Letter to the Editor: C.U. Should Embrace Female Nobel Laureates

To the Editor:

Re: “National Research Council Releases Grad School Rankings” News, Sept. 29

In light of this week’s announcement of the Nobel Prize winners, it is worth noting that Cornell can count among its alums three female winners of unshared Nobel Prizes — Pearl S. Buck, Barbara McClintock and Toni Morrison. Although Cornell operates in the brutally competitive world of higher education, this fact doesn’t even get mentioned on the university’s website!

Perhaps, we can have a week devoted to celebrating the lives and works of these truly remarkable women. There could be a competition to create some artistic work (a sculpture, an architectural piece, a painting, a collection of their biographies, to name a few examples) involving them; Toni Morrison (a retired professor from Princeton) may be invited to inaugurate this work. She may even be offered a professorship to come and teach a class or lecture on topics of her choosing (her own work!).

This week, I think the students should come up with ideas and proposals as to how to celebrate the lives of these greatest of Cornell alums.

Arkadev Chatterjea ’91