The MIT Corporation-its board of trustees-elected two life members and nine term members at its quarterly meeting today, Monday, June 1, held just before the Institute's 126th Commencement Exercises.
The names of those elected were announced by Dr. Paul E. Gray, Chairman of the Corporation.
Elected life members were Shirley A. Jackson (MIT alumna, 1968), professor of physics at Rutgers University and distinguished research physicist at AT&T Bell Laboratories of Murray Hill, N.J., and Frank Press, president of the National Academy of Sciences, Washington, D.C.
Elected to five-year term memberships:
Pedro Aspe Armella (MIT, 1978), finance secretary of Mexico.
Gerald J. Burnett (MIT, 1964), president of Visionary Corporate Technologies, Inc. of Palo Alto, Calif., (Alumni Association nominee).
George N. Hatsopoulos (MIT, 1949), founder, chairman of the board, and president, Thermo Electron Corporation of Waltham, Mass., (Alumni Association nominee).
Robert B. Horton (MIT, 1971), chairman and chief executive officer, British Petroleum of London, England.
Nannerl O. Keohane, president of Wellesley College.
William B. Lenoir (MIT, 1961), vice president of Booz, Allen & Hamilton Inc. of Bethesda, Md., (Alumni Association nominee).
Robert M. Metcalfe (MIT, 1968), publisher/chief executive officer of InfoWorld of San Mateo, Calif.
Dava J. Newman (MIT, 1989), received PhD in aerospace biomedical engineering, 1992. (Nominee from recent classes.)
Romano Prodi, professor of economics and industrial policy at the University of Bologna, Italy.
In addition, Robert A. Muh (MIT, 1959), an investment banker of San Francisco, Calif., , becomes an ex officio member of the Corporation by virtue of his selection as president of the Alumni Association for 1992-93.
As of July 1, the Corporation will be comprised of 75 distinguished leaders in education, science, engineering and industry. Of the 75, 23 are currently life members. In addition, 22 individuals are life members emeriti, participating in meetings but without a vote. The Corporation meets four times a year and considers broad policy issues for the university.
In addition to four standing committees and several committees of annual recurrence, the MIT Corporation appoints 25 Visiting Committees, which provide critical counsel to each academic department and make recommendations to the Corporation on academic activities and initiatives. Each Visiting Committee is chaired by an MIT trustee and includes several Corporation members as well as alumni and other professionals. In all, more than 400 individuals participate in the Corporation Visiting Committees.
The Corporation includes these ex officio members: the chairman, Dr. Gray (MIT, 1954); President Charles M. Vest; Vice President and Treasurer Glenn P. Strehle (MIT, 1958); Vice President and Secretary Constantine B. Simonides; the president of the Alumni/ae Association, Robert A. Muh (MIT, 1959); Massachusetts Governor William F. Weld; Paul J. Liacos, the Chief Justice of the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court; and Robert V. Antonucci, Massachusetts Commissioner of Education.
One of the two new life members, Shirley A. Jackson, has served three five-year terms as a Corporation member, in 1975-85 and 1987-92. She was born in Washington, D.C., in 1946. She received the SB degree from MIT in 1968 and in 1973 became the first black woman to receive a PhD from MIT. Now a professor of physics at Rutgers University and also a distinguished research physicist at AT&T Bell Laboratories, she was a member from 1978 to 1991 of the Technical Staff in the Scattering and Low Energy Physics Research Department at the AT&T Bell Laboratories. Before that, she was a research associate in theoretical physics at the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory in Batavia, Ill., and a visiting scientist in the Theoretical Physics Division of the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) in Geneva, Switzerland. She is a fellow of both the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and American Physical Society and a member of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.
Frank Press, the other new Life Member, has been a Corporation member since 1982. Born in Brooklyn, New York, in 1924, he received the SB degree in physics from City College of New York in 1944 and a PhD in geophysics from Columbia University in 1949, where he became an associate professor. In 1955 he was appointed professor of geophysics at the California Institute of Technology, and two years later became director of its Seismological Laboratory. In 1965 he was named head of MIT's Department of Geology and Geophysics (now the Department of Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences). In 1977 he was appointed by President Jimmy Carter as the President's Science Advisor and Director of the Office of Science and Technology Policy. He returned to MIT in 1981 and was named Institute Professor, a title reserved for scholars of special distinction. Later that year he was elected president of the National Academy of Sciences. He is a former president of both the American Geophysical Union and the Seismological Society of America. His memberships include the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, American Philosophical Society, French Academy of Sciences and Royal (U.K.) Society. He has received many professional awards, including NASA's Distinguished Public Service Medal in 1973, and more than 20 honorary degrees.
Pedro Aspe Armella, born in 1950 in Mexico City, Mexico, received a BA degree in economics from the Instituto Tecnologico Autonomo de Mexico (ITAM) in 1974 and the PhD in economics from MIT in 1978. From 1977 to 1978 he was a research assistant and then an instructor in MIT's Department of Economics. Returning to Mexico in 1978, he became professor and director of the Department of Economics at ITAM, serving in that post until 1982. From then until 1985 he was president of the National Institute for Statistics, Geography, and Information. In August, 1985, he became Undersecretary of Programming and Budgeting, and two years later was named Secretary. In December, 1988, he was appointed Finance Secretary of Mexico. His honors include distinguished achievement medals from the Hellenic Republic and the Government of Spain.
Gerald J. Burnett, born in 1942 in Alameda, Calif., received the SB degree in electrical engineering from MIT in 1964 and the SM in 1965. He received a PhD in computer science from Princeton University in 1970. From 1965 through 1967 Dr. Burnett was an engineer at Rockwell, and from 1969 to 1975 he was vice president of the Information Systems Division of Index Systems. In 1975 he became the founder president of one of the Teknekron, Inc., companies, a systems engineering and development firm specializing in advanced technology. Over the years he and his associates built a number of successful technology-related businesses, with Dr. Burnett serving as president of the parent company and chief executive officer and chairman of many of the operating companies. He has been president of Visionary Corporate Technologies, Inc., since 1989.
Born in 1927 in Athens, Greece, George N. Hatsopoulos attended the National Technical University in Athens before coming to MIT, where he received the SB degree in mechanical engineering in 1950 as a member of the Class of 1949. His other MIT degrees, all in the field of mechanical engineering, are the SM in 1950, the Mechanical Engineer in 1954, and the ScD in 1956. Dr. Hatsopoulos was a member of the mechanical engineering faculty from 1956 to 1962 and continued his association with the department as a senior lecturer until 1990. In 1956 he founded Thermo Electron Corporation, whose principal businesses include manufacturing of environmental and analytical instruments, alternative-energy power plants and pre-packaged cogeneration systems, industrial process and power equipment, and biomedical products. He is the author of several texts and articles. He is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, vice chairman of the American Business Conference, and a member of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics, American Society of Mechanical Engineers, Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers, National Academy of Engineering and National Bureau of Economic Research. He has honorary degrees from the University of Lowell and the New Jersey Institute of Technology.
Robert B. Horton is beginning his second consecutive term on the Corporation, having been elected a member in 1987. Born in England in 1939, he was educated at the King's School Canterbury, and the University of St. Andrews, where he received a degree in mechanical engineering. He received the SM in management from MIT as a Sloan Fellow in 1971. Mr. Horton joined British Petroleum in 1957 and in the next two decades held a series of positions in oil supply, marketing, finance and planning. In 1980 he was appointed chief executive officer of BP Chemicals International and was elected to the BP board of directors as managing director in 1983. He became chairman and chief executive officer of the Standard Oil Company in 1986 and, in 1988, was named managing director, BP, and chairman, BP America. He has been chairman and chief executive officer of BP since 1990. He also is chancellor at the University of Kent at Canterbury. He has a number of professional memberships in England and several honorary degrees from British universities.
Nannerl O. Keohane was born in 1940 in Blytheville, Ark. She received a BA degree from Wellesley College in 1961, a second BA and an MA degree from St. Anne's College, Oxford University, England, in 1963 and a PhD from Yale University in 1967. She was elected to Phi Beta Kappa at Wellesley and was a Marshall Scholar at Oxford, where she received First Class Honours. Dr. Keohane served on the political science faculty of Swarthmore College in 1967-73, and at Stanford University from 1973 to 1981, when she was named president of Wellesley College, where she also is professor of political science. Among her several publications, she is the author of Philosophy and the State in France: The Renaissance to the Enlightenment (1980, Princeton University Press) and co-editor of Feminist Theory: A Critique of Ideology (1982, University of Chicago Press).
Born in 1939 in Miami, Fla., William B. Lenoir received three MIT degrees in electrical engineering: the SB in 1961, SM in 1962 and PhD in 1965. He served several years as a faculty member in electrical engineering and received a Ford Foundation fellowship for postdoctoral study at MIT in 1965-66. Dr. Lenoir was a scientist-astronaut at NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston, Tex., in 1967-84. He flew in space in 1982 as a mission specialist on Shuttle Mission STS-5, the first operational flight of the Space Transportation System. In 1984 he joined Booz, Allen & Hamilton, Inc., engineering consultants, and subsequently became a vice president and member of the board of directors, managing the company's Space Systems Division. In 1989 NASA appointed Dr. Lenoir associate administrator for space flight, giving him full responsibility for the development, procurement and operation of the Space Shuttle, Space Station, and expendable launch vehicles. He also was responsible for developing and implementing the necessary policy for all Space Shuttle and US government civil launch activities. In addition, he exercised institutional management authority over the Johnson Space Center, the Kennedy Space Center, the Marshall Space Flight Center, and the John C. Stennis Space Center. In March of 1992, Dr. Lenoir resigned his position at NASA and, on May 1, rejoined Booz, Allen & Hamilton as vice president. His awards include NASA's Distinguished Service Medal, Exceptional Service Medal, and Space Flight Medal.
Robert M. Metcalfe, born in 1946 in Brooklyn, N.Y., received two SB degrees from MIT, in electrical engineering and management, in 1969, as a member of the Class of 1968. He received a master's degree in applied mathematics from Harvard University in 1970 and a PhD in computer science in 1973. While studying at Harvard, he was employed as a researcher at MIT's computer laboratory, Project MAC. In 1972 Dr. Metcalfe began working at the Palo Alto Research Center of the Xerox Corporation and it was there, in 1973, that he developed Ethernet, a system for local network communications. While there he also began eight years of part-time teaching in the Department of Electrical Engineering at Stanford University. In 1979 Dr. Metcalfe founded 3Com Corporation (the company's name stands for computer communication compatibility), and in a variety of managerial positions oversaw its growth and development past $400 million in annual sales. He retired from 3Com in 1990 and accepted an appointment as a visiting fellow in the Computer Laboratory of Wolfson College at Cambridge University, England. In March of 1992, he was named publisher/chief executive officer of Infoworld, a newsweekly for corporate PC managers, and a publication of International Data Group (IDG). Dr. Metcalfe established the Robert Metcalfe Professorship in Engineering and Liberal Arts at MIT in 1986. His honors include the Alexander Graham Bell Award of the IEEE in 1988.
The new board member from recent classes, Dava J. Newman, was born in 1964 in Helena, Mont. She received her bachelor's degree in aerospace engineering from the University of Notre Dame in 1986. She then earned two master of science degrees from MIT in 1989, in aeronautics and astronautics and in the Technology and Policy Program, and the PhD in aerospace biomedical engineering from MIT this year. Her many accomplishments at MIT encompassed both scholarly and athletic activities. In the former category, she served as a UROP supervisor for six years, was a research assistant in the Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics' Space Shuttle Flight Experiment, studied under a NASA Graduate Student Researcher's Fellowship and was an executive board member of the founding conference of the International Space University. In 1991 she set the women's world speed record for human-powered hydrofoil boats. She was a member of the MIT women's cycling team, participating in the national championships, and was an assistant coach of both the varsity women's basketball team and the varsity alpine ski team. She plans to begin a teaching career as a university faculty member in the fall.
Born in 1939, Romano Prodi graduated from the Catholic University of Milan, Italy, in 1961. In the years following he served as a researcher at the London School of Economics and then a visiting professor at Harvard University. From November 1978 to March 1979, he was Minister of Industry for the Italian government. From 1982 to 1989 he was chairman of the Istituto per la Ricostruzione Industriale (IRI) in Rome. Dr. Prodi now serves as professor of economics and industrial policy at the University of Bologna, and also is chairman of the scientific committee of the economic research institute, NOMISMA, in Bologna. He is the author of numerous articles focusing on questions of European industrial policies, public enterprises and Italy, and energy.
Robert A. Muh, who takes on the role of ex officio member of the Corporation by virtue of becoming president of the Alumni Association for 1992-93, was elected to a five-year term on the Corporation in 1988. He was Alumni Association vice president in 1987-88. Mr. Muh, born in 1938 in New York City, received the SB degree in management from MIT in 1959. He also holds the MBA (1961) and M.Phil (1965) degrees from Columbia University. Mr. Muh began his business career at McKinsey & Co. in New York and later served as chairman of Newburger, Loeb & Co., Inc., and as president of Financial Services International. In 1978 he joined Bear, Stearns & Co. Inc. as head of the Los Angeles Region Corporate Finance Department. In 1984 he became managing director in charge of the San Francisco region of Bear, Stearns and served in that position until 1987, when he became an independent investment banker.
A version of this article appeared in the June 3, 1992 issue of MIT Tech Talk (Volume 36, Number 33).
