June 18, 1998

Penn State Honors Wolszczan and Hume as Evan Pugh Professors

Alexander Wolszczan, distinguished professor of astronomy and astrophysics, and Robert D. Hume, the Edwin Earle Sparks Professor of English, have been named Evan Pugh Professors, the highest honor Penn State bestows on a faculty member.

Evan Pugh professorships are awarded to faculty members whose "research publications or creative work or both have been of the highest quality over a period of time, and further to candidates who show evidence of having contributed significantly to the education of students who later achieve recognition for excellence in the candidates' discipline or interdisciplinary areas."

"It is a real pleasure to see these two outstanding people awarded Penn State's most prestigious faculty title," said University President Graham B. Spanier. "Their achievements inspire students and faculty colleagues and greatly enhance Penn State's leadership."

Alexander Wolszczan, the new Evan Pugh Professor of Astronomy and Astrophysics in the Eberly College of Science, is the discoverer of the first planets ever found outside our solar system. In 1992, he used the 1000-foot Arecibo radiotelescope to detect three planets orbiting a pulsar, a rapidly-spinning neutron star. His discovery, which suggested that planets may be plentiful throughout the universe, opened the door to the current intense era of planet hunting. His research interests include neutron stars and their structures, interstellar matter, and the applications of radio pulsars as probes to investigate phenomena in physics and astrophysics.

"His relentless pursuit of a long-range program for the development of innovative hardware and data-analysis techniques has produced many outstanding results and has pushed experimental capabilities well beyond their existing limits," says Peter Meszaros, professor and head of the department of astronomy and astrophysics. Among the innovations developed in Wolszczan's lab is the Penn State Pulsar Machine, a tool now in use at the Arecibo Observatory of the National Astronomy and Ionosphere Center that yields precise information on the physical properties of rapidly rotating neutron stars.

Wolszczan's research has been supported by grants from the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, the National Science Foundation, IBM, and the Polish Committee for Scientific Research. Among his many awards, he received the Commander Cross of the Order of Merit from the President of Poland in 1997, both the Casimir Funk Natural Sciences Award from the Polish Institute of Arts and Sciences in America and the Beatrice M. Tinsley award from the American Astronomical Society in 1996, the Penn State Faculty Scholar Medal for Outstanding Achievement in 1994, the Popular Science Grand Award for "Best of What's New" in 1994, the Alfred Jurzykowski Foundation award in 1993, and the Annual Award of the Foundation for Polish Science in 1992.

Wolszczan received a master's degree in astronomy in 1969 and a doctoral degree in physics in 1975 from the Nicholas Copernicus University in Torun, Poland. He held faculty positions there until 1979, when he joined the Polish Academy of Science as research associate at the Copernicus Astronomical Center. In 1983, he joined the research staff of the Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico. He was a visiting professor at Princeton University before joining the Penn State faculty as professor of astronomy and astrophysics in the fall of 1992. He was named Distinguished Professor of Astronomy and Astrophysics in 1995.

Robert D. Hume is the new Evan Pugh Professor of English in the College of the Liberal Arts. With research spanning 150 years of theatre history, his extraordinary achievements have earned him an international reputation in the history of literary criticism, opera, and drama, and he is widely recognized as the foremost living historian of Restoration and eighteenth-century theatre. He has rediscovered lost manuscripts, plays, and theatre rosters of importance to scholars both here and abroad. In less than 30 years, he has published 13 books and 120 articles, with topics ranging from the early career of Henry Fielding to Italian opera in eighteenth-century London. Oxford University Press will soon release his latest work, Archaeo-Historicism: Constructing Contexts in Literary and Cultural Studies, and several other books are scheduled for release by the end of the century.

Hume's wide expertise and dedication to undergraduate and graduate scholarship makes him an exemplary teacher, according to Don Bialostosky, professor and head of the Department of English. "Every undergraduate paper he reads is returned with extensive typed comments, and graduate students report that the energy he devotes to them as teacher, adviser, or mentor is staggering," Bialostosky says. "His emphasis on the importance of research and publication as a vital part of successful scholarship leads graduate students to do high quality research and to write publishable articles early on, often before their degrees are granted. With strong research skills and publications, along with Hume's highly respected recommendations, his Ph.D. students have done very well in finding academic positions during difficult placement years in the humanities."

He has taught thirty-three different courses in the English department during his career and has directed the largest number of doctoral dissertations in the department. The quality of Hume's work has also been recognized by external funding agencies: in 1983 and 1984 he received a Guggenheim Fellowship to work in London on his book about Henry Fielding's early career. From 1990 to 1993 Hume, along with Judith Milhous, Distinguished Professor of Theatre History, CUNY Graduate Center, and Curtis Price, Principal of the Royal Academy of Music, held an NEH Interpretive Grant in order to write the first of their collaborative books about Italian opera in late eighteenth-century England.

Hume earned his undergraduate degree from Haverford College in 1966, and his Ph.D. from the University of Pennsylvania in 1969. At Cornell University he was assistant professor from 1969 to 1974, and associate professor from 1974 to 1977. He joined Penn State as professor of English in 1977, became Distinguished Professor of English in 1990, and became the Erwin Erle Sparks Professor of English in 1991.