Therapeutic Cognitive Neuroscience Professorship

A family whose members wish to be anonymous created this professorship, along with a research endowment in the Department of Neurology, to support wide-ranging efforts to improve mental functions in people with developmental or acquired brain disorders. Research and clinical initiatives at Hopkins will apply the best theoretical knowledge from many fields–including behavioral neuroscience, cognitive neuroscience, molecular and neural science, experimental psychology, neuropyschology, and theoretical simulation–to help patients affected by developmental disorders, acquired brain injury, and problems stemming from “natural” brain development. Advances from applied knowledge–for instance computer science and engineering–will also be employed to aid individuals with impaired brain function. This gift supports efforts both to improve function and to advance initiatives to compensate for impaired function.

Elliott Coleman Professorship in the Writing Seminars

In 1947 ELLIOTT COLEMAN founded the Hopkins Writing Seminars, which was only the second such program in the country. Dr. Coleman, who published 18 volumes of poetry and essays, continued to chair the department until his retirement 30 years later. He was a mentor to many American writers who later gained prominence, including Russell Baker, A&S 1947, who won the Pulitzer Prize for Growing Up, and John Barth, A&S 1951, 1952 (MA), who won the National Book Award for Chimera.

Son of an Episcopal minister, Professor Coleman studied theology at Oxford University and the General Theological Seminary in New York City. He was ordained a deacon in the Cathedral of St. John the Divine in New York, but shortly after his father’s death, Dr. Coleman entered the publishing business. He went on to become a prolific and admired writer, as well as beloved teacher. Professor Coleman died in 1980.

“I have admired Elliott Coleman’s short poems and his long poems; most of all I admire his longest-running poem: the Johns Hopkins Writing Seminars, over which his benignant spirit still very much presides.”

–John Barth, Alumni Centennial Professor Emeritus in the Writing Seminars

 

Desmond M. Tutu Professorship in Public Health and Human Rights

BISHOP DESMOND M. TUTU was born in 1931 in Klerksdorp, Transvaal. His father was a teacher, and he himself was educated at Johannesburg Bantu High School. After leaving school he trained first as a teacher at Pretoria Bantu Normal College and in 1954 he graduated from the University of South Africa. After three years as a high school teacher he began to study theology, being ordained as a priest in 1960. The years 1962-66 were devoted to further theological study in England leading up to a Master of Theology. From 1967 to 1972 he taught theology in South Africa before returning to England for three years as the assistant director of a theological institute in London. In 1975 he was appointed Dean of St. Mary’s Cathedral in Johannesburg, the first black to hold that position. From 1976 to 1978 he was Bishop of Lesotho, and in 1978 became the first black General Secretary of the South African Council of Churches. Tutu is an honorary doctor of a number of leading universities in the USA, Britain and Germany.

As Archbishop of Capetown, Tutu received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1984 for his fight against South Africa’s apartheid laws, which were repealed in 1993. The new president, Nelson Mandela, entrusted Tutu with chairing the Truth and Reconciliation Commission that investigated the atrocities committed under apartheid.

 

NEW CHAIRHOLDER TO BE NAMED.

James B. Murphy Professorship in Oncology

JAMES B. MURPHY, Med 1909, was a pioneer in cancer research at the Rockefeller Institute in New York from 1910 until his death in 1950. Known as a natural leader, he achieved excellence in his own research even as he encouraged excellence in others. Chief members of the department he led included Albert Claude and George Palade, who both won the Nobel Prize in 1974, and Keith Porter, among the most important founders of the field of cell biology. Dr. Murphy was an associate of Peyton Rous, Med 1905, and shared in the discovery of the cancer virus of chickens, for which Dr. Rous won the Nobel Prize in 1966. Dr. Murphy published many papers showing that the lymphocyte was responsible for resistance to tuberculosis and cancer, as well as for the rejection phenomenon against transplanted tissue. This work was summarized in Rockefeller Institute Monograph No. 21, published in 1926. In the 1930s, his research concluded that cancer was caused by a somatic mutation and that the Rous virus was best thought of as a transmissible mutagen.

Mason F. Lord Professorship in Geriatric Medicine

MASON F. LORD, Med 1954, recognized as one of the fathers of geriatric medicine, was the first full-time chief of the Geriatrics Program at the Baltimore City Hospitals, now the Hopkins Bayview Medical Center. Prior to his untimely death in 1965 at the age of 39, Dr. Lord laid the foundation for a comprehensive and long-term geriatrics program, providing a continuum of care to the chronically ill. It was a revolutionary concept at a time when the chronic hospital was essentially a place to keep the elderly patient until death. Today, the program he outlined is considered a national model.

Henry N. Wagner Jr., M.D., Professorship in Nuclear Medicine

HENRY N. WAGNER JR., A&S 1948, Med 1952, who died in 2012, was an international authority on nuclear medicine. His pioneering work in imaging brain neuroreceptors paved the way for groundbreaking research in addiction and drug design, and increased understanding of the physiology and pathophysiology of the brain. During his 56-year association with Hopkins, he trained more than 500 radiologists, internists, physicians, and scientists, eight of whom have held the position of president of the Society of Nuclear Medicine, which Dr. Wagner also led. In 1993 Dr. Wagner was awarded the First Annual Society of Nuclear Medicine President’s Award for Outstanding Contributions to Nuclear Medicine, and the Georg Von Hevesy Award in 1985. A member of the Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of Sciences, he was an honorary member of both the British Institute of Radiology and the Radiological Society of North America.

 

CHAIRHOLDER TO BE NAMED.

Robert S. Lawrence Professorship

ROBERT S. LAWRENCE, the first Center for a Livable Future Professor, joined the faculty in 1995 as associate dean for Professional Education and Programs, and professor of health policy and management. A graduate of Harvard College and Harvard Medical School, he trained in internal medicine at the Massachusetts General Hospital. Following duty as an epidemic intelligence service officer, CDC, he joined the faculty of the University of North Carolina. From 1974 to 1991 he directed the Division of Primary Care at Harvard Medical School, and from 1991 to 1995 directed health sciences at the Rockefeller Foundation, overseeing grants to improve health in Asia, Africa and Latin America. Dr. Lawrence is a founding member of Physicians for Human Rights, which shared the Nobel Peace Prize in 1997, and currently chairs its board of directors. He has participated in human rights investigations in Chile, Czechoslovakia, Egypt, El Salvador, Guatemala, the Philippines, South Africa and Kosovo. He is the founding director of the Center for a Livable Future.