President Robert A. Brown last week named H. Eugene Stanley of the College of Arts & Sciences and Wendy Gordon of the School of Law as William Fairfield Warren Distinguished Professors. The second and third Warren Professors named this month, their appointments came less than two weeks after CAS biologist Thomas Kunz received the same honor. The professorships were established in 2008; Kunz was the first named since 2009.
“I am deeply touched to join seven other scholars to represent the hundreds exemplifying the University’s commitment to excellence,” says Stanley. “One key feature of my teaching and research is to recognize the priceless value of each student and the ability of a student to bring their innate creativity to bear in approaching new problems.”
Stanley, observing his 35th anniversary at the University, is a statistical physicist, one who studies unpredictable events, such as the possible outcomes of Japan’s nuclear crisis. In 1973, appalled that refuseniks had been denied admission to a Russian scientific conference he was speaking at, he announced from the podium that attendees could hear the refuseniks’ talks at their homes. He was hustled off by trench-coated security men and briefly feared he was going to be tossed out the top-floor window. But he did lead conference-goers to the refuseniks’ homes and later headed a new organization lobbying the Soviets to permit more emigration. Those efforts, plus his advocacy for more women in physics, contributed to his winning the American Physical Society’s Nicholson Medal for Human Outreach in 2003.
Stanley’s eclectic research has included the study of water’s structure; the onset of Alzheimer’s disease; and common statistical patterns governing disparate phenomena, such as the distribution of stock price fluctuations and the speeds of air molecules.
He is a member of the National Academy of Sciences and has been thesis advisor to almost 100 PhD candidates at BU and MIT, where he previously taught. Holder of seven honorary degrees, he earned a BA at Wesleyan and a doctorate at Harvard.
This article was originally published in BU Today.