Four professors from the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences were among the seven U. of I. professors recently appointed to the Center for Advanced Studies (CAS). The professors from LAS are Peter Beak, chemistry; Stephen Jaeger, Germanic languages and literatures, and comparative and world literature: Susan Kieffer, geology: and Michael Moore, law and philosophy. An appointment in the Center for Advanced Study is one of the highest forms of recognition that the campus bestows on faculty members for outstanding scholarship.
CAS professors, which number 24 with the recent additions, are drawn from across campus. They continue to serve as full members of their home department while also participating in activities organized by the center and advising on the center's future programs and direction.
Peter Beak, who holds the James R. Eiszner Distinguished Chair in Chemistry, has made fundamental contributions to organic chemistry that have proved unifying concepts and opened new areas of investigation. His work clarified the effect of molecular environment on the structure-stability relationships, provided new reactions that are widely used for chemical synthesis, and identified novel reactive intermediates.
Beak is a member of the National Academy of Sciences and of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He has received numerous awards, lectured around the world, and served as research adviser for more than 100 graduate and postdoctoral students who are making important, independent contributions to their fields.
Stephen Jaeger's research has focused on the courtly literature of the Middles Ages and the interrelations of vernacular and Latin cultures. He has brought to light the real social background of two phenomena long considered to be merely fictional or literary: courtliness and courtly love. He has studied medieval humanism and written on its emergence at cathedral schools in the pre-courtly period and its influence on Gottfried's "Tristan."
Among Jaeger's awards are a Guggenheim Fellowship; Honorary Research Fellowship, University of London; two Fulbright Fellowships; Research Prize, Alexander von Humboldt Foundation; and a National Endowment for the Humanities Fellowship. In 2002, he was elected a fellow of the Medieval Academy of America.
Susan Kieffer, who holds a Charles R. Walgreen Jr. Chair, is known for her work in geological fluid dynamics and for the Kieffer model of heat capacities and thermodynamic properties of complex minerals. In planetary science, she has studied mega-scale geologic processes, such as meteorite impacts, volcanic eruptions, and river floods, on Earth, Mars, Venus, the moon, Io, and Triton.
Kieffer is a member of the National Academy of Sciences and a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. She is the only woman and second American to have won the Spendiarov Prize of the USSR Academy of Sciences. She has also been awarded a MacArthur Fellowship, an Alfred P. Sloan Foundation Fellowship, a U.S. Department of the Interior Meritorious Service Award, and a Day Medal from the Geological Society of America.
Michael Moore, who also holds a Charles R. Walgreen Jr. Chair, is considered a leading legal theorist, with broad interests in many fields and disciplines. His research and writing have dealt with such current issues as whether torture may be used justifiable in the war on terrorism, whether the death penalty has been imposed justly in certain well-known cases, and whether the legal prohibition on recreational used of certain drugs can be justified.
Moore is a professor of both philosophy and law and is the co-director of the Program in Law and Philosophy at Illinois. He has held a series of distinguished chairs and fellowships at other universities. He is the editor-in-chief of the journal, Law and Philosophy and serves on the editorial board or as guest editor of four other journals. Two of his books on responsibility theory have been the subject of extensive, published symposiums at the University of Pennsylvania.
