Two members of the Department of Biology have been selected as Class of 1960 Fellows in recognition of their distinguished contributions to instruction and course development.
The selection of Professor Nancy Hopkins of the Center for Cancer Research and Professor Eric S. Lander of the Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research was announced by Provost Joel Moses. Their two-year terms begin July 1.
"Your selection reflects your distinguished contributions to the Department of Biology's instructional program, in particular, your highly successful teaching of the initial course in core biology, 7.012," Professor Moses told Professors Hopkins and Lander. "Your teaching provided a standard for other versions of core biology offered by other faculty. In addition, the spirit and intellectual excitement of the course attracted students to the field of biology and helped justify the addition of the requirement of biology to the MIT community."
Professor Moses also saluted the members of the Class of 1960 for their gift which has "created a richer, livelier educational environment" for MIT students.
Professor Hopkins, a virologist and developmental biologist, joined the department and the Center for Cancer Research in 1973. She has made major contributions toward understanding how certain mouse retroviruses cause specific types of leukemia and more recently has contributed to developing molecular technologies in the zebrafish field.
She received the BA in biology cum laude from Radcliffe (1964), and received the PhD from Harvard (1971).
Professor Lander, who has directed the Whitehead/MIT Center for Genome Research since 1990, joined MIT and Whitehead in 1989. He recently led the completion of the first comprehensive genetic map of the mouse genome, a milestone in the international Human Genome Project.
He received the AB in mathematics with highest honors from Princeton (1978) and the DPhil in mathematics from Oxford (1981).
A version of this article appeared in MIT Tech Talk on May 1, 1996.
