Four to receive honorary degrees at Clarkson's graduation
Clarkson University has announced the recipients of honorary degrees to be awarded today at this year's commencement.
RAY KURZWEIL
Inventor, author and entrepreneur Ray Kurzweil will receive an honorary doctor of science degree.
The degree will be awarded for his "exceptional career achievements in the fields of optical character recognition, speech recognition technology, music synthesis and other areas of artificial intelligence, and for his lifelong commitment to developing innovative technology that serves humanity."
Mr. Kurzweil has been described as "the restless genius" by the Wall Street Journal, and "the ultimate thinking machine" by Forbes. Inc. magazine, which ranked him eighth among entrepreneurs in the United States, calling him the "rightful heir to Thomas Edison." PBS included Mr. Kurzweil as one of 16 "revolutionaries who made America," along with other inventors of the past two centuries.
As one of the leading inventors of our time, Mr. Kurzweil was the principal developer of the first CCD flat-bed scanner, the first omni-font optical character recognition, the first print-to-speech reading machine for the blind, the first text-to-speech synthesizer and the first commercially marketed large-vocabulary speech recognition.
He has received 16 honorary doctorates and honors from three U.S. presidents.
Mr. Kurzweil has written five books, four of which have been national best sellers. "The Age of Spiritual Machines" has been translated into nine languages and was the top best-selling book on Amazon.com in science.
JOHN H. SEINFELD
John H. Seinfeld, the Louis E. Nohl professor in the divisions of chemistry and chemical engineering and engineering and applied science at the California Institute of Technology, will receive an honorary doctor of science degree for his significant contributions to the understanding of the chemistry and physics of the atmosphere, including his pioneering work in aerosol climatology.
He received his doctorate in chemical engineering from Princeton University in 1967 and joined the faculty of the California Institute of Technology that year.
Mr. Seinfeld's early focus on the interaction of aerosols — the microscopic airborne particles and droplets that drive the atmosphere's chemical processes — allowed him to integrate many complex variables that influence air quality. This work, and an exceptional mathematical talent for differential equations, led to his landmark 1972 papers on mathematical models for air pollution. From these came the first urban air quality models incorporated in the Federal Clean Air Act and which today provide the basic tool employed by air quality managers worldwide.
One of the first scientists to describe the chemical processes producing urban ozone, Seinfeld has been a leading figure in scientific advances in understanding urban photochemical smog, acid deposition, tropospheric ozone depletion, the global influence of aerosols in cloud formation and the behavior of "greenhouse" gases.
In 1982, at age 39, Mr. Seinfeld was the youngest person ever elected to the National Academy of Engineering. He also is a fellow of the National Academy of Arts and Sciences.
JOAN A. STEITZ
Joan A. Steitz, the Sterling professor of molecular biophysics and biochemistry investigator at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute in Maryland, will receive an honorary doctor of science degree for her exceptional contributions in the field of molecular biology, most notably for her pioneering research into ribonucleic acid and the role of small nuclear ribonucleoproteins in the splicing of messenger RNA.
Steitz earned a bachelor's degree in chemistry from Antioch College in 1963. Significant findings from her work emerged as early as 1967, when her Harvard Ph.D. thesis with Jim Watson examined the test-tube assembly of a ribonucleic acid bacteriophage (antibacterial virus) known as R17.
Ms. Steitz spent the next three years in postdoctoral studies at the Medical Research Council Laboratory of Molecular Biology in Cambridge, England. There, she used early methods for determining the biochemical sequence of RNA to study how ribosomes know where to initiate protein synthesis on bacterial mRNAs.
In 1979, Ms. Steitz and her colleagues described a group of cellular particles called small nuclear ribonucleoproteins, a breakthrough in understanding how RNA is spliced. Subsequently, her laboratory has defined the structures and functions of other snRNPs, such as those that guide the modification of ribosomal RNAs and several produced by transforming herpes viruses.
Ms. Steitz is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the American Philosophical Society, the National Academy of Sciences and the Institute of Medicine.
DANIEL F. SULLIVAN
St. Lawrence University President Daniel F. Sullivan will receive an honorary doctor of science degree for his resolute commitment to upholding the highest ideals of education, most notably through his leadership support of liberal arts education and his contributions to national and state higher-education policies.
The 17th president of St. Lawrence University, Canton, he began his duties July 1, 1996.
A 1965 mathematics graduate of SLU, Mr. Sullivan received his Ph.D. in sociology from Columbia University, where he was an Edward John Noble Fellow, a University Fellow and a National Science Foundation Graduate Fellow. While at Columbia, he also served as an instructor in sociology and a research associate at Barnard College.
Mr. Sullivan was president of Allegheny College, in Meadville, Pa., from 1986 to 1996.
Under Mr. Sullivan's leadership, SLU has launched several major initiatives in facilities renovation, expansion and construction; in academic programs, including expansion of the faculty and the addition of new major fields and international study programs; and in regional economic development and community relations.
He is a trustee and past chair of the Association of American Colleges and Universities, the only major higher-education association whose sole focus is the quality of student learning in the college years. His other professional service has included membership on advisory panels and committees for the National Science Foundation, the Consortium on Financing Higher Education, the College Board, the Commission on Independent Colleges and Universities and the National Association of Independent Colleges and Universities, among others.
