Princeton University. Honors Faculty Members Receiving Emeritus Status. June 2008

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1 Princeton University Honors Faculty Members Receiving Emeritus Status June 2008

2 The biographical sketches were written by colleagues in the epartments of those honore.

3 Contents Faculty Members Receiving Emeritus Status Robert Choate Darnton (2007) Page 1 Peter Raymon Grant Page 5 John Joseph Hopfiel Page 8 William Louis Howarth Page 10 Hisashi Kobayashi Page 14 Joseph John Kohn Page 18 Ralph Lerner Page 21 Eugene Perry Link Jr. Page 24 Guust Nolet Page 27 Giacinto Scoles Page 29 John Suppe (2007) Page 33 Abraham Labe Uovitch Page 36 Bastiaan Cornelius van Fraassen Page 40

4 John Joseph Hopfiel John Hopfiel has mae major contributions to all three of the major isciplines of moern science: physics, chemistry, an biology. His special an rare gift is his ability to cross interisciplinary bounaries to iscover new questions an propose answers that uncover the conceptual structure behin the experimental facts. John s outstaning contribution to physics was a series of brilliant joint papers with D. G. Thomas that forme the basis of unerstaning of the optical spectroscopy of II-VI semiconuctors in the late 1950s. Their work on the spectra of excitons, their interactions with photons, an the effects of electric an magnetic fiels was a tour e force at the time: a complicate spectroscopy was quantitatively interprete in terms of conuction electrons boun to associate holes in what amounts to a hyrogen atom. For this work he an Thomas, his experimental collaborator, were aware the Buckley Prize, the fiel s most prestigious awar, in One of the consequences of this work was the founing of an inustry: semiconuctor light-emitting ioes (LEDs) that have become ubiquitous. It is worth noting also that at Princeton, John traine a number of extraorinary stuents who have become leaers themselves: among them G. D. Mahan, whose thesis began the fertile subject of Fermi surface anomalies in spectra, an S. M. Girvin an Bert Halperin. John an his collaborators mae a major contribution to chemistry by their simple, yet quantitative explanation of the role of cooperativity in the bining of oxygen atoms to hemoglobin. In retrospect, it seems that this work was unerestimate in favor of the then-current ieas of Max Perutz; in the fullness of time it appears that their conclusions are closer to the moern view of protein action than those of Perutz. 8

5 John s contributions to biology are two-fol, both characterize by great originality of insight an, like the semi-conuctor work, the basis of entirely new ways of thinking about basic issues. The principle of kinetic proofreaing is one of the truly profoun conceptual iscoveries of molecular biology. In this iea, he showe for the first time how it is possible that replication an translation of nucleic acis manages to use store energy to achieve accuracy far beyon that possible in an equilibrium process. In collaboration with Shulman s group, this iea was checke experimentally, an remains one of the central theoretical achievements of molecular biology. John s remaining major contributions to biology have been in the fiel of neural processing. The Hopfiel neural net was not only an intriguing emonstration of possibility an a proof by emonstration of the information-hanling capabilities of neural nets, but also was an enormous stimulant in reviving the perceptron an other machinelearning programs. More recently, he foun an entirely ifferent organizing principle for olfaction, an has emonstrate a new principle in which neural function can take avantage of the temporal structure of the spiking interneural communication. John has been a recipient of many awars an honors, incluing the MacArthur Awar, the Dirac Meal, an the Buckley Prize. John s colleagues amire him for his ability to think broaly as well as eeply about science. His wisom an insight about the conceptual structure that must lie behin the experimental facts as we observe them are legenary. Inee, he remains one of the very few theoretical biologists who functions in relation to his fiel as a true theorist. John continues to be a wonerful example to others. 9