Class Correspondent

Edward Witten, H’87, a theoretical physicist and professor of mathematical physics at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, N.J., was one of nine people to win a $3 million Fundamental Physics Prize, a new award given by Russian billionaire Yuri Milner to recognize research at the field’s cutting edges. It is the most lucrative academic prize in the world (the Nobel Prize awards $1.2 million, usually split by two or three people). Edward is spending this academic year as a visiting professor at the University of Pennsylvania. Steven Berk, P’07, School of Medicine dean and executive vice president and provost at Texas Tech University Health Sciences Center, received the Distinguished Alumni Award from the Boston University School of Medicine Alumni Association. He is the author or co-author of more than 120 peer-reviewed publications and four textbooks, was named Eastern Tennessee State University’s medical school Teacher of the Year 10 times and earned the American College of Physicians’ Laureate in Medicine distinction in 1998. He is currently overseeing the most extensive curriculum reform in the School of Medicine’s 40-year history. Michael Swartz, P’08, recently hiked the 500-mile Camino de Santiago de Compostela in Spain, a medieval Christian pilgrimage route. He is the first Brandeis alum known to have completed the route. He has also climbed the 100 highest peaks in New England and traversed the 2,175-mile Appalachian Trail. Jackie Hyman, who writes as Jacqueline Diamond, is celebrating the publication of her 90th and 91st novels: “The MD’s Secret Daughter,” a light romance centering on the formation of a hospital’s egg donor program, and the ebook “Out of Her Universe,” a science-fiction thriller inspired in part by research she conducted at Brandeis while a student. For more information, visit www.jacquelinediamond.com.
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