More news of Yale people

Honored

Kroon Hall, the new home of the School of Forestry and Environmental Studies, has received a LEED Platinum certification from the U.S. Green Building Council, a Washington, DC, nonprofit that evaluates buildings’ sustainability. The Prospect Street building, designed by Hopkins Architects and Centerbrook Architects, was designed to minimize energy needs, reuse water, and use green and recycled materials. Kroon is the second Yale building to earn the platinum rating: the sculpture building received the honor in 2008.

Ruslan Medzhitov, the David W. Wallace Professor of Immunobiology, has been awarded the Rosenstiel Award for Distinguished Work in Basic Medical Science for his research on the workings of the human immune system. The award comes with a $30,000 cash prize, and previous winners have gone on to win the Nobel Prize in medicine. Medzhitov studies toll-like receptors, which control the body’s inflammatory response to microbial infection.

Paula Vogel, chair of the playwriting department at the School of Drama, will receive the award for Distinguished Achievement in the American Theatre at the William Inge Theatre Festival in April. The award recognizes the work of influential U.S. playwrights. Vogel has previously won the Pulitzer Prize, a PEN/Laura Pels Foundation Award, a John Simon Guggenheim Foundation fellowship, and the American Academy of Arts and Letters Prize in Literature, among many other awards.

Remembered

Radley Daly ’49, whom University Secretary Linda Koch Lorimer ’77JD called “the most loyal and versatile of senior administrators,” died on January 5, after serving six Yale presidents over the course of nearly 40 years. He was 84. Daly directed the library, the Peabody Museum, and the Office of Public Affairs, and he served as deputy secretary. Daly’s most public role was as University Marshal—an office created for him in 1991—in which he led commencement and other processions bearing the mace of the university. A memorial service was held at Battell Chapel on April 18 at 1:45 p.m.

John Edwin Smith, a philosophy professor who taught at Yale for nearly 40 years, died of a stroke on December 7. He was 88 years old. Smith’s wide-ranging work included studies of pragmatism and religious philosophy, with a focus on American thinkers. He was the author of many books of philosophy and the editor of the Works of Jonathan Edwards. Smith was named the Clark Professor of Philosophy in 1972 and served as chair of the philosophy department.

Daniel Freed ’48, ’51LLB, an emeritus Yale Law School professor who influenced federal sentencing policy, died January 17 in New York City of renal failure. He was 82. Freed, who joined the Yale faculty in 1969 to launch the Law School’s clinical program, advocated more-uniform criminal sentencing, and his work helped establish the federal sentencing guidelines. A memorial service was held at the Law School’s auditorium on April 18 at 2 p.m.