MOVE OVER, CONDI RICE: Senior Jared Cohen says he wants to be national security adviser when he grows up. And he may be on his way. Cohen and Tess Bridgeman, ’03, were named 2004 Rhodes Scholars in November. Cohen, who has written a book manuscript on the Rwandan genocide of the 1990s, plans to focus on African studies at Oxford. Bridgeman, who has performed community work throughout Latin America, including research on birth defects in Mexico, will study international development.
SCIENCE STARS: Five Stanford professors have been elected fellows of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the world’s largest federation of scientists: linguist Eve Clark, chemists James Collman and W.E. Moerner, psychologist Russell Fernald and professor of medicine Harry Greenberg.
MEDAL PERFORMANCE: President George W. Bush selected chemistry professor John Brauman as one of eight recipients of the National Medal of Science. The White House cited Brauman’s work determining differences in chemical reactivity in the presence or absence of solvents.
NOT ALL EFFORTS ARE NOBEL: Professor Philip Zimbardo and two Italian colleagues received the 2003 Ig Nobel prize in psychology for their paper “Politicians’ Uniquely Simple Personalities.” Awarded by the Annals of Improbable Research, the Ig Nobels are given for work that “first makes people laugh, then makes them think.” Indeed: other prizes were awarded for chemical investigation of a bronze statue that fails to attract pigeons, a study of dragging sheep across various surfaces, and documentation of homosexual necrophilia in the mallard duck. Compared to those, Zimbardo’s research—which showed that citizens judge politicians’ personalities on only two dimensions, energy and trustworthiness—seems positively normal.
