ASTRONOMY DEPARTMENT
AND
THE HOPKINS OBSERVATORY
The Astronomy faculty included Karen B. Kwitter, Professor of
Astronomy; James R. Voelkel (`84), Visiting Assistant Professor of
Astronomy and History of Science; and Deborah L. Maraziti, Instructor
in Astronomy and Observatory Supervisor. Field Memorial Professor of
Astronomy Jay M. Pasachoff was on leave in residence, supported by a
grant from the Getty Foundation.
Pasachoff continued his studies of the solar corona at eclipses.
In collaboration with Bryce Babcock, Staff Physicist, and Kevin
Reardon `92, he carried out observations of the corona at the total
solar eclipse of 3 November 1994 from a site in Putre, Chile, at an
altitude of 3500 m. Students participating in the expedition were
Robert Galloway `96, Bonnie Schulkin `96, and Princeton student Eric
Kutner `95. Also participating were Woody Printz of Richmond,
Massachusetts; Lee Hawkins of Wellesley College, Keck Consortium
technician; Jonathan Kern of New Orleans; and Robert Eather of
Boston.
The main experiment was to study the heating of the solar corona
through a search for oscillations of small coronal loops in the 0.5 -
2 Hz range. The observations were made on-band in a narrow spectral
band including the coronal green line at 530.3 nm and off-band in
nearby continuum. Instrumentation included two Princeton Instruments
CCD detectors and Macintosh Quadra controllers. A second experiment
used the Photometrics CCD supplied as part of the Keck Consortium to
look through special filters chosen to be either at wavelengths
especially sensitive to coronal temperature or at nearby
non-sensitive nodes. Auxiliary experiments included Kern's
radial-filter imaging, now being scanned at the Royal Observatory
Edinburgh; Eather's IMAX movie, auxiliary photographs and videos,
etc. Summer students Sebastian Diaz `98 and Keck exchange student
Rana Nichols-Kiley (Vassar `97) are participating in the data
reduction. Pasachoff delivered a joint paper by Pasachoff, Babcock,
and Reardon entitled "Coronal Heating Studies at the 1994 Total Solar
Eclipse" at an eclipse symposium of the Bolivian Academy of Sciences
at Lake Titicaca in May 1995. He also was Scientific Advisor to the
conference, in his role as Chair of the Working Group on Eclipses of
the International Astronomical Union. He further delivered a summary
paper "Observations at the International Astronomical Union Site at
Putre, Chile". The work at the 1994 eclipse has been sponsored by
grants from the National Science Foundation and the National
Geographic Society.
Pasachoff and Babcock are preparing a version of their oscillation
experiment for the 24 October 1995 total solar eclipse in India.
Pasachoff worked during the year on a study of "Comets and Meteors
in 18th and 19th Century British Art and Science," jointly with Prof.
R.J.M. Olson of Wheaton College on a collaborative grant from the
Getty Foundation. They are writing a book on the topic for Cambridge
University Press. Their work took them to archives at the Royal
Observatory in Edinburgh, the Royal Society in London, the Royal
Astronomical Society in London, the Old Greenwich Observatory and the
National Maritime Museum in London, and to museums, print rooms, and
other archives at the British Museum, the Tate Gallery, the
Fitzwilliam Museum, and elsewhere. Pasachoff and Olson are describing
the tremendous interest among scientists and the public following the
work of Halley and Newton on the comets of 1680 and 1682 and the
discovery of Uranus by Herschel in 1781. Their study continues
through the 1910 apparition of Halley's comet.
Pasachoff continued to work with D. Lubowich of the American
Institute of Physics and Hofstra University on studies of
interstellar and stellar deuterium and its relation to cosmology. The
abundance of the light elements has proved to be an equal supporting
column of current cosmology, along with the expansion of the Universe
observed as redshifts and the existence and distribution of the
cosmic background radiation. Along with Robert Galloway `96, Robert
L. Kurucz of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, and
Vern Smith of the University of Texas, they delivered a paper
entitled "Upper Limit for the Deuterium Abundance in the Halo Star HD
140283," at the American Astronomical Society in Tucson, Arizona, in
January 1995, discussing their observations at the Kitt Peak National
Observatory of the spectrum of a star in the halo of our galaxy. They
discussed limits of the deuterium-alpha spectral line in the star,
and how they indicate that the reported possible discovery of
extremely redshifted deuterium in a distant quasar probably resulted
from confusion with spectral lines of ordinary hydrogen. The results
of deuterium studies have bearing on our understanding of whether the
Universe will expand forever or will eventually contract, and leads
to an assessment of the percentage of dark matter in the Universe.
Kwitter's main projects continue to include haloes and chemical
abundances of planetary nebulae, interactions of old planetary
nebulae with the interstellar medium, and a search for lithium in the
neutral envelopes of planetary nebulae.
Kwitter's studies of old planetary nebulae are in collaboration
with Richard Tweedy (Steward Observatory, University of Arizona),
making use of the large-format (2048x2048 pixel) CCD detector at the
Burrell Schmidt telescope on Kitt Peak, Arizona. Tweedy and Kwitter
have published two papers on their results, which include discovery
of planetary nebulae around two hot white dwarf stars. In November
1994, Deborah Maraziti observed with Tweedy. In May 1995, Kwitter and
Tweedy were joined on an observing run by Christina Reynolds `97.
Kwitter is also continuing to work on carbon abundances in
planetary nebulae. The only emission line appearing in the visible
part of the spectrum is a transition in singly ionized carbon,
C+, which is intrinsically very weak compared to the
normally observed emission lines in these objects; there are stronger
lines available in the ultraviolet. Along with Richard Henry
(University of Oklahoma) and his graduate student Richard Buell,
Kwitter is working under the auspices of a NASA Astrophysics Data
Program grant to use newly recalibrated archived data from the
International Ultraviolet Explorer satellite to study the
production of carbon in intermediate-mass stars. They presented two
papers at the American Astronomical Society meeting in Tucson,
Arizona, January 1995: "A New Look at Carbon Abundances in Planetary
Nebulae" and "Helium in Planetary Nebulae and Asymptotic Giant Branch
Models." Summer 1995 Keck exchange student Dan Pierkowski (Colgate
`96) and Tim McConnochie `98 participated in analyzing the more than
300 spectra required for this project.
Kwitter is continuing a collaboration with Don Lubowich (American
Institute of Physics/Hofstra University) to search for lithium in
planetary nebulae. Lithium enrichment has been documented in
main-sequence stars, giant stars, and pre-planetary nebula stars;
this investigation proposes to continue the search farther along the
evolutionary path to planetary nebula envelopes. Kwitter and Lubowich
have applied for time on the Kitt Peak 4-meter telescope to obtain
high-dispersion spectra of suitably-chosen planetary nebulae in which
to search for evidence of lithium.
Kwitter was a member of the Scientific Organizing Committee for a
conference on Asymmetric Planetary Nebulae, at the University
of Haifa at Oranim, Israel, held 8-11 August 1994. She was also an
invited participant at the Fifth Tex-Mex Meeting in Astrophysics, on
the subject of Gaseous Nebulae and Star Formation, sponsored
by the Universidad Nacional Autonoma de Mexico, the University of
Texas, and Rice University, held 3-5 April 1995, in Morelos, Mexico.
She delivered a paper entitled "A New Look at Carbon Abundances in
Planetary Nebulae -- Results for Four Nebulae."
James Voelkel spent the first few weeks of his time at Williams
finishing his Ph.D. dissertation in history of science for Indiana
University. His dissertation, "The Development and Reception of
Kepler's Physical Astronomy, 1593-1609," was subsequently awarded the
Esther L. Kinsley Ph.D. Dissertation Award for 1994, the highest
honor for graduate research Indiana University offers.
Voelkel attended the History of Science Society meeting in New
Orleans in the fall. He also gave several talks this spring. He gave
a talk at Bennington College entitled "Johannes Kepler as Publisher
and Scientist," and the inaugural talk entitled "Tycho and Kepler" of
the summer observing season to the Arunah Hill astronomy club. He
also gave a talk to the staff of the Adler Planetarium in Chicago
entitled "The State of the Astronomical Art, 1540." Book reviews by
Voelkel appeared in Isis and Physics Today.
Maraziti, a graduate student at the Institute for Astronomy at the
University of Hawaii, is progressing in her dissertation research on
galaxy clusters. Certain moderate- to high-redshift galaxy clusters
appear to have an excess of galaxies with blue optical colors when
compared to low redshift clusters of comparable richness (the
"Butcher-Oemler Effect"). Most attribute the blue color to enhanced
star-formation, but the trigger which accelerates the star-formation
in these galaxies is not understood. She is observing the galaxies in
two clusters at infrared wavelengths to search for evidence that
galaxy-galaxy interactions trigger the star-formation and to
investigate whether their star-forming properties are similar to
those of nearby star-burst galaxies. This work is under the direction
of Robert Joseph and Patrick Henry at the University of Hawaii. All
infrared data for this project must be collected at the high and dry
location of the UH 2.2 meter telescope atop Mauna Kea on the Big
Island in Hawaii. Maraziti was awarded three nights in September 1994
to observe one cluster and three nights in March to observe the
other. She also obtained images of the cluster Abell 370 in October
1994 with NASA's IRTF telescope on Mauna Kea. She is reducing the
data using the Astronomy Department workstations. In the galaxies
examined so far, there is no evidence for the Butcher-Oemler effect
in the infrared colors. This suggests that if star formation is
responsible for the blue optical colors of the cluster galaxies, then
that star formation may be different than the star formation of
galaxies in less crowded environments.
Alexandria Ware, (Wellesley `96), on exchange at Williams
accompanied Maraziti on an observing run in March 1995 as part of her
semester-long independent study of Infrared Studies of Galaxy
Clusters. She also assisted with the reduction of data from a study
of a third galaxy cluster, Abell 370. In collaboration with Patrick
Henry and Jeffrey Goldader (University of Hawaii), Maraziti will
complete the data reduction and analysis of this cluster.
On April 22, Maraziti attended the 75th Anniversary Astronomical
Debate in Washington, DC. It not only commemorated the 1920
Shapley-Curtis Debate over the nature of the "spiral nebulae," but
was a debate of significant content itself. Donald Lamb and Bohdan
Paczynski argued for and against (respectively) the position that
gamma ray burst sources are within the boundaries of the Milky Way
Galaxy.
The Hopkins Observatory launched two long-term research projects
in the Spring of 1995: assembling a photometric CCD atlas of peculiar
galaxies and searching for optical counterparts to gamma-ray bursts.
New observations by the Hubble Space Telescope and others show that
universe is filled with many more small, faint galaxies than
anticipated. The origin of these galaxies is a mystery. Until
recently, little attention has been paid to the tremendous potential
of galaxy-galaxy collisions to clutter the universe with fragmented
star clusters -- galaxies by their own rights. Maraziti is interested
in exploring the outer regions of colliding galaxies to search for
such self-gravitating groups of stars in the process of breaking free
from their parent systems. Three students, Patrick Russell `97,
Richard Leimsider `98 and Steven Ehrenberg `97 did the
ground-breaking observations for this study as part of their ASTR 106
course. Summer 1995 Keck exchange student Jennifer Heldman, (Colgate
`98) will continue this project.
The systematic lack of identification of gamma-ray burst
counterparts at other wavelengths remains one of the great
frustrations in astronomy. To address this issue, a group of
investigators on the Compton Gamma Ray Observatory have designed a
collaborative effort called the "Rapid Burst Response Campaign." The
Hopkins Observatory is now one of about 30 sites worldwide that are
part of this network. The TAs and faculty are on-call to observe
burst sites at a moment's notice.
Voelkel brought his unique perspective as an historian of
astronomy to teaching introductory astronomy this year. In the fall,
his course "Cosmology: Aristotle to Einstein and the Hubble Space
Telescope" brought the history and philosophy of cosmological systems
to a wide variety of students. This course, the first ever offered in
the astronomy department that could satisfy a division II
requirement, was also cross listed in the History of Science
department. Voelkel's historical perspective was also brought to bear
when appropriate in 100 level courses in teaching not only the
conclusions of modern astronomy but also the logic of the discovery.
This was especially the case in the inaugural section of ASTR 104, a
new course offering which treats galactic astronomy and modern
cosmology exclusively.
Under Maraziti's supervision, the 24" telescope and associated
electronics continued to be used successfully in the astronomy
curriculum. Students used the CCD detector to obtain images, then
manipulated them using several image processing packages. Teaching
Assistants this year were Steven Blood `96, Nathaniel Farny `96,
Robert Galloway `96, Jason Lorentz `96, Corey Olsen `96, Sarah Rispin
`96, Christina Reynolds `97, Henry Roe `97, Bonnie Schulkin `96,
Benjamin Slocum `98, and Alexandria Ware (Wellesley `96). Kyle Downey
`96 and Sebastian Diaz `98 were the system managers for the astronomy
workstations.
The ASTR 106 course, a "hands-on" observational astronomy seminar,
was taught by Jim Voelkel and Deborah Maraziti. In addition to the
colliding galaxies project, other research was undertaken by
Astronomy 106 students. An unsuccessful search for supernovae
disappointed Matthew Libbey `98, Jason Mitrakos `98 and Jacinto Pico `98. Meanwhile, Alvaro Borrell `97, David Foran
`97, Reggie Hall `98, Rendhel Pierre-Louis `98 and Robert Watkins `98
took a close look at the surface features and brightness of Mars
during its 1995 opposition.
Fifty students opted for the Observational Astronomy Winter Study
class (ASTR 016) taught by Maraziti during WSP 1995. Among other
activities, they watched the Quadrantid meteor shower and submitted
their results for the International Meteor Organization.
On April 8, Kwitter, Maraziti, Christina Reynolds `97, Ruth
O'Gorman `97, Benjamin Slocum `98, and Kyle Downey `96 attended the
Meeting of Astronomy Research Students (MARS) held at Wellesley
College. MARS is sponsored by NECUSE.
In May, Maraziti, Kwitter, and Christina Reynolds `97 ran a
workshop called Shooting the Stars to participate in the Sigma
Xi annual award day for the Science Fair winners at local elementary
schools. In June, under the auspices of the Office of Public
Information, Kwitter and Maraziti ran a workshop for teachers from
local schools to teach them about current astronomical topics and the
basics of obtaining astronomical images via the world-wide web and
other computer resources.
The family of Truman Henry Safford, second director of the Hopkins
Observatory (1876-1901), has kindly given a fund for the benefit of
the Observatory, centered on support of student participation in
research. Principals of the family involved in the gift include
Arthur Safford of West Hartford, Connecticut; his daughter, Joan
Safford Wright of Princeton, New Jersey; and C. Louis Safford of
Williamstown.
Pasachoff continued on the Education Advisory Committee and the
News Committee of the American Astronomical Society. He was a Sigma
Xi National Lecturer, and as such spoke about the "Triumph of the
Hubble Space Telescope" at Northwestern University, Syracuse
University, Oakland University, Tennessee Technical University,
University of Southern Mississippi, and Eckerd College. He was
elected American Association of Physics Teachers/American Physical
Society Member at Large of the Forum on Education of the American
Physical Society, and attended the Executive Committee meeting in
Washington in May.
Pasachoff continued to serve on the advisory boards of the
educational projects of the American Association of Variable Star
Observers, the Astronomical Society of the Pacific, and the American
Astronomical Society. He was on the advisory board of Odyssey,
a children's magazine (Cobblestone Publishing) and on the Physical
Science Board of World Book Encyclopedia.
Several new books and new editions of older texts by Pasachoff
were published this past year: Calculus and
Multiple-Variable Calculus (L. Holder, J. De Franza and
Pasachoff) with Brookes-Cole; Physics for Scientists and
Engineers (2nd ed.), and Physics for Scientists and Engineers,
Extended with Modern Physics (R. Wolfson and Pasachoff) with
Harper Collins, and The Farthest Things in the Universe
(Pasachoff, H. Spinrad, P.S. Osmer, and E. Cheng) with Cambridge
University Press.
Saunders College Publishing also brought out the 4th edition of
Pasachoff's textbook, Astronomy: From the Earth to the
Universe., and Harper Collins published the 2nd edition of
Physics for Scientists and Engineers, (Wolfson, R., and
Pasachoff).
The Milham Planetarium was operated by Jason Lorentz `96, Amy
McDougal `95, and Corey Olsen `96. The fall and spring shows were
entitled "Lions and Spirals and Bears, Oh My!" and concentrated on
constellation myths of the appropriate seasons. The summer 1995 show
was entitled "Now You See It, Now You Don't: Celestial Mysteries
Unveiled." Summer shows were principally given by Tim McConnochie
`98.
Williams had a strong showing at the 5th annual Keck Northeast
Astronomy Consortium student conference, held at Wesleyan University
in October 1994, at which students reported on their research
activities during the previous summer. During the summer of 1995, the
following Keck exchange students will be in residence at Williams:
Jennifer Heldman (Colgate `96), working with Deborah Maraziti; Rana
Nichols-Kiley (Vassar `96), working with Jay Pasachoff; and Daniel
Pierkowski (Colgate `96), working with Karen Kwitter.
Student Papers: 5th Annual Keck Student Conference
- Kyle Downey `96
- Lee Hawkins (Wellesley College), advisor
- "Automated Data Reduction and Apsidal Binary Motion"
- Henry Roe `97
- Eileen Friel (Maria Mitchell Observatory), advisor
- "A Preliminary Color-Magnitude Diagram for the Old Open
Cluster NGC 6369"
- Robert Galloway `96 and Eric Spaulding (Colgate) `96
- Jay Pasachoff, advisor
- "Determining the Galactic Deuterium Abundance"
ASTRONOMY COLLOQUIA [Colloquia are held jointly with
Physics. See Physics section for additional listings.]
-
- Prof. Richard Henry
- University of Oklahoma
- "Chemical Abundance Gradients in the Spiral Disks of
Galaxies" - Class of 1960 Scholars Program
- Somak Raychaudhury
- Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics
- "Our Motion in the Universe, or How Gravity Matters"
- Kyle Downey, Teon Edwards, Corey Olsen & Alex Ware
- Students - Williams College
- "An Astrophysical Summer"
- John Salzer
- Wesleyan University
- "Smurfs in Space: A Multi-Wavelength Study of Blue Compact
Dwarf Galaxies"
- Edwin F. Ladd `86
- University of Massachusetts
- "Peering Into the Stellar Cradle: Successes and
Shortcomings of Our Current Picture of Star Formation" - Class
of 1960 Scholars Program
BIOLOGY
Interest in biology continues strong; for this year and the
coming academic year, we have 130 junior and senior majors. Although
we are gratified by the success of our program, our growth has
created difficult logistical problems in staffing courses and
providing adequate research and teaching facilities for students and
faculty. We are looking forward to the time that our space problems
will be addressed with the major science facility renovations that
are now in the planning stages. The renovation last summer of our
main lecture hall, TBL 111, to provide up-to-date video and computer
projection facilities, has provided us with an excellent lecture
space. Part of this renovation was supported by the Howard Hughes
Medical Institute.
In our continuing effort to modify and expand our curriculum, we
will be introducing next year a new course in virology (BIOL 314)
taught by Nancy Roseman and a new project laboratory course (BIOL
104) taught by Liz Adler, for beginning students with a special
interest in biology. In addition, we have modified the 400 level
courses so that all of them are literature based, and we have changed
the major requirements so that every biology major takes one of these
courses. During the past several years, we have added a number of new
courses of particular interest to majors, including Immunology
(BIOL 313), Biochemical Regulatory Mechanisms (BIOL 312) and
Evolution (BIOL 305). Three 400 level courses are scheduled
for next year: BIOL 402T (Current Issues in Ecology), taught
by Professor Meyer; BIOL 411 (Plasticity in the Nervous
System), taught by Professor Adler; and BIOL 412 (Biochemical
Regulatory Mechanisms), sections of which will be taught by
Professors DeWitt and Raymond.
The department is pleased to welcome Dr. Ted Floyd, who has been
appointed a Visiting Assistant Professor of Biology for one year. He
will be replacing Colin Orians, who has accepted a position at Tufts
University. Dr. Floyd received his undergraduate degree from
Princeton University and is currently completing his Ph.D. in Ecology
at Pennsylvania State. Dr. Floyd's research focuses on the ecological
and evolutionary determinants of animal community structure. Dr.
Floyd's teaching responsibilities will include evolution,
conservation biology, and advanced ecology.
After 6 years in the Dean's Office, Joan Edwards will be taking a
sabbatical leave next year. David Smith, who will also be on leave
next year, and Joan plan to spend time learning molecular techniques
to apply to their research. They will spend the fall semester in New
Zealand and then return to Williams in the spring. They will both be
returning to the department following their leave.
After three years as Visiting Assistant Professor, Colin Orians
has accepted a position as Assistant Professor at Tufts University
for the coming year. Although his departure will certainly leave a
void in the department, we wish him well.
This past year, Professor Daniel Lynch taught the introductory
biology class in the fall and biochemistry during the spring
semester. Prof. Lynch advised two honors students this past year,
Alison Criss and Greg Crowther. During the summer of 1994 Prof. Lynch
supervised two other students in his lab, Vy Bui and Lauren Araiza.
He also hosted four high school students in his lab for one week as
part of the outreach program funded by the Howard Hughes Medical
Research Institute.
Prof. Lynch also published a paper on his research, co-authored
by Alexi Phinney `93, and served as a reviewer for several journals
in the fields of plant biology and biochemistry and for various
granting agencies, including the National Science Foundation and the
U.S. Department of Agriculture. He was an invited speaker at the
Eleventh International Meeting on Plant Lipids held in Paris, France.
Professor Gretchen Meyer taught Ecology (BIOL 203) in the
fall semester and team-taught Introduction to Environmental
Science (ENVI 102) with Professors Jay Thoman and David DeSimone
in the spring. She also taught a senior tutorial (BIOL. 402,
Current Issues in Ecology and Evolution) which focused on
discussions of papers from the primary literature. During this past
year Professor Meyer supervised several students in her lab. Victor
Lopes conducted an independent project on the effects of seed size on
germination success and seedling growth in Brassica nigra. She also
supervised an honors thesis by Andre Gerard which involved how
abiotic factors shape insect communities in small streams. Brian
Spitzer `96 began an honors project with Prof. Meyer this spring. He
plans to examine how differences in the quality of flower nectars
influence fitness of pollinating insects.
Last August, Prof. Meyer presented a poster at the national
meeting of the Ecological Society of America in Knoxville, Tennessee.
In March she presented a seminar at Bennington College and gave a
seminar as part of the Bronfman Lunch Series at Williams College. She
was awarded the LaMont C. Cole Award from the Section of Ecology and
Systematics, Cornell University. This award is given to the author of
the most outstanding paper written by a graduate student or recent
graduate of the Section of Ecology and Systematics. Prof. Meyer also
served as a reviewer for the journal Ecology.
In her first year at Williams, Professor Wendy Raymond taught
BIOL 202 (Genetics) in the fall semester and BIMO 406
(Biochemistry and Molecular Biology) in the spring. Five of
the eight students in this course will enter Ph.D. programs in the
fall of 1995, two of them with NSF Predoctoral Fellowships. Prof.
Raymond supervised two honors students in her lab this past year.
Tahira Palmer, the recipient of a Hughes summer fellowship, presented
the results of her thesis project at the National Conference of
Undergraduate Research at Union College in April, 1995. Tahira's
project employed transposable elements to map the functional limits
of a recently discovered mitotic regulatory gene EXM2. Thad
Schilling, also a recipient of a Hughes summer fellowship, completed
his honors thesis research involving the identification of several
new genes that may play important roles in the mechanics or
regulation of mitosis in yeast. Prof. Raymond also supervised two
students, Kevin Lee `96 and Sheyda Namazie `96, in her lab during
Winter Study this past year.
In August 1994 Prof. Raymond presented a talk at the national
Yeast Genetics and Molecular Biology Meeting in Seattle, Washington.
She also served as a reviewer for the journal Genetics.
Professor Nancy Roseman taught BIOL 313 (Immunology) in
the fall and took an assistant professor leave in the spring. During
the past year she supervised three honors students in her laboratory,
Miko Enomoto, Adrian Rossi, and Erica Mayer. Miko's project involved
the assessment of the level of enzyme activity which occurred during
a 12 hour viral replication cycle. Adrian worked on generating
mutants of the dUTPase and overexpressed the protein in E. coli in
order to begin structure/function studies. Erica's project determined
that azido nucleotide analogs could be used to identify the active
site of the dUTPase enzyme by demonstrating that the analog was a
competitive inhibitor of dUTP. Prof. Roseman supervised four high
school students last summer for one week as part of the outreach
program funded by the Howard Hughes Medical Research Institute.
Professor Venolia taught a senior seminar on The Molecular
Biology of Disease in the fall, with a laboratory section on
Genetics, and the Developmental Biology course and lab in the spring.
She supervised honors research by Caroline Kim, which will soon yield
the publication of the predicted protein sequence for the unc-45 gene
of the nematode, C. elegans. This will be the first reported sequence
of a protein that is important in muscle thick-filament assembly.
Professor Heather Williams was on maternity leave during the fall
semester, taught a winter study course entitled "Birds" and spent the
spring semester working on an ongoing research project supported by
the MacArthur Foundation, looking into the processes involved in
adult brain plasticity after the period of flexibility that
characterizes development is over. She supervised Matt Murrell's
honors work on how the vocalizations that are used in communication
are represented within the brain. Prof. Williams lectured on her
research at The Rockefeller University, and served as a reviewer for
several scientific publications.
Prof. Steven Zottoli spent the year on sabbatical leave
continuing his research on nerve regeneration. He also served as
administrator of the Howard Hughes grant.
1960 Distinguished Visitors 1994-95
Dr. Ruth Lehman Howard Hughes Medical Institute
Dr. Shirley Tilghman Princeton University
Dr. P. Dee Boersma University of Washington
Dr. Ian Baldwin University of Buffalo
Class of 1960 Scholars in Biology
Seniors Juniors
Mark de Kanter Michael Brush Matthew Kohn
Susanne Doblecki Lauren Burwell Rebecca Marin
Jeremy Fox Jason Carey Magdalene Moran
Bridget Kelly Nathaniel Gerhart Tania Shaw
Erica Mayer Michelle Gonzales
Heather McAuley Bryan Greenhouse
Thad Schilling Cynthia Huang
D. Chris Winters Hilary Kessler
BIOLOGY COLLOQUIA
- Dr. Ian Baldwin
- University of Buffalo
- 1960 Scholar
- "Is There Memory in the Induced Defenses of Plants?"
- Dr. P. Dee Boersma
- University of Washington
- 1960 Scholar
- "Penguins of Patagonia: Formal Rules for Life in a Variable
Enrivonment"
- Dr. Leo Fleishman
- Union College
- "Sensory Influences on the Evolution of Visual Displays in
Anoline Lizards"
- Dr. Janet Kurjan
- University of Vermont
- "Genetics of Adhesion Proteins in Yeast Mating"
- Dr. Richard Kobe
- University of Connecticut
- "Linking Scales: Juvenile Tree Mortality in Individuals,
Populations, and Communities"
- Dr. Ruth Lehman
- Howard Hughes Medical Institute
- 1960 Scholar
- "Establishment of Head-to-Tail Polarity in the Drosophila
Embryo"
- Dr. Alfred Merrill
- Emory University School of Medicine
- BIMO 1960 Scholar
- "Sphingolipids in Cell Regulation and Disease"
- Dr. Matthew Parker
- SUNY Binghamton
- "Co-evolution in Plant-Bacterial Mutualisms"
- Dr. Shirley Tilghman
- Princeton University
- 1960 Scholar
- "Genomic Imprinting: A Novel Mechanism for Growth
Regulation in Mammals"
POSTGRADUATE PLANS OF BIOLOGY MAJORS
- Christa Alexander
- - Unknown
- Mandy Allison
- - Taking a year off
- Daren Bishop
- - Working in Maine for a year, then applying to medical
school.
- Sarah Brill
- - Unknown
- Richard Campin
- - Medical School (Dartmouth or Kansas)
- Alison Criss
- - Graduate School - Dept. of Biochemistry & Molecular
Pharmacology, Harvard Medical School.
- Gregory Crowther
- - Graduate School - University of Washington (Seattle)
- Lenise Cummings
- - Unknown
- John Davidman
- - Taking a year off, then applying to medical school.
- Mark de Kander
- - Teaching - Eaglebrook School, Deerfield, MI
- Anne Del Borgo
- - Veterinary School - Cornell University
- Diana Del Valle
- - Medical School - New York Medical School (deferring for a
year).
- Amit Dhamoon
- - Unknown
- Susanne Doblecki
- - Unknown
- T. Miko Enomoto
- - Taking a year off, then applying to medical school.
- John Feerick
- - Taking a year off, then applying to medical school
- Jeremy Fox
- - Graduate School - Rutgers University, Ph.D. in Ecology
- Andre Gerard
- - Working as a field assistant with the Nevada Biodiversity
Initiative, Bridgeport, CA. Plans to apply to medical school.
- Jordana Gilman
- - Medical School - George Washington Medical School.
- Laura Good
- - Medical School - Pittsburgh Medical School.
- Brian Gugliotta
- - Unknown
- Kristina Hansen
- - Working, Health Care consulting - Lewin UHI, Fairfax, VA
- Lucas Henderson
- - Applying to medical school
- Yuri Hur
- - Unknown
- Wendy Kasserman
- - Graduate School - Hannemann University, Physical Therapy
Program.
- Bridget Kelly
- - Delaying medical school application for a year.
- Jennifer Kerns
- - Medical School
- Caroline Kim
- - Medical School - University of Pittsburgh
- Tracy Lee
- - Medical School - SUNY, Brooklyn
- Kristin Lindstrom
- - Unknown
- Victor Lopes
- - Unknown
- Erica Mayer
- - Teaching for a year in Japan, then attending Harvard Medical
school.
- Heather McAuley
- - Working - Goldman, Sachs & Co., Investment Banking
- Charles Morrison
- - Applying to medical school
- Matthew Murrell
- - Working - Laboratory of Dr. Frank Sharp in the Neurology
Department at UCSF.
- Max Nanao
- - Graduate School - UCSD
- Bridie Newman
- - Unknown
- Tahira Palmer
- - Unknown
- Stephanie Parsons
- - Working - Research Tech at Harvard Med/Brigham & Women's
Hospital.
- Marion Pepper
- - Unknown
- Christina Pligavko
- - Unknown
- Pamela Proffit
- - Medical School - Temple University
- Peter Richards
- - Working as a paramedic in Burlington, VT. Applying to
medical school.
- Heidi Rose
- - Working, hopefully in health management
- Mario Rossi
- - Applying to medical school
- Allison Rowland
- - Medical School - Dartmouth Medical School
- Thad Schilling
- - Medical School - Case Western University
- Dana Secrist
- - Unknown
- Sonia Shah
- - Medical School - SUNY Buffalo
- Amy Storer
- - Unknown
- Margaret Swaine
- - Applying to medical school
- Alice Tsao
- - Unknown
- Donald C. Winters
- - Business School - Northeastern University
- Marcienne Wright
- - Unknown
- Andrew Zwiebel
- - Delaying medical school application for a year.
-
- Stanley Cho
- - Applying to medical school
- Marilo Crissman
- - Unknown
- Melissa Dalzell
- - SUNY, Stony Brook Medical School
- Thomas Day
- - Applying to medical school
- Brenda Dunlap
- - Unknown
- Deborah Feiner
- - Working for 2 years at NYU Medical Center on Aids Research
- Jonathan Fisher
- - Mt. Sinai or New York Medical School
- Hesammodin Gharavi
- - Louisiana State Medical School
- Doron Greenbaum
- - Unknown
- Shaw Henderson
- - Working at UVM, then applying to medical school
- John Hering
- - University of Minnesota, Minneapolis Medical School
- Rhadjena Hilliard
- - Applying to medical school
- Sayre Hodgson
- - Unknown
- Paul Hohenlohe
- - Working for the Wilderness Society in Alaska
- Elizabeth Linen
- - Teaching marine science as an Assistant Scientist with SEA
in Woods Hole, MA.
- Mei-Lin Lu
- - Working at NYU Medical Center (Bellevue Hospital)
- Sangeeta Mahajan
- - Case Western or Ohio State Medical School
- Scott Martin
- - Working at Aaron Diamond AIDS Research Center, NYC
- Neil Mehta
- - Rush Medical College
- Katharine Nash
- - University of Michigan Graduate School in Biology
- Elise Newhall
- - Teaching at New Canaan Country School, then Med. School
- Helen Norwood
- - Unknown
- Brian Rho
- - Applying to graduate programs
- Rebecca Schaffner
- - Working Center for Coastal Studies, Provincetown, MA
- Deborah Schein
- - Unknown
- David Scholle
- - University of Chicago Graduate School
- Cynthia Sharpe
- - University of Chicago Graduate School
- Jeffrey Sicat
- - Applying to medical school
- Bradley Smith
- - Unknown
- Rajnish Tandon
- - Applying to medical school
- Dana Tomasino
- - Studying Alternative Medicine in Italy then Grad. School
- Lisanne Velez
- - Unknown
- Erik White
- - Dartmouth Medical School
- Sara White
- - North Carolina State University Veterinary School
CHEMISTRY
The Department had a very busy year, highlighted by the promotion
of Professors Enrique Peacock-López and John W. Thoman, Jr. to
the rank of Associate Professor and Professor Charles M. Lovett, Jr.
to the rank of full Professor effective 1 July 1995. Associate
Professor Thoman will replace Professor Chang as Department Chair in
January 1996. Two of our graduating seniors, Alison K. Criss and
Jennifer K. Hood, were awarded National Science Foundation
Fellowships for graduate study.
Part-time lecturer Dr. Manuel Finkelstein announced his
retirement from the College in May. Dr. Finkelstein taught organic
chemistry laboratory sections for 38 years and played an
important role in our educational program. We thank him for his
service and contribution and wish him all the best .
This year we continued to participate in the lectureship program
under the sponsorship of the Class of 1960 Scholars Program. Four
distinguished scientists were invited to campus to meet with our
students and present a seminar. Professor John K. Snyder of Boston
University, Professor Sylvia T. Ceyer of M.I.T., Professor Margaret
A. Tolbert of CIRES at the University of Colorado, Boulder, and
Professor Bruce Ganem of Cornell University were the 1960 Scholar
Speakers this year. Thirteen students were selected by the
faculty to be Class of 1960 Scholars during 1995 and to participate
in the seminar program which includes: a preliminary meeting of the
Scholars with a Chemistry Department faculty member to discuss some
of the papers of the seminar speaker; attendance at the
seminar/discussion; and an opportunity for further discussion with
the seminar speaker at an informal reception or dinner. The students
selected for this year are:
Class of 1960 Scholars in Chemistry
Chuchu Chizea-Dennar Phoebe Glazer Chia-Yu Hwu
Michael Miller Shing Chi Poon Amy Prieto
Dan Radov Gates Roe Mark Rudolph
Gregg Theiss Rebecca Thomas Robin Truelove
Erin Whitney
During the final week of classes, a number of awards were
presented to chemistry students for outstanding scholarship.
Professors Chang and Thoman presented the CRC Award to Erin M.
Thelander `98 as the outstanding student in the general chemistry
course and Professors Evans and Koehler presented the CRC Award to
Robert Chang `98 as the outstanding student in the advanced general
chemistry course. Professors Markgraf and Richardson awarded the
Harold H. Warren Prize to Susan E. Gurgel `97 in recognition of her
being the outstanding student in introductory organic chemistry. At
the annual senior Honors Colloquium, Professor Chang announced the
American Chemical Society Polymer Division Award for excellence in
introductory organic chemistry for Frederick C. Winston `97, the
American Chemical Society Analytical Division Award for Matthew G.
Jarvis `96, the American Chemical Society Connecticut Valley Section
Award for sustained scholastic excellence for Heather A. Cox `95, and
the American Institute of Chemists Student Award for outstanding
scholastic achievement for Daniel E. Patterson `95.
At Class Day activities before graduation, the John Sabin
Adriance Prize was awarded to Alison K. Criss as the senior chemistry
major who maintained the highest rank in all courses offered by the
Department. Also during Class Day, Elizabeth A. Gray was the
recipient of the Leverett Mears Prize in recognition of outstanding
scholastic achievement, admission to graduate study in the medical
sciences or to medical school, and designation by the faculty of the
Department as showing outstanding promise. The James F. Skinner Prize
for achieving a distinguished record in chemistry and showing promise
for teaching and scholarship was presented to Jennifer K. Hood.
During the summer of 1995, a number of Williams College chemistry
majors were awarded research assistantships to conduct research in
the laboratories of departmental faculty. Some of these students were
supported by funds from the College, some from NIH, NSF, the Research
Corporation, and the Petroleum Research grants administered by the
American Chemical Society.
Professor Raymond Chang continues to serve on the Graduate
Records Examination Committee (GRE) in chemistry. He has been
appointed to the editorial board of a new journal (Chemical
Educator) devoted to chemical education issues and serves as a
member of the advisory committee for the NSF sponsored project:
"Sweeping Change in Manageable Units: A Modular Approach to Chemistry
Curriculum Reform" at the University of California at Berkeley. In
January Professor Chang gave an invited talk at the Milton Academy.
Working with Honors student Rajiv Doshi they explored new techniques
for generating neutral free radicals and studied the mechanism of
Grignard reagent formation.
During his leave year Assistant Professor Dalton continued his
research directed toward the synthesis of new metal-carbonyl
complexes and Lewis acid analogs of metalloenzymes. Funding for these
projects was provided by Research Corporation. Summer researcher
Jennifer Hood `95 focused on the synthesis of new heterocyclic
ligands that could mimic the active site of the metalloenzyme
[[beta]]-Lactamase II. Her efforts included the development of
11B NMR techniques to characterize the target molecules.
Jennifer presented the results of her work at the Organometallic
Summer Undergraduate Research Group (OSURG) in August. In conjunction
with her Pfizer Fellowship, Jennifer and Professor Dalton also
presented their findings at Pfizer Central Research last Fall.
Professor Dalton was awarded a grant from NECUSE to host the 7th
annual OSURG conference that was held at Williams. The OSURG
conference was canceled in 1995 but should return next summer.
Professor Dalton was also awarded a $54,000 grant from the National
Science Foundation for the creation of a molecular modeling lab in
the chemistry department. The funds will be used to purchase a
Silicon Graphics workstation, Macintosh computers, and software for
experimental work in computational chemistry.
Assistant Professor Robert Evans continued his research directed
at characterizing the active site of HIV-1 reverse transcriptase. His
research efforts were aided this year by Jean Pesola `95, Max Nanao
`95, Kirsten Williams `95 and Steven Saunders. He also served as a
reviewer for the Journal of Biological Chemistry and
Biochemistry . In addition to his research, Professor Evans
developed and taught a new non-majors course during the fall semester
AIDS: The Disease and Search for a Cure, (CHEM 115.) During
the spring term Professor Evans taught the advanced section of
General Chemistry and the Department's Ford Course in
General Chemistry (CHEM 106/108).
Professor Lawrence Kaplan was elected to membership in the
American Academy of Forensic Science while attending the 47th annual
meeting of the Academy held in Seattle in February.
He presented lectures and conducted workshops on his continuing
work to promote forensic science as a vehicle for science education.
The lectures included: "Forensic Chemistry with a Murder at Midnight"
which was presented by invitation at the Chemical Education Symposium
at the 24th North Eastern Regional Meeting of the American Chemical
Society at the University of Vermont in June 1994; "Chemistry and
Crime: An Introduction to Forensic Science" which was presented at
the 13th Biennial Conference on Chemical Education at Bucknell
University in August 1994; "Forensic Science - Crime in the Chemistry
Curriculum." and "Chemistry and Crime: From Sherlock Holmes to Modern
Forensic Science" which were presented as the ACS speaker at Iowa
State University in March 1995; and "Forensic Science - Crime in the
Chemistry Curriculum" a seminar presented at the University of New
Hampshire in April 1995.
During spring break, Professor Kaplan taught a workshop,
Chemistry and Crime: From Sherlock Holmes to Modern
Forensic Science - Experiments for High School Science Courses,
as part of the Franklin County Teacher In-Service Day at the Mohawk
Regional High School for a number of science teachers from Western
Massachusetts. It was sponsored by the Consortium for the Improvement
of Math & Science Teaching based at North Adams State College. He
presented two more informal seminars at Williams: "The Evidence Never
Lies But Is It Admissible: The DNA Profiling Evidence in the O. J.
Simpson Case," presented during the fall first year family weekend;
and "Forensic Science: Solving Cases Old and New," presented at the
alumni reunion weekend during June 1995.
In collaboration with Professor Lee Park, he developed a new
Winter Study course, Science for Kids. The course, which was
a variation on the course Science on the Road which he
had developed a number of years ago with Professor Bud Wobus, was
designed to introduce Williams students to the many aspects of
developing and presenting a science workshop. The participants in the
workshops were elementary school students and their parents. 4th
graders and their parents were invited to campus and the workshops
were conducted here rather than at the individual schools.
His work in the field of forensic science was reported in the
popular media. "Secret to Longevity? Elementary for Holmes" in the
Albany Times Union, and "Whodunit course catches fire" in
The Boston Globe discussed the unique features of the
Chemistry and Crime course. Professor Kaplan was interviewed
on two broadcasts on National Public Radio, "The Law Show" (WAMC) and
"Best of Our Knowledge" (WAMC.) Finally, he was profiled in
Chemical & Engineering News in the article "Chemistry
Curriculum Reform Focuses on Content, Technology, and Pedagogy,"
discussing his presentation at the 13th Biennial Conference on
Chemical Education.
This year Assistant Professor Andrew Koch has been on leave.
Though this leave took him no farther then his own research
laboratory at Williams, he has enjoyed a fruitful year of research.
Professor Koch took one Honors student, Grant Harbison `95, this year
who helped work on his pyridinium substituted benzoquinone project.
Together they were able to prepare and study a series of unique
pyridinium benzoquinones which they are writing up for publication
this summer. Grant Harbison's work has culminated in a thesis
entitled "Synthesis and Isolation of
2,5-bis-4-tert-butylpyridinium-3,6-dioxy-1,4-Benzoquinone and
Attempted Synthesis and Isolation of Related Compounds". Grant
presented his findings at the 15th Annual Undergraduate Research
Symposium at Trinity College which was hosted by the Connecticut
Valley Section of the American Chemistry Society. Professor Koch
presented their findings at an invited seminar at Rensselaer
Polytechnic Institute entitled "Per-pyridinium Compounds: Preparation
and Investigation of an Unusual Class of Densely Charged Compounds".
He will also present these results as a poster entitled "Working
Towards the Formation of Pyridinium Substituted Benzoquinones" at the
34th National Organic Symposium in Williamsburg, Virginia in June.
Professor Koch was also fortunate enough to attend the 12th IUPAC
Conference on Physical Organic Chemistry in Padova, Italy last
summer.
While on leave, Professor Koch continued his activities for the
Sigma XI Science Day by offering middle school children hands-on
demonstrations of how one can draw conclusions on the atomic scale by
making macroscopic observations. Professor Koch was also responsible
for setting up a summer research student exchange program between the
University of Leiden in the Netherlands and Williams. This summer two
Williams students, Grant Harbison `95 and David Vosburg `97, will be
involved in research in Leiden while two Dutch students, Martin de
Kort and Simon van der Plas, will be working for Professor Koch and
Professor Markgraf, respectively. In addition, Professor Koch has
also continued to serve as a reviewer for the Journal of Organic
Chemistry and Chemistry of Materials.
This past year, our department received a new member. Assistant
Professor Birgit Koehler moved from Boulder, Colorado to Williamstown
in July of 1994. Her first month started out well with the news that
she had been awarded a Camille and Henry Dreyfus Foundation Start-up
Grant for Undergraduate Institutions. During her first semester,
Professor Koehler taught CHEM 103, the advanced section of
Introductory Chemistry with a record enrollment of 40 students. In
the spring, she concentrated on her specialty by teaching a new
class, Atmospheric Chemistry (CHEM 316) for junior and senior
chemistry majors, some of whom are also Environmental Studies
concentrators.
On the research front, Professor Koehler worked with senior
Honors student Anne N. Normand `95. Anne worked through an enormous
data set to evaluate the evaporation kinetics of solid solutions and
crystals of water and nitric acid which are representative of polar
stratospheric clouds (PSCs). Because PSCs are key initiators for
polar stratospheric ozone depletion, this information will help model
the stability of PSCs and hence the spatial extent of ozone loss.
Anne presented her findings at the 15th annual Undergraduate Research
Symposium of the Connecticut Valley Section of the American Chemical
Society, and Professor Koehler will present this work with a poster
at the 1995 Atmospheric Chemistry Gordon Conference in Newport, RI.
Professor Koehler also presented talks on Polar Stratospheric Clouds
and Ozone Depletion at the Center for Environmental Studies' "Log
Lunch" series, at the science faculty's Bronfman Lunch series, and
for the Chemistry Department seminars at Hamilton College, Dartmouth
College, and the College of the Holy Cross. During Winter Study,
Handel Emery `98 worked in Professor Koehler's lab devising
strategies for forming thin films of carbon on an inert silicon
substrate. His results are useful preliminary experiments for the
project Erin Whitney `96 will spearhead. She is currently helping
design and will soon be building a custom apparatus for studying the
interaction of atmospheric trace gases with atmospheric particulates.
Erin is working in Professor Koehler's lab during the summer of 1995
with support from Hewlett-Packard Company through a Council on
Undergraduate Research Academic-Industrial Research Partnership
Fellowship. Erin will continue her work next year as a senior Honors
thesis project.
Professor Koehler was a co-author of a recent publication
entitled "Infrared Optical Constants of H2O Ice, Amorphous Nitric
Acid Solutions, and Nitric Acid Hydrates" which appeared in the
Journal of Geophysical Research..
Charles Lovett was promoted to Professor of Chemistry, effective
July 1, 1995. Professor Lovett served his second year as Director of
Bronfman Science Center and Chair of the Science Executive Committee.
He also served as Chair of the Building Committee for the new science
facility; in this capacity he was involved in the early stages of the
project, including architect selection and programming. He continued
to serve as Chair of the Biochemistry and Molecular Biology Program.
He also served on the Executive Board of the New England Consortium
for Undergraduate Science Education and on the Advisory Committee for
Project Kaleidoscope (PKAL), a national reform movement to strengthen
undergraduate science and mathematics.
Professor Lovett continued his research on the regulation of DNA
repair in the bacterium Bacillus subtilis, supported by the National
Science Foundation. During the past year, this work involved the
efforts of several Williams students. Last summer, Dana Tomasino `94,
Donny Wong `95, Jon Hargreaves `95, and Rebecca Marin `96 worked on
various aspects of this research as full-time research assistants.
During the academic year, he directed Jen Hood, Jon Hargreaves, and
Donny Wong as Senior Honors students. Professor Lovett published one
paper, co-authored with former Honors student James Woodruff, in the
Journal of Bacteriology:, "Analysis of the SOS Inducing Signal
in Bacillus subtilis using Esherichia coli LexA as a Probe."
Professor Lovett continued to serve as an ad hoc reviewer of research
grant proposals for the Molecular Genetics Division of the National
Science Foundation.
Last summer , Professor Lovett taught the Chemistry lectures
component of the Williams College Summer Science Program for Minority
Students. During the summer he also worked with Anne Normand `95, on
the preparation of a laboratory manual for the laboratory program in
the introductory biochemistry course, Structure and Function of
Biological Molecules, which he taught during the fall semester.
He and Professor David Richardson taught two courses in the spring
semester, Toxicology and Cancer and Enzyme Kinetics and
Reaction Mechanisms. During the spring semester he also taught
the new interdisciplinary course, Introduction to Global
Studies, which he developed and taught with Professors Raymond
Baker (Political Science) and Mark Taylor (Religion).
Professor Hodge Markgraf's research group included Nick Byrne
`95, Dan Patterson `95, Chia-Yu Hwu `96 (Honors theses), Poorab
Sangani `97 (WSP project), and Dr. Manny Finkelstein (research
associate). Byrne and Hwu started a new area of research into
azahelicenes, Patterson developed a new route to heteronaphthacenes
via high temperature Diels-Alder reactions, Sangani and Finkelstein
discovered a new method of oxidizing tertiary amines under phase
transfer catalysis conditions, and Finkelstein completed a synthesis
of carbocyclic analogs of canthin-6-one by intramolecular Diels-Alder
reactions. This summer Hwu and Sangani continued their respective
investigations and exchange student Simon van der Plas (University of
Leiden) joined the group effort on azahelicenes. Also this summer
Markgraf, Finkelstein, and John Cort `91 presented with others a
paper, "Protodediazoniation of an Aryldiazonium Ion," in the first
Electronic Conference on Trends in Organic Chemistry (ECTOC) which
was a two-week international conference via the World Wide Web.
In March 1995 Professor Markgraf attended the national meeting of
Sigma Xi, the scientific research society, as a representative of the
Williams College Chapter. The Williams College Sigma Xi officers are
Professors Lawrence J. Kaplan (Chemistry) and Laurie Heatherington
(Psychology). During the past year Markgraf also served as a reviewer
for the Journal of Organic Chemistry.
Assistant Professor Lee Park taught CHEM 305, Inorganic and
Organometallic Chemistry, during the fall term and CHEM 304,
Instrumental Methods of Analysis in the spring. She also
team-taught a Winter Study course, Science for Kids, with
Professor Larry Kaplan. She has been working with Assistant Professor
Andy Koch on developing a new upper level course on Materials
Chemistry which will be offered for the first time during the fall of
1995. She also served as the departmental graduate school advisor, as
well as the faculty advisor to the Chemistry Student Advisory
Committee (CSAC). In October she presented a workshop on Liquid
Crystalline Materials to local high school and middle school teachers
under the auspices of the Consortium for the Improvement of Math and
Science Teaching. She attended the National Meeting of the American
Chemical Society in Washington, D.C. in August, an NSF sponsored
workshop on Materials Chemistry in Pittsburgh in May, as well as the
4th International Symposium on Metallomesogens in Cetraro, Italy in
June.
Professor Park continued her work on the synthesis of novel
metal-containing liquid crystalline materials. Jebrell Glover (`95)
and Susan Gillmor (`96) worked with her on the preparation of these
new materials over the summer. Jebrell's summer work was supported by
a grant provided by the Council on Undergraduate Research, and he
presented his results at the 7th annual OSURG conference, held at
Williams College in July. Jebrell continued his work as an Honors
student this year, and presented his results at the 15th Annual
Undergraduate Research Symposium hosted by the Connecticut Valley
Section of the American Chemical Society at Trinity College. Jebrell
was joined in Professor Park's lab this year by two other Honors
students, Mark Cordes (`95) and Jonathan Nitschke (`95). Their work
will be continued this summer by Amy Prieto (`96) and Thomas Reid
(`97).
Assistant Professor Enrique Peacock-López continued his
research in complex dynamical chemical and biochemical mechanisms.
During the past year, Elizabeth Juang `95 has been working on two
projects. During the summer of `94, Elizabeth worked on an extended
model of the alternative pathway of the complement. She postulated a
model that includes self-recognition. During the 94-95 academic year,
Ms. Juang worked on the steady state approximation in cascade
mechanisms. In particular, she considered our previous minimal model
and simplified the Michaelis-Menten step using the steady state
approximation. She analyzed both the full and the contracted version
of the minimal model.
Also, Chia-Yu Hwu `96 worked on cascade mechanisms. Her work
centered around bifunctional enzymes. In particular, she considered
phosphofructo kinase 2/fructo-2,6-bisphosphatase. This enzyme
switches from a phosphatase to a kinase via phosphorylation and
controls the glycolysis/gluconeogenesis in liver. Ms. Hwu postulated
a model that includes the bifunctional enzyme, control by
phosphorylation and hormonal response. More work will be done on this
model during the summer of `95.
In addition to his research activities, Professor
Peacock-López taught Quantum Chemistry and Physical Chemistry
where he has increased the use of MATHEMATICA as a tool to solve
time-consuming numerical and symbolic calculations in physical
chemistry. Finally, Professor Peacock-López' effort in
teaching chemistry to children continued. This year, Professor
Peacock-López gave demonstrations to second, fourth and sixth
graders at the Williamstown Elementary School.
Associate Professor David Richardson continued his research
efforts directed at the synthesis of monoterpenes with anesthetic
activity that are derived from plants used in Chinese and Japanese
folk medicine. Honors student Priscilla Carr `95 concentrated on this
project this year; early evidence indicates that she achieved this
year a total synthesis of paeoniflorigenone, a long-sought target of
synthetic activity in the Richardson group. His other Honors student,
Elizabeth Gray `95, concentrated her research efforts on isolating
the chemical components responsible for the toxicity of Southeast
Asian blow dart poisons. Elizabeth's work refined and extended the
chemical isolation work established by previous students and she
developed a microscale procedure for assessing the biological
activity of fractions purified from poison samples, as well.
Professor Richardson also served as a reviewer for the Journal of
Organic Chemistry.
In addition to his research activities and serving as the
College's Premedical Advisor, Professor Richardson taught the Fall
semester of the Department's introductory organic chemistry sequence.
He team-taught two courses with Professor Charles Lovett, Jr. during
the Spring semester: Enzyme Kinetics and Reaction Mechanisms
and Toxicology and Cancer. During July he taught the Chemistry
laboratory portion of the Williams College Summer Science Program for
Minority Students. During this year Professor Richardson oversaw the
purchase, delivery and installation of the Department's new 300 MHz
FT-NMR spectrometer. He also attended two week-long training courses
dedicated to operation of the new instrument at Bruker Instruments,
Inc. facilities in Richmond, CA and Billerica, MA. Finally, Professor
Richardson served as chair of the College's Olmsted Committee.
Dr. Anne Skinner attended the 209th National Meeting of the
American Chemical Society, held in Anaheim, California in April 1995.
She presented a paper in the Archaeological Chemistry Symposium, "The
Use of Electron Spin Resonance To Determine The Age of Flint
Artifacts". Mark Rudolph `96 was a co-author on the paper, which has
been accepted for publication in the ACS Symposium Series volume for
this symposium. In May of 1995 she attended the 4th International
Symposium on ESR Dosimetry in Munich, Germany, where she presented a
paper on "ESR Dating of Flints: Problems and Prospects". She was a
member of the program committee and is a co-editor of the proceedings
for this meeting. Dr. Skinner is continuing to collaborate with an
archaeologist in Florida on the problem of dating paleoindian flints.
Also at the ACS meeting, in her role as campus safety consultant,
Dr. Skinner organized a symposium on Safety in Small Colleges.
Material from that symposium is to be published in the ACS journal
Chemical Health and Safety.
Associate Professor (as of July 1, 1995) Jay Thoman continued
research on the fluorescence quenching of gas-phase nitric oxide,
supported by the American Chemical Society Petroleum Research Fund.
Three publications related to this work, with Thoman as a co-author,
appeared in press in 1994, including one paper with Mike Furlanetto
`91 as first author. With Laralyn Bergstedt `96 and Honors student
Heather Cox `95, Thoman expanded this research to study fluorescence
quenching by alcohols and constructed apparatus to measure quenching
in the temperature range 200 - 300 K. Cox presented results at the
National Conference on Undergraduate Research in April. At the same
conference, Catherine Shawl `95 presented her work on mercury and
chromium in fish and sediment in the local environment. Shawl started
her work during summer 1994 as a Keck Foundation Global Studies
Fellow, and continued as part of her chemistry Honors thesis
sponsored by Professor Thoman and Professor David Dethier of the
Geology Department.
Professor Thoman again taught CHEM 101, Concepts of
Chemistry, ENVI/CHEM 110 Environmental Chemistry and the
chemistry portion of the science seminar, ENVI 102 Introduction to
Environmental Science. In January 1996, Prof. Thoman retires as
departmental seminar coordinator and takes on the responsibility of
department chair.
CHEMISTRY COLLOQUIA
- Nicholas Byrne, Priscilla Carr, Mark Cordes, Heather Cox,
Rajiv Doshi, Jebrell Glover,
Elizabeth Gray, Grant Harbison, Jonathan Hargreaves, Jennifer
Hood, Elizabeth Juang, Jonathan Nitschke, Anne Normand, Daniel
Patterson, Jean Marie Pesola, Catherine Shawl, Christopher Song,
Kirsten Williams, Donny Wong
- Senior Research Projects
- Professor William V. Shaw `55
- University of Leicester
- "Chemical Anatomy of Antibiotic Resistance by Enzymatic
Acetylation"
- Professor Lawrence J. Kaplan
- Williams College
- "The Evidence Never Lies - But Is It Admissible: DNA
Profiling and the O.J. Simpson Case"
- Professor Gary E. Wnek
- Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute
- "Plastics That Conduct Electricity"
- Professor John K. Snyder
- Boston University
- Class of 1960 Scholars Speaker
- "Dienophilicity of Indole in Inverse Electron Demand
Diels-Alder reactions: Exploration and Synthetic Applications"
- Professor Sylvia T. Ceyer
- Massachusetts Institute of Technology
- Class of 1960 Scholars Speaker
- "Dynamics of Sticky Collisions with a Surface: Splats,
Hammers, Sink-holes"
- Professor Stuart Rice
- University of Chicago
- Phi Beta Kappa Visiting Scholar
- "Modern Aspects of the Theory of Unimolecular Reactions"
- Professor Karen E. Wetterhahn
- Dartmouth College
- "The Carcinogen Chromium (VI): Reactive Intermediates and
DNA Damage"
- Professor Margaret A. Tolbert
- University of Colorado, Boulder
- Class of 1960 Scholars Speaker
- "Polar Stratospheric Clouds and Ozone Depletion"
- Professor Scott C. Mohr `62
- Boston University
- "Small, Acid-Soluble Spore Proteins (SASPs): How Dormant
Bacteria Alter the Photochemistry of DNA"
- Dr. Ellen Ochoa
- NASA
- Bernhard Visiting Fellow
- "Space Shuttle Mission STS-66: Atmospheric Research
Flight"
"Stratospheric Ozone Research on Space Shuttle Mission STS-66"
- Dr. Lyal Hood
- Office of Laboratories and Scientific Services, U.S. Customs
Service
- "Analytical Chemistry in the U.S. Customs Service"
- Professor Bruce Ganem
- Cornell University
- Class of 1960 Scholars Speaker
- "Studies on Chorismate Mutase: Implications for Mechanism
and Catalysis"
POSTGRADUATE PLANS OF CHEMISTRY MAJORS
- Rebecca L. Bryant
- - Unknown
- Nicholas P. Byrne
- - Unknown
- Priscilla W. Carr
- - M.D. University of Massachusetts Medical School
- Mark A. Cordes
- - M.D. Vanderbilt University School of Medicine
- Heather A. Cox
- - Ph.D. Physical Chemistry, Harvard University
- Alison K. Criss
- - Ph.D. Biochemistry and Molecular Pharmacology, Harvard
Medical School
- Rajiv R. Doshi
- - Medical School
- Seamus C. Fernandez
- - Unknown
- Jebrell K. Glover
- - Ph.D. Chemistry, University of California, San Diego
- Elizabeth Gray
- - M.D. Dartmouth Medical School
- W. Grant Harbison
- - M.D. University of Washington Medical School
- Jonathan B. Hargreaves
- - Teaching high school chemistry
- Jennifer K. Hood
- - Ph.D, Biological & BioMedical Sciences Program, Harvard
Medical School
- Elizabeth Juang
- - Work for 2 or 3 years, then graduate school in biophysical
chemistry or some related field
- Noory Y. Kim
- - Unknown
- Maureen E. Mahowald
- - Graduate school in biochemistry
- Amy C. McNutt
- - Research in the Pharmacology Department, Cornell University
Medical School
- Matthew S. Miller
- - Co-founder, Summit Waste Consultants, Lee's Summit, Missouri
- Heidi R. Narins
- - M.D. SUNY, Buffalo School of Medicine
- Jonathan R. Nitschke
- - Ph.D., University of California, Berkeley
- Anne N. Normand
- - M.D./M.P.H. Program, Tufts University
- Daniel E. Patterson
- - Ph.D. Organic Chemistry, Stanford University
- Jean Marie Pesola
- - Ph.D. BioMedical Sciences, Harvard University
- Sacha D. Place
- - Unknown
- Catherine E. Shawl
- - Ph.D. Inorganic/Archaeological Chemistry, Northwestern
University
- Christopher S. Song
- - M.D. Tufts University School of Medicine
- Helen E. Spande
- - Unknown
- Thomas L. Wang
- - Unknown
- Kirsten M. Williams
- - Unknown
- Donny Wong
- - Ph.D. Molecular and Cellular Toxicology, Harvard School of
Public Health
COMPUTER SCIENCE DEPARTMENT
The Department of Computer Science welcomed one new member to our
faculty this year. Assistant Professor Andrea Danyluk joined the
department, after spending four years as project leader of the
Adaptive Expert Systems Project at NYNEX Science and Technology, Inc.
Professor Danyluk received her Ph.D. in Computer Science from
Columbia University in 1992 and her Bachelor's degree from Vassar
College in 1984. Her specialty is Artificial Intelligence, especially
Machine Learning in the context of "real-world" applications, such as
expert systems.
Promotions were approved for two members of our department this
year. Bill Lenhart was promoted to full professor, effective July 1,
1995, and Tom Murtagh was promoted to the same rank, effective July
1, 1996. In addition, Duane Bailey's promotion to Associate Professor
takes effect this July. Our secretary, Beth Koch, became a real mom
this Spring (after taking care of us for the past few years), and she
has left the department to raise her son Zach. While we will miss
her, we are also delighted to welcome our new secretary, Marie St.
John.
In recent years, we have been pleased to see many of our majors
become involved in research projects and then go on to more advanced
study in Computer Science at the graduate level. This year, we had an
unusually small number of graduates in Computer Science (4), but they
set a record of 100% participation in research and 100% enrollment in
Computer Science graduate programs. Three of four completed honors
theses. Next year they will be entering graduate programs at Brown
University, the University of Texas at Austin, the University of
Oregon and the University of Delaware. Stina Bridgeman `95 received a
National Science Foundation graduate fellowship to support her
studies at Brown.
In addition to saying farewell to this year's graduates, we
welcome 18 members of the class of `97 as new majors. They join 14
majors from the class of `96 to form the largest group of Computer
Science majors since the department was founded.
As in past years, many of our students have spent the summer on
campus working with faculty this year. During the summer of 1994, Dan
Fasulo `94, Stina Bridgeman `95, Stephen McLaughry `95, Leaf Petersen
`96 and Jasper Rosenberg `96 worked as summer research assistants.
Kimberly Tabtiang `96 served as our laboratory assistant. Work is
just beginning for this summer's assistants: Alice Bernhiem `96,
Sarah Calvo `96, Leaf Petersen `96, Jasper Rosenberg `96, Kimberly
Tabtiang `96 and Hank Zill `97.
Several additions to our curriculum were made this year. Andrea
Danyluk developed a new course for non-majors: CS 108 Artificial
Intelligence: Image and Reality. She taught the course in the
Spring. She presented a paper describing the course last November at
the Symposium on Improving the Instruction of Introductory Artificial
Intelligence (sponsored by the American Association for Artificial
Intelligence).
Bill Lenhart developed a new Winter Study course, called The
Mathematics of Games and Puzzles. This course discussed famous
(and not so famous) puzzles and games, including Rubic's Cube,
Instant Insanity, Nim and Spin Out, and showed how one could master
these games and puzzles by using mathematical techniques from
abstract algebra, graph theory and other areas of discrete
mathematics. Bill also took over the teaching of the computer
graphics course for Computer Science Majors, an adventure from which
he is currently recovering....
Professor Kim Bruce also introduced a new Winter Study course.
His course was entitled Creating the Williams Adventure Game.
In spite of the frivolous title, the course took a careful look at
object-oriented design and analysis, a relatively new technique for
planning complex computer programs. The final project involved
students working in teams to design and implement a computerized
"adventure" game set on the Williams campus.
Kim also continued work on the course he introduced just last
year, CS 137. In June he presented a talk, "CS 137, Programming
paradigms and data structures," at the annual summer meeting of the
Liberal Arts Computer Science Consortium. He also chaired a session
at the same meeting on the place of object-oriented programming
languages in the Computer Science undergraduate curriculum. He
presented another paper on CS 137 at the NECUSE (New England
Consortium on Undergraduate Science Education) Workshop on Computer
Science Curricula at Harvard University in January. He also chaired
and reported for a working group on curricula for intermediate and
advanced computer science courses. In the fall, Professors Bruce and
Murtagh taught two classes on Hypercard for elementary school
teachers at the Williamstown Elementary School. Both also served on a
Technology Advisory Committee at Mount Greylock High School.
The department was pleased to participate again in the Class of
1960 Scholars Program This year, support from this program enabled us
to bring two distinguished visitors to campus. John Savage of Brown
University gave two talks on his work on theoretical aspects of
Computer Science. Dorothy Denning of Georgetown University discussed
technical and social issues relating to the use of advanced
cryptographic techniques in conjunction with computer communication
networks.
Professor Duane Bailey continued his research on specifying
communication for parallel systems. During the summer of 1994, he and
Steve McLaughry `95 implemented the Linder Programming Layer. Linder
implements and extends many of the concepts made popular by
Gelernter's Linda(TM) environment. In these systems, programmers
write distributed programs by managing data ("tuples") in a shared
database. McLaughry and Bailey augmented the model with multiple
(concurrent) tuple spaces and new, performance-motivated operations
that combine multiple (perhaps distributed) tuple-space requests into
a single database update.
The long-term goal of Linder is to provide a spectrum of open,
extensible, public domain distributed systems that trade ease of
programming for performance and correctness. This summer Alice
Bernheim `96 begins work on improving the performance of the database
that underlies all Linder projects. Bernheim will consider
distributed debugging in her honors work this coming year.
In March, Bailey gave a Faculty Lecture Series talk entitled, "A
Puzzling Model for Computation." The thesis of the talk was that a
special class of oriented sliding block puzzles (recall the child's
15-piece puzzle) can be used to model digital circuits and, in
particular, a class of finite state machines or "computers." Our
experience with computers ("They're cool! They're complex! They're
impossible!") therefore, can be translated into direct statements
about these puzzles. Certain infinite sliding block puzzles are so
complex that it is impossible to determine (in the spirit of
Gödel's incompleteness proof) if they may be solved in a finite
amount of time. Of course, most of us suspected this all along.
In April, Bailey attended a NECUSE workshop on the role of
parallel programming in the undergraduate curriculum, held at
Wellesley College. He also was a co-editor of the Council on
Undergraduate Research's debut Directory of Undergraduate
Mathematics and Computer Science Programs.
In May, Bailey began cooperative work with University of Oregon
researchers Professor Jan Cuny (Computer Science) and Professor Roger
Haydock (Material Sciences Institute). The goal of the project is to
provide fast mechanisms for specification, simulation, and
visualization of cooperative processes (superconductivity, magnetism,
etc.) involving millions of molecules. Typically, the process
involves manipulation of large, but sparse matrices. For crystals,
significant progress has been made using data structures that are
dynamically grown in a way that simulates the crystal's growth.
Professor Kim Bruce continued his research on the semantics and
design of object-oriented programming languages. After working for
several years on the mathematical semantics of object-oriented
languages, he has spent the last several years applying the semantic
concepts to the design of better programming languages. The goal is
to design languages which are very expressive, yet have a simple
conceptual model and make it easier to catch more type errors at
compile-time.
During the summer of 1994, Leaf Petersen `96 and Jasper Rosenberg
`96 worked with Professor Bruce in further developing PolyTOIL, a
polymorphic object-oriented language designed over the last few years
as part of the senior honors theses of Angela Schuett `93 and Rob van
Gent `92. They were able to clean up a number of rough points in the
concrete syntax of the language, provide support for
recursively-defined functions, classes, and data types, add some new
data types, provide support for selective hiding of methods, and add
more flexibility to the type-checker. This work involved very
significant modifications to the parser, type checker, and run-time
support system for the interpreter. They also began writing a
reference manual for PolyTOIL.
Somewhat strikingly, it was discovered that subtyping did not
play as important a role in the language as the concept of
"matching". As a result, Leaf will commence work in the summer of
1995 with Professor Bruce on developing a language in which the role
of matching is more central and subtyping is omitted. This will
continue as his honors thesis during his senior year.
Adam Seligman `95 did an honors thesis with Professor Bruce on
the semantics of the object-oriented core of C++. One of the most
interesting findings was the importance of the statically-determined
features of the language. One normally expects that the semantics of
message passing in object-oriented languages is almost entirely
determined at run time. However, in C++ the combined impact of
overloading and messages sent to expanded objects (those not referred
to by pointers) leads to a high percentage of message calls being
statically determinable. Adam's careful analysis of the complexities
of C++, however, only added to Bruce's concern about the complexity
of the language.
Professor Bruce's paper "A Paradigmatic Object-Oriented
Programming Language: Design, Static Typing and Semantics," was
published in the June, 1994, issue of the Journal of Functional
Programming. In July he gave a talk, "Matching is better than
constraining for bounded polymorphism in object-oriented languages",
and also chaired a session at the Second International NSF-ESPRIT
Workshop on the Foundations of Object-Oriented Languages held in
Paris. Professor Bruce was principal investigator of the NSF grant
which supported the U.S. participants in this meeting.
In March, 1995, Professor Bruce presented a lecture, "A
Polymorphic Statically-Typed Object-Oriented Programming Language
with Guaranteed Type-Safety," at Bell Labs in New Jersey. Later that
month he participated in a panel on "Open Problems in the Semantics
of Object-Oriented Languages" at the 1995 Conference on the
Mathematical Foundations of Programming Semantics in New Orleans.
Professor Bruce served on several program committees and chaired
several sessions at conferences this year. He served on the program
committees for the `94 and `95 ACM OOPSLA (Object-Oriented
Programming, Systems, Languages, and Architecture) conferences, and
chaired a session at the `94 meeting in Portland, Oregon, in October.
He also was on the program committee and chaired a session of the
1995 Workshop on State in Programming Languages in San Francisco in
January. He has also been named to the Editorial Advisory Board of
the forthcoming CRC Handbook of Computer Science and Engineering.
Professor Bruce will be on leave in the fall at the Newton Institute
for Mathematical Sciences at Cambridge University, which will be
having a special 6 month program on the semantics of computation.
Andrea Danyluk continues her research in the field of Machine
Learning, a subfield of Artificial Intelligence. Research in machine
learning focuses on the development and analysis of algorithms that
allow a computer system to improve its own performance. Professor
Danyluk's work focuses on machine learning in the context of expert
systems, computer systems that perform tasks that would generally be
performed by a human expert. Her research investigates the
performance of machine learning algorithms in the presence of error.
Others have long recognized the need to consider the possible effects
of noise in the data from which a learning algorithm extrapolates new
knowledge. However, they have defined noise as random error in a
small number of data points.
Professor Danyluk has concentrated on the application of machine
learning to "real world" systems, where data may contain many forms
of error. She has classified sources of error and is exploring the
different ways in which they impact machine learning. She is also
investigating the development of expert interfaces for data
collection. This year she gave an informal Bronfman Lunch talk
describing her work, entitled "Adaptive Expert Systems (or The
Miracle Of Receiving Dialtone)." Professor Danyluk continues to work
closely with researchers at NYNEX, as well as with researchers at the
University of California at Irvine. Kimberly Tabtiang `96 will be
working with Professor Danyluk this summer.
Professor Danyluk wrote several papers this year. She wrote
"Tuning Numeric Parameters of a Knowledge-Based System for
Troubleshooting the Local Loop of the Telephone Network" with Michael
Pazzani and Christopher Merz of the University of California at
Irvine. This paper has been submitted to IEEE Expert (Special Issue
on Intelligent Telecommunication Systems). In August she will present
"A Comparison of Data Sources for Machine Learning in a Telephone
Trouble Screening Expert System" at the Workshop on Data Engineering
for Inductive Learning to be held in conjunction with the
International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence.
Professor Danyluk has been invited to present a paper at the
Workshop on Applying Machine Learning in Practice, which will be held
in July in conjunction with the International Machine Learning
Conference.
Bill Lenhart continues his research in graph theory and
computational geometry. Currently he is working on problems
associated with graph layout, in particular the classification of
graphs which admit certain types of drawings called proximity
drawings. A proximity drawing of a graph is one in which adjacent
vertices are drawn relatively close together, while non-adjacent
vertices are drawn farther apart. Different definitions of "close
together" give rise to different types of drawings.
During the past summer Bill spent a month as a visiting scholar
at the University of Rome, where he continued his collaborations with
researchers there on graph layout problems. He also supervised the
research of Stina Bridgeman `95 on a problem in a different area of
graph theory: studying the algorithmic complexity of finding
Hamiltonian cycles in certain types of graphs known as grid graphs
without holes. Stina made substantial progress on this problem, and
it became the focus of her senior honors thesis. Bill also supervised
the honors work of a mathematics major, Michael Pelsmajer `95, who
investigated new definitions of proximity and began to classify the
graphs which admitted proximity drawings under these new definitions.
Bill had two papers accepted at the international workshop Graph
Drawing `94, held at Princeton University this past October. He
presented one of the papers: "Proximity Drawability: A Survey,"
co-authored with Giuseppe Di Battista and Giuseppe Liotta, both of
the University of Rome. The second paper, "Proximity Constraints and
Representable Trees," written jointly with Prosenjit Bose, Giuseppe
Di Battista and Giuseppe Liotta, was presented by Giuseppe Liotta,
who has visited Williams several times over the last two years. Bill
also continues to referee papers for journals and conferences.
Tom Murtagh's research this year concentrated on the
investigation of contention based protocols for high-speed ring
networks. He continued work begun with Daniel Yu `93 on the design of
priority-based collision resolution schemes for contention rings. He
also began the investigation of a new contention-based protocol based
on adding optimistic transmissions to the standard token ring
protocol. The objective in all these schemes is to devise ring
protocols that provide the low delay at low load associated with
contention protocols such as Ethernet and the high throughput
associated with token based protocols. In fact, because the protocols
Tom has designed enable multiple stations to transmit simultaneously,
they provide throughput significantly higher than the token ring.
Tom's work this year was assisted by Chris Umans `96 who collected
performance data on variations of these protocols by conducting
computer simulations of ring networks. This summer, Sarah Calvo `96
will work with Tom to analyze the expected behavior of these
protocols mathematically.
In July of 1994, Tom represented the department at the Computer
Research Association's semi-annual meeting for chairs of Computer
Science Departments. He also attended the ACM SIGPLAN Programming
Language Design and Implementation Conference.
COMPUTER SCIENCE COLLOQUIA
- Tom Longtin
- Helio Animations
- "An Animated Evolution of Gears"
- Kathi Fisler `91
- University of Indiana
- "Diagrammatic Reasoning & Its Application to Hardware
Verification"
- Jasper M. Rosenberg `96 and Leaf E. Petersen `96
- Williams College
- "A Summer of PolyTOIL"
- Forrest P. Trepte `96
- Williams College
- "Bug Collecting in Philadelphia"
- A. J. Bernheim `96
- Williams College
- "ZPL, Gargoyles and Mt. Rainier: A Summer of Research at
the University of Oregon"
- Donna Brown
- University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
- "A Survey of VLSI Channel Routing Results "
- Joel Spencer
- Courant Institute, New York University
- "Dynamic Probabilistic Methods"
- Lisa N. Masterman `95
- Williams College
- "Computer Visualization"
- Stephen W. McLaughry `95
- Williams College
- "Linda & You: (Almost) Painless Parallel Programming"
- Adam Seligman `95
- Williams College
- "Building a C++ Compiler"
- Stephen W. McLaughry `95
- Williams College
- "An Approach to Persistent Tuples in a Distributed Tuple
Space "
- Kim Bruce
- Williams College
- "Designing a Next-Generation Object-Oriented Language"
- Adam Seligman `95
- Williams College
- "SHOVIT C++: A Semantics of Hiding, Overloading, Virtual
Functions, and Inheritance with Type Rules for C++"
- Stina Bridgeman `95
- Williams College
- "Finding Hamiltonian Cycles in Grid Graphs Without Holes "
- Lyle McGeoch
- Amherst College
- "Data Structures for Traveling Salesmen"
- John Savage
- Brown University
- Class of 1960's Scholars Speaker
- "The Role of Theory in Computer Science"
"A Model for Multi-Grained Parallelism"
- Jim Kurose
- University of Massachusetts, Amherst
- "Adventures in Real-Time and Multimedia Communication
Networking "
- Dorothy Denning
- Georgetown University
- Class of 1960's Scholars Speaker
- "Codes, Crime, and Clipper: The Encryption and Privacy
Debate"
"The Clipper Chip: Safeguarding the Keys"
POSTGRADUATE PLANS OF DEPARTMENT MAJORS
- Stina S. Bridgeman:
- - Ph.D. Program at Brown University
- Lisa N. Masterman:
- - Ph.D. Program at the University of Delaware
- Stephen W. McLaughry:
- - Ph.D. Program at the University of Oregon
- Adam L. Seligman:
- - Graduate Program at the University of Texas, Austin
GEOLOGY
For the first time in several years the Geology Department has
been at "full strength" all year, with no sabbaticals or other leaves
to diminish our staff. Capitalizing on this opportunity, the
Department offered two new full-semester courses and two new Winter
Study Projects, in addition to unbracketing a number of courses that
were not offered last year due to scheduled leaves. In the fall
Profs. David Dethier and Paul Karabinos taught Earth
Catastrophes (GEOL/ENVI 107), and in the spring Bill Fox launched
Remote Sensing and GIS (GEOL/ENVI 214). These two new courses
were, in many ways, direct opposites; Earth Catastrophes, with
a lecture format and high enrollments, had to move out of the
building, while Remote Sensing was taught to a capacity group
of only 12 geology, environmental studies, and computer science
students, entirely in a "hands-on" mode, in the computer graphics lab
in Clark Hall. During Winter Study, David Dethier offered a course on
Commercial Nordic Skiing, which was timed to coincide with the
current discussion of a new nordic center at Greylock Glen in Adams,
and Bud Wobus taught Geology of the National Parks, a
"vicarious tour" of selected parks and monuments that focused on the
geological basis for their scenery.
There have been several noteworthy milestones among our staff
during this past academic year. Paul Karabinos has been promoted to
Full Professor, effective July 1 of this year. Prof. David DeSimone
and Office Manager/Secretary Pat Acosta each marked ten years of
service to the Geology Department this spring. Bill Fox, the Edward
Brust Professor of Geology and Mineralogy, has announced that he will
retire at the end of the next academic year. Next year this report
will include a review of the many contributions Bill has made to his
department and his profession since joining the faculty in 1961.
Our students have once again received an impressive array of
academic awards and honors during the current college year.
Highlighting this list are Demian Saffer `95 and Greg Balco `92 who
became the fourth and fifth Williams geology majors in the last three
years to receive National Science Foundation (NSF) Fellowships for
graduate study in the geological sciences - a record unmatched by any
other undergraduate geology department in the nation! Demian was also
elected to Phi Beta Kappa at the end of his junior year. At
commencement five seniors were elected to associate membership in
Sigma Xi, the scientific research society, for their especially
original senior theses and for promise in a scientific career; they
are Michele Koppes, Laura Libbey, Sarah Mills, Demian Saffer, and Max
Simian. Mike Montag received both the Freeman Foote Prize in Geology
for giving the best oral presentation of his senior thesis results
and the Thomas Hardie Prize in Environmental Studies for an
exceptional project (his senior thesis) relating to the environment.
Demian Saffer was selected by the geology faculty to receive the
David Major Award, presented each year to an outstanding geology
senior in memory of David N. Major, `81. John Phipps won the
Mineralogical Society of America award as the top student in
mineralogy and petrology courses.
Seven seniors were selected early in the year as Class of 1960
Scholars; they are
Class of 1960 Scholars in Geology
Michele Koppes John Phipps
Laura Libbey Demian Saffer
Sarah Mill Jeff Schmidt
Mike Montag
This program provides a higher level of interaction between those
selected as Class of 1960 scholars and the two speakers who were
brought to campus as Class of 1960 Fellows during the spring term.
Two geology students, Jim Heyes `96 and Samantha Teplitzky `98,
received scholarships from the National Science Scholars Program,
among the 15 awarded at Williams. Seven incoming juniors and seniors
have received scholarships from the David Major Fund and the Freeman
Foote Fund to attend month-long field geology or marine science
programs this summer. Jim Heyes, Myra Hill, and Rebecca Thomas, `96,
and Martha Folley, Jo Holbert, and Patrick Russell, `97, are enrolled
in the field geology course directed by the University of
Pennsylvania at the Yellowstone-Bighorn Research Association station
near Red Lodge, Montana. Alison Kopelman `97, will participate in a 5
week marine science course at the Duke University Marine Lab in
Beaufort, NC.
During the academic year our colloquium program continued to
flourish under the leadership of Paul Karabinos. A complete list of
speakers and their topics appears at the end of this report. Several
speakers were brought to Williams under the auspices of endowed
lectureship programs, and we wish to acknowledge those here. In the
fall, our speaker in the Sperry Lecture Series (in conjunction with
the Five College-University Geology Lecture Series) was Dr. Kip
Hodges of MIT. His profusely illustrated main address on the evening
of October 5 was entitled "The Dynamics of Himalayan Orogenesis."
This was a topic of considerable departmental interest since one of
last year's honors students, Rebecca Edwards `94, had worked with Dr.
Hodges' team in Nepal the summer before her senior year and had based
her thesis on that work. The Sperry Lecture Series, established in
1991 by a gift from William E. Sperry `51 and his family, makes a
special point of sponsoring speakers with whom our students are
acquainted through their own research.
In the spring semester, two lecturers were brought to the campus
under the Class of 1960 Scholars and Fellows Program. Both spoke on
topics related to this year's theme, "Extensional Tectonics." On
March 1 Prof. George Davis of the University of Arizona lectured on
"Mid-Tertiary and Basin and Range Extension in the American
Southwest," following up the next day with "Regional Structural
Deformation in the Bryce Canyon/Zion Canyon Region of the Colorado
Plateau." On April 27, Prof. Bob Varga from the College of Wooster
spoke on "Large-Scale Segmentation in Continental Rifts."
A special bonus in this year's lecture schedule was the pair of
talks, sponsored by Sigma Xi, given by our own Prof. Bill Fox. It was
a special occasion for Bill, who had presented the first Sigma Xi
lectures at the college some 25 years ago. He gave two lectures
during consecutive afternoons in April on the topic of "Remote
Sensing," based on work he had done in preparing for his new
semester-long course in that field and on research he conducted with
Rebecca Thomas `97 last summer during a Keck-sponsored project in
Texas.
While the research contributions of geology faculty at
professional meetings are reported later, it is noteworthy that our
students - particularly senior thesis students - are also becoming
more visible at these meetings. Two of last year's seniors, Chris
Brookfield and Dan White `94, collaborated with Prof. David Dethier
on a poster presentation at the national meeting of the Geological
Society of America in Seattle in October: "Thick Glacial Drift and
Divergent Striae - Clues to Changes in Ice Flow During Retreat of
Continental Ice through the San Juan Islands, Washington." Three
current seniors gave poster presentations based on their thesis
research at the annual meeting of the Northeastern Section of the
Geological Society of America (GSA) in Hartford during spring
vacation. Sarah Mills presented "Post-Pleistocene Paleo-Nearshore
Features in Long Island Sound as Found in Seismic Profiles." John
Phipps' presentation was entitled "Metavolcanic Wall Rocks of the
Gouldsboro Pluton, Dyer Neck and Vicinity, Maine." And Demian Saffer
gave two presentations, one of them in poster format on "Flood
Channels of Glacial Lake Bascom: A Miniature Scablands" and the
second one orally: "Stress Perturbations Near Weak Fault Systems:
Applications to the San Andreas Fault System, California." (The
latter was judged by GSA to be one of the best student presentations
at the meeting.) All three students received travel grants from the
Geological Society and additional assistance to defray expenses at
the meeting from the McAleenan Family Fund for Geology. Profs.
Dethier, Fox, Karabinos, and Wobus joined them in attending the
meeting.
Later in the spring another senior, Max Simian, traveled with
Prof. Markes Johnson to the third International Meeting on the
Geology of the Baja California Peninsula held in La Paz, Mexico.
Simian, who is from Chile, delivered his paper in Spanish on the
topic "Foundering of the Pliocene Santa Ines Archipelago in the Gulf
of California." His travel expenses to the meeting were funded by the
Nils Anderson Fund at Williams.
Additional research experience and participation in an annual
symposium are provided to Williams students and faculty by the Twelve
College Geology Consortium, funded by the W.M. Keck Foundation of Los
Angeles. Initiated in 1986 in response to a proposal from Profs. Fox
and Wobus at Williams, the consortium has received $2.6 million to
support collaborative research in geology by students and faculty
from the 12 consortium colleges. Additional funding has been provided
by NSF for the last several years to include minority students and
faculty from outside the consortium schools in the program . In
December 1994, the Keck Foundation renewed its commitment to the
consortium by providing an additional $900,000 to support the program
for two more years. Cathy Manduca, Adjunct Professor at Carleton
College and a 1980 Williams geology graduate, is the new coordinator
of the consortium.
Last summer five Williams students and three faculty members
participated in Keck-sponsored research projects. Mike Montag `95 and
Prof. David DeSimone studied the effects of mining on an alpine
environment in southern Montana near Yellowstone National Park. John
Phipps `95 and Prof. Bud Wobus worked on metavolcanic rocks along the
Maine coast. Peter Taylor `95 (also advised by Prof. Wobus) studied
the geochemistry of volcanic rocks in the Cascade Range of southern
Oregon. In projects designed for students in the summer after their
sophomore year, Rebecca Thomas `96 and Prof. Bill Fox worked on the
applications of remote sensing to geologic problems in southern
Texas, and Will Morgan `96 investigated geologic structures in
ancient metamorphic rocks of the Quetico Wilderness of southern
Ontario. These students and faculty presented the results of their
summer field work and academic year lab studies at the 8th annual
Keck Undergraduate Research Symposium in Geology at Pomona College,
California, in early April. In addition to sharing information about
their research, all participants took part in a day-long field trip
along the San Andreas Fault north of Los Angeles. An abstract volume
and field trip guidebook were published for the symposium.
During the summer of 1994, two students worked with Prof. David
Dethier on glacial geomorphology projects in the Puget Lowland of
Washington State. Michele Koppes `95 and Jeff Schmidt `95 received
support for field work and travel from Bronfman Summer Science funds.
Sarah Mills `95 also received Bronfman support to study seismic
profiles of Holocene nearshore sediment features in Long Island
Sound, a project supervised by Dr. Ralph Lewis of the Long Island
Sound Resource Center at Avery Point, CT, and Prof. Bill Fox. Laura
Libbey `95 and Max Simian `95 worked at Williams during the summer
doing bibliographic research and developing applications of computer
graphics for their senior thesis projects in Baja California. Their
field work with Prof. Markes Johnson took place during this year's
Winter Study Period and was funded by Markes' grants from the
Petroleum Research Fund of the American Chemical Society and NSF
(International Program). Demian Saffer `95 was supported last summer
by the Sperry Family Fund for Geology in his work with Paul Karabinos
on mathematical models for stress perturbations along the San Andreas
Fault. Aengus Jeffers `96 received a grant from the Geophysical
Institute of the University of Alaska/Fairbanks for his work in
remote sensing at the Institute.
Next summer Williams students and faculty will again work
together on research projects in the field, many of them sponsored by
the Keck grant. Profs. Paul Karabinos and David DeSimone will
co-direct a Keck project based at Williams on the structural
geomorphology of northern Berkshire County; Will Crane `97 will be
part of that team. Jonathan Payne `97 will travel to northwestern
Wyoming to join a Keck group interpreting glacial features in the
Clarks Fork region. Myra Hill `96 will be in southern Oregon to work
in mountains of a different kind - the volcanic Cascades. Rebecca
Thomas `96 will be based in the Tobacco Root Mountains of southwest
Montana, working on the petrology and structure of ancient
metamorphic rocks, and Jim Heyes `96 will work on a Keck project at
the northern termination of the San Andreas Fault near Cape
Mendocino, California. Bryan Stanley `96 will be part of a Keck
research group in the Northern Apennines of Italy. After working
during the academic year to interpret field results and analyze
samples, these students and their Williams advisers will be joined by
some ninety other students and faculty to present their results at
the 9th Keck Geology Symposium, to be held at Williams April 11-13,
1996.
In addition to these Keck-sponsored projects scheduled to begin
summer 1995, two other students will join Prof. David Dethier in the
San Juan Islands of Puget Sound, Washington, to study the effects of
deglaciation in the Puget lowland. Will Morgan `96 will be sponsored
by a grant to Dethier from the Petroleum Research Fund of the
American Chemical Society, and Mary Ann Hirshfeld `96 will be funded
by a CURSOR grant she won in national competition from the Council on
Undergraduate Research.
Research Associate Gudveig Baarli helped host two visiting
Russian geologists during July and early August (see more below under
Johnson). She also attended the biennial field conference of the
Subcommission on Silurian Stratigraphy on August 21-28 in Vienna and
the Carnic Alps of Austria. Her monographic work on the Silurian
brachiopods of southern Norway finally yielded page proofs in May and
is expected to realize publication in the journal Fossils and
Strata by mid-year 1995.
David DeSimone (CES and Geology) joined Eric Leonard (Colorado
College) and project director Bob Carson (Whitman) for a four-week
Keck research program centered in Cooke City, MT. The faculty,
technical assistant Eric Jensen (Stanford), and ten students from the
Keck Geology Consortium explored varied aspects of the periglacial,
glacial, and environmental geology of the Beartooth Mountains,
Absaroka Mountains, and Clark's Fork Yellowstone River drainage
basin. Mike Montag `95 presented the results of his thesis research
at the annual Keck symposium held at Pomona College in a paper and
talk titled "A Morphological and Geochemical Comparison of a
Partially Reclaimed Open Mine Pit to a Similar but Undisturbed Site,
Cooke City, Montana."
David DeSimone continues to shape his
climatology/paleoclimatology course to focus on geologically recent
evidence for climate change, especially non-linear response of the
climate system as demonstrated by the Younger Dryas event from
11.2-9.9 Ka. DeSimone is looking forward to returning to sharing the
teaching of Environmental Geology in the fall and
Introduction to Environmental Science in the spring.
On the research front, DeSimone continues his consulting work on
water supply wells in Hancock, MA, and the geology and archaeology of
Paleoindian sites in the Hoosic Valley, NY, among others. DeSimone
will renew his studies of the timing of late deglacial events and
flood discharges through the lower Mohawk Valley and Hudson Valley of
eastern New York, doing field work with Gary Wall (Rensselaer) during
June and July of 1995. Wall is a Ph.D.. candidate in glacial
geomorphology at RPI, Troy, NY, and DeSimone is on his doctoral
committee.
David Dethier continued mapping of late Pleistocene glacial
deposits in the San Juan Islands of Washington as part of his
research about the climatic, sea-level, and isostatic processes that
resulted in rapid retreat of the most recent continental ice from the
area about 13,500 years ago. Michele Koppes `95 and Jeff Schmidt `95
worked in the field with Professor Dethier, studying thick deposits
of glacial sediment in detail. Koppes used her field work and
laboratory studies in her senior honors thesis, whereas Schmidt
completed an extended independent study based on his field studies.
Dethier presented a paper "Chronology of Latest Pleistocene Ice
Retreat and Isostatic Rebound, Northern Puget Lowland, Washington"
and was a co-author with Dan White `95 and Chris Brookfield `95 on a
paper entitled "Thick Glacial Drift and Divergent Striae: Clues to
Changes in Ice Flow During Retreat of Continental Ice Through the San
Juan Island, Washington," both presented at the Geological Society of
America (GSA) National Meeting in Seattle in October, 1994. Dethier
was also one of the leaders of a three-day post-meeting field trip
that examined glacial deposits exposed in the Puget Sound area. In
June 1995, he received a two-year grant from the Petroleum Research
Fund of the American Chemical Society to continue field studies with
students in the northern Puget Lowland.
Dethier continued his research collaboration with Steve Reneau
(Los Alamos National Laboratory), studying large landslides along the
Rio Grande in White Rock Canyon, New Mexico. The slides have moved
repeatedly during wet periods in late Pleistocene time, damming the
Rio Grande and forming extensive lakes that record the timing of
climate change with considerable precision. Some of this work was
published as a Los Alamos National Laboratory report "Landslides and
Other Mass Movements Near Technical Area 33, Los Alamos National
Laboratory, New Mexico," and Dethier and Reneau have submitted
several additional manuscripts for publication.
Dethier served as Director of Research for Hopkins Memorial
Forest, helping to coordinate ongoing collection of weather, stream
flow, precipitation chemistry and other environmental data from the
Forest. With Jay Thoman (Chemistry), Dethier supervised Catherine
Shawl's `95 senior honors thesis in Chemistry. Her thesis examined
the concentrations of chromium and mercury in local stream and pond
sediment, and in fish that live in ponds and rivers. This work
continues research by several previous Chemistry honors students on
levels of various trace metals in the local environment.
Professor William T. Fox returned from sabbatical leave where he
wrote a paper based on a Keck project in Gaspé and developed a
new course, GEOL 214, Remote Sensing and GIS. During June
1994, he received a course development grant from the Global Studies
Program at Williams College to develop programs and image software
for the Remote Sensing and GIS course which was taught in
spring 1995. During July and August 1994, he was a faculty member on
a Keck summer research project entitled "Geologic Remote Sensing and
Multi-spectral Image Processing" which was held at Trinity University
in San Antonio, Texas. The summer program was taught by three faculty
and attended by thirteen students from ten colleges in the Keck
Geology Consortium and three other colleges, Colgate University,
Virginia State University, and SUNY College at Buffalo. The sophomore
project for minority students was also supported by a grant from the
National Science Foundation. In April 1995, Dr. Fox attended the 8th
Annual Keck Research Symposium in Geology at Pomona College,
Claremont, California. At the Keck meeting his sophomore advisee,
Rebecca Thomas `96 and Mary Ellen Sault presented a poster entitled
"Shoreline Changes of San Luis Pass, Texas, from 1930 to 1990." In
March 1995, Dr. Fox attended the Northeast Section Meeting of the
Geological Society of America at Cromwell, Connecticut, where his
honors student, Sarah Mills `95, presented a poster entitled "Seismic
Evidence of a Holocene Marine Transgression in Long Island Sound."
The project was jointly directed by Dr. Fox at Williams and Dr. Ralph
Lewis, Director of the Connecticut Geological Research Station at
Avery Point, Connecticut. A paper entitled "Penouille Spit, Evolution
of a Complex Spit, Gaspé, Quebec, Canada" co-authored by
Rebecca L. Haney and H. Allen Curran of Smith College was published
in the spring 1995, issue of the Journal of Coastal Research.
The paper was based on a Keck research project conducted in
Gaspé during June 1989.
Professor Markes Johnson began his summer field season in June
94, immediately following Williams graduation ceremonies with a
three-week trip to the People's Republic of China to work with Dr.
Rong Jia-yu (Nanjing Institute of Geology & Paleontology) on the
early Silurian paleogeography of South China. The visit was sponsored
through a grant from the International Division of NSF, and the
collaboration resulted in the completion of a manuscript on "A
Stepped Karst Unconformity as an Early Silurian Rocky Shoreline in
Guizhou Province (South China)" submitted to the journal
Palaeogeography, Palaeoclimatology, Palaeoecology. In Nanjing,
Prof. Johnson delivered two illustrated lectures: "Applications of
Paleontology and Geology to the Study of Ancient Rocky Shores, with
Examples from Australia, Baja California, Canada, and Egypt" and "The
2nd International Symposium on the Silurian System: the James Hall
Meeting in 1996."
Returning home in late June, Prof. Johnson was joined in
Williamstown through July by two honors students, Laura Libbey `95
and Max Simian `95, who initiated library and laboratory phases of
study on topics related to Pleistocene and Pliocene rocky shorelines
in Baja California Sur (Mexico). The Johnson-Baarli household also
welcomed two visiting geologists from Russia: Dr. Yuri Tesakov
(Novosibirsk Institute of Geology) and Dr. Nikolai Predtechensky
(All-Union Geological Research Institute, St. Petersburg). Their
visit was the first stage of an exchange project being sponsored
under a grant from the National Geographic Society to study "Silurian
global events of the North American and Siberian platforms." The
second phase of the exchange begins in July 1995, when Markes goes
through Moscow on the way to a month of field work in arctic Siberia.
August 1994, Prof. Johnson and Gudveig Baarli attended the
biennial field conference of the Subcommission on Silurian
Stratigraphy held in Vienna and the Carnic Alps of Austria. In
Kotschach-Mauthen, he delivered a lecture on his recent experiences
in China as part of the subcommission's proceedings. As Chairman of
the Subcommission, he also officiated at the organization's biennial
business meeting. Another version of the same talk on China was
presented as a lecture to the Geology Department at Williams College
on Oct. 19, 1994.
In January 1995, Prof. Johnson supervised field work by Laura
Libbey `95 and Max Simian `95 at Punta Chivato in Baja California Sur
(Mexico). Laura's work was funded by the second year of a grant from
the Petroleum Research Fund (American Chemical Society), and Max's
work was funded by the second year of a grant from the International
Division of NSF. Markes presented a Bronfman lunch talk on
"Separating Tectonic and Eustatic Components on Sea-Level Change:
Adventures in the Pliocene Gulf of California and Silurian South
China Sea." In April, Simian and Johnson attended the 3rd
International Meeting on the Geology of the Baja California Peninsula
held in La Paz, Mexico. The conference, which was well attended by
Mexican and U.S. geologists from academia as well as industry,
offered over 90 presentations on all geological aspects of Mexico's
"frontier states." Simian, who reported on the results of his January
field project, gave a presentation entitled "Foundering of the
Pliocene Santa Ines Archipelago in the Gulf of California." Johnson
made two oral presentations and organized a poster, covering three
different research projects in Baja California. The poster on
"Pliocene Stratigraphy and Depositional Systems of the Bahia
Concepción Basins" included as a co-author former student Mark
Mayall `93. The titles of Johnson's two talks were: "Bryozoan Nodules
Built Around Andesite Clasts in the Late Pliocene of Baja California:
Paleoecologic Implications and Closure Along the Panama Isthmus" and
"Coastal Evolution of Late Cretaceous and Pleistocene Rocky Shores:
Pacific Rim of Northern Baja California."
Research papers published in 1994-95 include one co-authored with
Mexican field partner Jorge Ledesma-Vazquez (Universidad Autonoma de
Baja California) in Ciencias Marinas and two co-authored with
former students, Hovey Clark `94 and Jenn Zwiebel `94 in the
Journal of Coastal Research. Prof. Johnson will be on
sabbatical leave in 1995-96, during which time he will help organize
the 2nd International Symposium on the Silurian System to be held in
Rochester, NY, in August 1996.
Associate Professor of Geology Paul Karabinos and Demian Saffer
`95 conducted research on stress near active faults during the summer
of 1994. This work was the subject of Demian's senior thesis and a
talk presented at the Northeastern Sectional Meeting of the
Geological Society of America in Hartford, Connecticut, in March
1995, entitled "Stress perturbations near weak fault zones:
applications to the San Andreas fault system, California." Using
elastic theory, they constructed computer models showing how weak
fault zones, such as the San Andreas fault in California, can
profoundly affect the magnitude and orientation of crustal stresses
near faults. This information can be used to understand movement
along major faults and the development of subsidiary faults near
large strike-slip zones.
Karabinos also attended a meeting in Grand Falls, Newfoundland,
during August 1994, where he presented a paper based on his research
on the newly recognized Shelburne Falls Arc in Massachusetts and
Vermont with co-authors Heather Stoll `94, and J.C. Hepburn entitled
"Arc rivals of the Taconian orogeny in western New England." The
meeting was followed by a three-day field trip in the Gander zone of
Newfoundland examining ancient island arcs and back arc basins
preserved in the northwestern part of the island.
Karabinos also continued his geochronological research on the
evaporation method for analyzing single grains of zircon and
presented a paper at the Geological Society of America meeting in
Seattle, Washington, entitled "The single-grain zircon evaporation
method applied to highly discordant samples." A paper based on this
work has been submitted to Geochimica et Cosmochimica Acta.
Following the meeting, Karabinos attended a three day field trip to
the Cascade range, a magmatic arc in the northwest Pacific.
In March 1995, Karabinos attended a Keck workshop on teaching
structural geology at the undergraduate level at Smith College in
Northampton, Massachusetts.
Karabinos will be using a grant jointly sponsored by the Keck
Foundation and the National Science Foundation for a project entitled
"Structural Geomorphology of Northern Berkshire County." The $52,100
grant will support three faculty and ten students examining possible
structural controls over the topography of the Williamstown area.
David DeSimone from Williams College and John Leftwich from Old
Dominion University, Virginia, will be the other faculty members on
the project.
In the fall of 1994 Karabinos team taught a new course with David
Dethier called Earth Catastrophes. Development of this course
was sponsored by the Global Studies Program initiative and was
designed to appeal to both science and non-science majors.
Professor and Chairman Bud Wobus co-directed, with Bob Wiebe of
Franklin & Marshall College, a Keck Geology Consortium research
project in coastal Maine for the second summer last year. The group
of six students, from six different colleges of the Keck-sponsored
Twelve College Geology Consortium, included John Phipps `95 from
Williams. The project, which was based at Eagle Hill Wildlife
Research Station near Steuben, studied the granitic plutons and
metavolcanic wall rocks of the Schoodic and Petit Manan Peninsulas
and of Gouldsboro and Dyer Neck. Later in the summer he directed the
Williams Alumni College in the Rockies near Pikes Peak in Colorado,
and visited another Keck project in the Oregon Cascades where one of
his thesis advisees, Pete Taylor `95, was working. In October, he
attended the annual meeting of the Geological Society of America in
Seattle and was the Williams delegate to the Keck Geology
Consortium's planning meeting held in conjunction with the GSA
meeting. In December, he gave a Bronfman "Bag lunch" talk on "T.
Nelson Dale at Williams - a Centennial plus a Year," and he served as
a consultant to the geology department at Colorado College in
Colorado Springs.
During Winter Study Period he taught a course on the Geology
of the National Parks. He attended the Northeastern Section
meeting of the Geological Society of America in Hartford in
mid-March, where one of his advisees, John Phipps, gave a poster
presentation. The following month he was one of six Williams
participants at the 8th Annual Keck Undergraduate Research Symposium
in Geology at Pomona College, where he was co-author, with Bob Wiebe,
of a report, "Siluro-Devonian Plutonic and Associated Volcanic Rocks
of the Coastal Maine Magmatic Province," published in the abstracts
volume for the symposium. In May, he again served as a host and
demonstrator for junior high school science students during their
Saturday visit to Williams. Also in May, the Journal of
Geology published a paper for which he was a co-author with
Sheila Seaman (U. Mass) and others: "Volcanic Expression of Bimodal
Volcanism: The Cranberry Island-Cadillac Mountain Complex, Coastal
Maine."
GEOLOGY COLLOQUIA
- Dr. Kip Hodges
- Massachusetts Institute of Technology
- (Sperry Lecture Series in Geology)
- "Geochronology of Very Slowly Cooled Geologic Samples:
Laser 40Ar/39Ar Microprobe Data from the
Southwestern U.S."
- "The Dynamics of Himalayan Orogenesis"
- Dr. Markes E. Johnson
- Williams College
- "Silurian Stepped Unconformity in South China"
- Dr. Jillian F. Banfield
- University of Wisconsin-Madison
- "From Rocks to Soil: Chemical Weathering and Clay Formation
in the Near Surface Environment"
- Dr. Kimberly Hannula
- Middlebury College
- "Age of Blueschists on the Seward Peninsula, Alaska: The
Hazards of Dating Under Pressure"
- Dr. Paul Bierman `85
- University of Vermont
- "Rates of Geomorphic Processes"
- Dr. George Davis
- University of Arizona
- Class of 1960 Speaker
- "Mid-Tertiary and Basin and Range Extension in the American
Southwest"
- Dr. Charles G. Cunningham
- U.S. Geological Survey
- "Gold, Silver, and Volcanics: Geological Field Work in
South America"
- Dr. Robert Varga
- The College of Wooster
- Class of 1960 Speaker
- "Large-Scale Segmentation of Continental Rifts"
- Senior Honors Thesis Presentations:
- Michele Koppes `95
- "The Last Icy Remains: A Sedimentological and
Stratigraphical Analysis of Glaciomarine Diamicts in the San
Juan Islands, Washington"
- Laura Libbey `95
- "Pleistocene Rocky Shorelines and the Record of Sea-Level
Change at Punta Chivato, Baja California Sur"
- Sarah Mills `95
- "Seismic Evidence of Holocene Marine Transgression in Long
Island Sound"
- Michael Montag `95
- "A Morphological and Geochemical Comparison of a Partially
Reclaimed Open Mine Pit to a Similar but Undisturbed Site,
Cooke City, Montana"
- John Phipps `95
- "The Metavolcanic Wall Rocks of the Gouldsboro Pluton: Dyer
Neck and Vicinity, Maine"
- Demian Saffer `95
- "Stress Perturbations Near Active Faults: Applications to
Southern California"
- Maximino Simian `95
- "Foundering of the Pliocene Santa Inez Archipelago in the
Gulf of California: Baja California Sur, Mexico"
- Peter Taylor `95
- "Cascade Volcanics on the Southern Flanks of Brown
Mountain, Southern Oregon"
POSTGRADUATE PLANS OF GEOLOGY MAJORS
- Patrick Barnard
- - Unknown
- Brett Dalke
- - Teaching English in Greece
- Michele Koppes
- - Moving to West Coast, graduate school 1-2 years
- Laura Libbey
- - Summer Intern with Alpine Ocean Seismic Survey; graduate
school in Marine Science in the future
- Sarah Mills
- - Boston University Graduate School
- Michael Montag
- - Para-professional. at Colorado College Geology Dept.
- David Nicholson
- - Consulting with B.L.M. and Mesa State College, CO
- John Phipps
- - Trip Leader for Putney Student Travel in Australia, New
Zealand
- Demian Saffer
- - Univ. of California, Santa Cruz, Graduate School
- Jeffrey Schmidt
- - Camp Counselor for Summer `95
- Maximino Simian
- - Work in Chile for 1 year; graduate school 1996
- Peter Taylor
- - Unknown
HISTORY OF SCIENCE DEPARTMENT
For 1994-1995 the department enjoyed the additional support of
courses in the history of astronomy, given by James R. Voelkel, `84,
a visiting assistant professor of astronomy for the year, and in the
history of Graeco-Roman medicine given by Prof. Sumi, of the Classics
Department during Winter Study.
Given the proposed support for science and technology studies
suggested by the Committee on Educational Policy, the department
looks forward to having more faculty at Williams versed in the
history, sociology, and philosophy of science and technology.
In July, 1994, Prof. Donald deB. Beaver spent several days at the
Dibner Institute for the History of Science in Cambridge,
Massachusetts, working with Prof. Eri Yagi, of Toyo University,
Japan, on a paper describing education in the history of science in
the 1960s in the United States.
In October, Profs. Beaver and Voelkel attended the annual meeting
of the History of Science Society, held in New Orleans. Three others
associated with Williams College and the history of science also
attended the meeting, making the Williams' presence relatively
prominent: (University of Georgia) Prof. Edward J. Larsen `76, Helen
Rozwadowski `87, and Alex Pang, Bolin Fellow 1987-88.
In January 1995, Prof. Beaver again gave an informal evening
presentation to Dr. Michael Paynes' Winter Study premedical students,
on the Social History of American Medicine. On April 18, as part of
Earth Week activities, he gave an informal lunch talk on Technology
and the Environment to a small but highly participatory audience.
During spring break in March, and again just after classes in
May, Prof. Beaver traveled to London and Paris to complete his
research for a biography of Mrs. Robert Lee [nee Sarah Wallis,
formerly Mrs. T. E. Bowdich] (1791-1856), first woman ever to
discover new genera of plants, a skilled naturalist, voyager, author,
and painter.
Prof. Beaver attended the Fifth Biennial Conference of the
International Society of Scientometrics and Informetrics, held at
Rosary College in Forest Park, Illinois, June 14-17.
The remainder of June was to be spent in finishing the editing of
"Science at Williams: the First 200 Years," a bicentennial overview
constructed from students' papers written in the spring of 1992.
As usual, Professor Beaver continued to review and referee
scholarly work during the year for the American Journal of
Physics and Spectrum (journal of the IEEE.)
Modified by: bbabcock
Modification Date: December 13, 1995