Eleven To Receive Honorary Degrees

The University will today confer honorary degrees on 11--including a celebrated conductor, a key benefactor, a Holocaust-survivor-turned- pioneering entrepreneur and three Nobel laureates.

Nicolaas Bloembergen, Noam Chomsky, Frank O. Gehry, Andrew S. Grove, Judith R. Hope, Katherine B. Loker, Maclyn McCarty, Constance Baker Motley, Kenzaburo Oe, Seiji Ozawa and Amartya Sen will receive the degrees.

Serenaded by a string quartet playing Dvorak's opus, the honorands dined last night in Annenberg Hall on tomato basil soup, veal scaloppini with Madeira sauce and almond tulie cups for dessert.

Nicolaas Bloembergen

Bloembergen is the Gerhard Gade University Professor emeritus in Harvard's physics department. He served in the department from 1951 until his retirement in 1990.

Well known for work in numerous areas of physics, including nuclear resonance, lasers and optics, Bloembergen is a Nobel laureate in Physics. He is the author of one of the most famous scholarly articles in physics.

Bloembergen received a degree in physics from University of Utrecht in the Netherlands in 1943. He was forced into hiding later during the Nazi occupation of Holland. After the war he was a graduate student at Harvard and received an honorary masters degree from Harvard in 1951

He will receive an honorary Doctorate of Science today.

Noam Chomsky

Chomsky is a linguistics professor at MIT. He is considered by many the most influential scholar in the field, and his theory of language, published in 1957, launched what psychologists and linguists call the "Chomsky revolution."

Chomsky is also a frequent proponent of liberal political causes. He was an opponent of America's military involvement in Vietnam and Central American, among other places. He has also criticized the nation's mainstream news media for what he sees as its acceptance of government's and business' perspective.

A recipient of a bachelor's, a master's and a doctorate from the University of Pennsylvania, Chomsky has taught at MIT since 1955. He is receiving today a Doctorate of Laws.

Frank O. Gehry

Gehry will add an honorary Doctorate of Arts today to a long line of awards he has received for his unique architecture. Renowned for designing "wiggly" buildings, Gehry has been honored with the Pritzker prize, known as the "Nobel Prize of Architecture."

The Pritzker committee cited him for his "refreshingly original and totally American" architecture. And, in accepting the prize, he admitted being "obsessed" with design.

Gehry studied city planning at the Harvard School of Design.

He also received an honorary degree from Yale University this spring.

Andrew S. Grove

A Hungarian immigrant and Holocaust survivor, Andrew S. Grove has become one of the kings of new technology.

The University will honor today the chair and former CEO of Intel Inc. with a Doctorate of Laws.

Grove's work on semiconductors has become the standard text for the industry, and colleagues praise his innovation.

Grove was Time Magazine's Man of the Year in 1997. He joined Intel upon its creation in 1968, taking over as president in 1979 and CEO eight years later.

Judith Coleman Richards Hope

When she was appointed to the Harvard Corporation in 1989, Judith R. Hope became the first woman to sit on the University's highest governing board.

A graduate of Wellesley College and Harvard Law School, she committed herself to ensuring, "all doors are open to women at Harvard."

She taught at Harvard, Georgetown and Pepperdine. Currently, Hope is the chair of the National Housing Partnership Foundation and president of RiboPharm Inc.

Hope serves as Senior Counsel at Paul, Hastings, Janofsky & Walker, an international law firm based in Los Angeles and New York.

Katherine B. Loker

The national co-Chair of Harvard's Capital Campaign, Loker is a devoted philanthropist.

Loker was educated at the University of Southern California and, with her late husband Donald P. Loker '25, has supported higher education, scientific and medical research and the arts.

Her recent efforts have been spent on Harvard's Memorial Hall and Widener Library. The newly constructed lower floors of Memorial Hall opened in 1997 now bears her name, as does the central reading room in Widener. She received the 1996 Harvard Medal for her service to the University.

Loker will receive an honorary Doctorate of Humane Letters.

Maclyn McCarty

A molecular biologist, McCarty will receive an honorary Doctorate of Science.

Currently the John D. Rockefeller, Jr. Professor Emeritus at the Rockefeller University, McCarty was a faculty member for he Rockefeller University for Medical Research from 1941 until his retirement in 1981.

McCarty is a Stanford University graduate and received his master's from John Hopkins University.

He has also received the Wolf Prize in Medicine and the Lasker Special Public Health Award.

Constance Baker Motley

A prominent judge and civil rights lawyer, Motley was the first black woman appointed as a federal judge and elected to the New York States Senate.

Motley has also served the NAACP for 20 years, litigating cases such as Brown v. Board of Education.

Motley was educated at New York University and received an LL.B. from Columbia University in 1946.

She will receive an honorary Doctorate of Laws.

Kenzaburo Oe

The 1994 Nobel Prize of Literature recipient, Oe will receive an honorary Doctorate of Letters.

Known for his mythical stories, including "Hiroshima Notes," "A Personal Matter" and "The Silent Cry," many consider Oe to be Japan's finest writer.

Oe graduated from Tokyo University with a degree in French Literature in 1959. He is currently the Samuel Fisher Professor at the Free University of Berlin.

Oe has received the 1989 Prix Europalia and many other international literary honors.

Seiji Ozawa

As music director of the Boston Symphony Orchestra, Seiji Ozawa is one of Boston's most famous faces.

He will be honored today with a Doctorate in Music.

Born in China, he grew up in Japan studying music.

A performance hall at Tanglewood is named for him.

In an interview this spring for the French magazine Le Monde de la Musique, Ozawa said he would most like to be a ski instructor.

A year ago, Ozawa announced he would step down from the BSO in 2002 to take the baton at the Vienna State Opera.

Amartya Sen

Sen, a Nobel laureate in economics and Master of Trinity College at Cambridge University, will give the University's Commencement address today. He is also the Lamont University Professor emeritus in Harvard's Economics Department.

Sen is an expert on social choice theory and welfare economics. In 1987 he received an honorary Masters degree from Harvard (see related article, page xx).

Today, Sen will receive an honorary Doctorate of Laws.