Eight on faculty receive named professorships, DSPs

John Boyer

John Boyer, Dean of the College, has been named the Martin A. Ryerson Distinguished Service Professor. The Martin A. Ryerson chair was the first Distinguished Service Professorship established at the University.

Boyer is Professor in History, the Committee on International Relations and the College. An expert in modern Central European history, with an emphasis on 19th-century Austrian history, he is the author of Political Radicalism in Late Imperial Vienna: Origins of the Christian Social Movement, 1848-1897 (1981) and Culture and Political Crisis in Vienna, 1897-1918 (1995). During the three terms that he chaired the University's Western Civilization staff in the 1970s and 1980s, he served as general editor with Julius Kirshner of the nine-volume University of Chicago Readings in Western Civilization, published by the Press in 1986 and 1987. He has been co-editor with Kirshner of the Journal of Modern History since 1980.

A University faculty member since 1975, Boyer has been Dean of the College since 1992. Prior to his appointment as Dean, he had been Master of the Social Sciences Collegiate Division and Deputy Dean of the Social Sciences Division since 1987. In 1992-93, he also served as Acting Dean of the Social Sciences Division. He continues to serve as Chairman of the Council on Advanced Studies in the Humanities and Social Sciences, a position he has held since 1986.

He received his B.A. in 1968 from Loyola University and his A.M. in 1969 and his Ph.D. in 1975, both from Chicago.

The Martin A. Ryerson professorship was created in 1925 with a gift from Ryerson, a lumber executive and art collector who was one of the University's original trustees and the first Chairman of the Board of Trustees.

John Mearsheimer

John Mearsheimer, an accomplished scholar of international relations, has been named the R. Wendell Harrison Distinguished Service Professor. Mearsheimer is Professor in Political Science, the Committee on International Relations and the College.

Mearsheimer has written extensively on military strategy, deterrence theory and relations among great powers, particularly in the wake of the Cold War. He is the author of two books, Liddell Hart and the Weight of History (1988) and Conventional Deterrence (1983).

A member of the University faculty since 1982, Mearsheimer won the Llewellyn John and Harriet Manchester Quantrell Award for Excellence in Undergraduate Teaching in 1985. He served as Chairman of Political Science from 1989 to 1992.

He received his B.S. in 1970 from West Point, his M.A. in international relations in 1974 from the University of Southern California and his M.A. in 1978 and his Ph.D. in 1981 in government from Cornell.

The R. Wendell Harrison Distinguished Service Professorship in Political Science was established in 1969 by the Board of Trustees to honor Harrison, who had been a University faculty member for 26 years. At the time of his retirement in 1963, Harrison was Vice President and Dean of the Faculties. He also had served as Dean of the Biological Sciences Division and was nationally known for his research on such topics as influenza, dental caries and immunology.

Richard Saller

Richard Saller, Dean of the Social Sciences Division, has been named the Edward L. Ryerson Distinguished Service Professor. Saller is Professor in History, Classical Languages & Literatures, New Testament & Early Christian Literature, the Committee on the Ancient Mediterranean World, and the College.

A classical historian, Saller has helped increase knowledge of the role of the Roman family in history, and he has studied extensively the Roman family household and related legal issues. His most recent book is Patriarchy, Property and Death in the Roman Family, published in 1994. He also co-wrote The Roman Empire: Economy, Society and Culture, which was published in 1987 and has been translated into German, French, Italian, Greek and Spanish.

His other books include Personal Patronage Under the Early Empire (1982) and The Early Principate: Augustus to Trajan (1982). Saller was editor of the journal Classical Philology from 1990 to 1993.

Saller received the University's Llewellyn John and Harriet Manchester Quantrell Award for Excellence in Undergraduate Teaching in 1992.

He received B.A. degrees in Greek and history in 1974 from the University of Illinois and his Ph.D. in 1978 from Cambridge. He was on the faculty at Swarthmore before coming to Chicago in 1984.

The Edward L. Ryerson Distinguished Service Professorship was established in 1967 with a gift from Nora Butler Ryerson in honor of her husband. Edward Ryerson, retired chairman of Inland Steel Company, was also a Life Trustee of the University and a former Chairman of the Board of Trustees.

Ronald Burt

Ronald Burt, Professor of Sociology and Strategy in the Graduate School of Business, has been named the Hobart W. Williams Professor.

Burt's research activities include theory and research methodology for describing collaboration, envy and entrepreneurial opportunities in the social structure of competitive environments.

Burt received his B.A. in 1971 from Johns Hopkins University, his M.A. in 1973 from SUNY at Albany and his Ph.D. in 1977 from Chicago. He was professor of sociology and business at Columbia University before joining the Chicago faculty in 1993.

Burt is a past or present member of the editorial boards of Administrative Science Quarterly, American Journal of Sociology, Journal of Mathematical Sociology, Sociological Forum, Sociological Methods and Research and Sociological Theory. He is also a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and a member of the Sociological Research Association.

The Hobart W. Williams Professorship was created in 1945 and funded through a gift of the net income from the trust estate given by Williams in 1916. Born in Chicago in 1837, Williams built a very successful career in real estate, business and public service.

George Constantinides

George Constantinides, the Leon Carroll Marshall Professor of Finance in the GSB, has been named the Leo Melamed Professor.

Constantinides' research has focused on fixed-income securities, futures, options, convertibles and other derivative securities, as well as asset pricing theories.

A member of the University faculty since 1978, Constantinides received his B.A. in 1970 and his M.A. in 1974 from Oxford, and his M.B.A. in 1972 and his D.B.A. in 1975 from Indiana University.

Constantinides was president of the Society for Financial Studies from 1990 to 1993, and he has been a research associate with the National Bureau of Economic Research since 1989. He was also a director of the American Finance Association from 1984 to 1986 and for the Western Finance Association from 1989 to 1991. He is associate editor for Journal of Finance, Mathematical Finance and Cyprus Journal of Economics.

The Leo Melamed Professorship in Finance was created to promote research and teaching in futures trading. Funded by the Chicago Mercantile Exchange, the professorship honors Leo Melamed, chairman of the executive committee of the exchange until his retirement in 1990.

John Gould

John Gould, Distinguished Service Professor of Economics in the GSB, has been named the Steven G. Rothmeier Professor and Distinguished Service Professor of Economics.

A member of the Chicago faculty since 1965, Gould served as Dean of the GSB from 1983 to 1993. His research activities have concentrated on corporate governance, business strategy, the economics of information, theory of investment of the firm, microeconomics and industrial organization.

Gould received his S.B. in 1960 from Northwestern and his M.B.A. in 1963 and his Ph.D. in 1966 from Chicago.

From 1969 to 1970, Gould was special assistant for economic affairs to George Shultz, former University faculty member and Dean of the GSB, when Shultz was U.S. secretary of labor and then director of the Office of Management and Budget. Gould was editor of the Journal of Business from 1976 to 1983 and has also been associate editor for the Journal of Financial Economics and the Journal of Accounting and Economics.

Gould is currently a director of Prairie Funds, DFA Investments Group and Harbor Capital Advisors.

The Steven G. Rothmeier Professorship is a gift of Rothmeier (M.B.A.'72), chairman and CEO of Great Northern Capital and former chairman of Northwest Airlines. Rothmeier is both a University Trustee and a member of the GSB Advisory Council.

John Huizinga

John Huizinga, Professor of Business Economics in the GSB and Deputy Dean for the GSB faculty, has been named the Walter David "Bud" Fackler Professor.

Huizinga has concentrated his research on empirical issues in international economics and monetary economics, as well as econometric theory. His most recent work in the area of international economics has dealt with predicting long-run movements in exchange rates, the impact of exchange-rate changes on prices in U.S. manufacturing industries and the effect of exchange-rate volatility on U.S. manufacturers' ability to compete internationally.

Huizinga received B.A. degrees in both economics and mathematics from Pomona College in 1976 and his Ph.D. from MIT in 1980, the same year he joined the Chicago faculty.

A consultant to the International Monetary Fund, Huizinga was co-editor of the Journal of Business from 1992 to 1993.

The Walter David "Bud" Fackler professorship was created this year to honor Fackler, who died in 1993. He joined the GSB faculty in 1960, and during his years with the school served as Associate Dean, Acting Dean and Director of the Executive M.B.A. Program. The professorship is funded by the gifts of 763 donors, the largest such pooled gift in the history of the GSB.

Richard Thaler

Richard Thaler, Professor of Behavioral Sciences and Economics in the GSB, has been named the Robert P. Gwinn Professor.

Thaler, who is also Director of the GSB's Center for Behavioral Economics & Decision Research, has focused his research activities on the gap between economics and psychology.

The author of numerous articles on behavioral economics and finance and the psychology of decision making, Thaler also has written the books The Winner's Curse and Quasi-Rational Economics and is the editor of Advances in Behavioral Finance.

Thaler received his B.A. in 1967 from Case Western Reserve University and his Ph.D. in 1974 from the University of Rochester. He is a research associate with the National Bureau of Economic Research. Prior to joining the Chicago faculty in 1995, he had been the Henrietta Johnson Louis Professor of Economics at Cornell.

The Robert P. Gwinn Professorship was provided for by a gift in 1988 to create the Encyclopedia Britannica fund. Gwinn is the retired chairman and CEO of Encyclopedia Britannica Inc.