sciences and
Engineering, who officially graduated when degrees were conferred
in the morning ceremony, will receive diplomas.
G.W.C. Whiting School of Engineering
Master's Diploma Award Ceremony
May 20, 7 p.m.
Gilman Quadrangle, Homewood
Speaker: John C. Stuelpnagel, director and deputy for
science and technology, Northrop Grumman
Paul H. Nitze School for Advanced International Studies
Diploma Award Ceremony (tickets required)
May 21, 3 p.m.
Lincoln Theater, Washington, D.C.
Speaker: John Browne, group chief executive,
The British Petroleum Co.
Peabody Institute Diploma Award Ceremony
May 21, 8 p.m. (tickets required)
Miriam A. Friedberg Concert Hall, Peabody Conservatory
Speaker: Anne Brown, teacher, performer and originator
of the role of Bess in Gershwin's Porgy and Bess
School of Continuing Studies Diploma Award Ceremony
May 21, 7:30 p.m. (tickets required, except Ed.D.'s)
Gilman Quadrangle, Homewood
Speaker: Nancy Grasmick, superintendent,
Maryland State Department of Education
School of Hygiene and Public Health Diploma Award Ceremony
May 20, 2 p.m. (tickets required)
Shriver Hall, Homewood
Speaker: Harold Varmus, director,
U.S. National Institutes of Health
School of Medicine Diploma Award Ceremony
May 20, 1 p.m. (tickets required)
Kraushaar Auditorium, Goucher College
Speaker: Daniel Nathans, University Professor of
Molecular Biology and Genetics at the
Johns Hopkins School of Medicine and former
interim president of The Johns Hopkins University
School of Nursing Diploma Award Ceremony
May 21, 4 p.m.
Turner Auditorium, School of Medicine
Speaker: Ada Davis, associate professor, director,
Johns Hopkins School of Nursing baccalaureate program
Zanvyl Krieger School of Arts and Sciences
Master's Diploma Award Ceremony
May 21, 6:30 p.m.
Shriver Hall, Homewood
Speaker: William Clinger, Hopkins alumnus and former
U.S. representative from Pennsylvania's
5th Congressional District
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