Sterling Professor

Sterling Professor, the highest academic rank at Yale University, is awarded to a tenured faculty member considered the best in their field. It is akin to the rank of distinguished professor at other universities.

The appointment can be granted to any Yale faculty member and is made by the President of Yale University and confirmed by the Yale Corporation. Up to forty professors can hold the title at the same time.^[1][2] The position was established through a 1918 bequest from John William Sterling, and the first Sterling Professor was appointed in 1920.

History

John W. Sterling, namesake of the title

The professorships are named for and funded by a $15-million bequest left by John W. Sterling, partner in the New York law firm Shearman & Sterling and an 1864 graduate of Yale College. In addition to funding large number of campus buildings like the Sterling Memorial Library, the bequest required "to some extent, the foundation of Scholarships, Fellowships or Lectureships, the endowment of new professorships and the establishment of special funds for prizes."^[2][3] Sterling's trustees eventually left the university more than $5 million for this purpose—about $225,000 per chair.^[1][4]

The first Sterling Professor was chemist John Johnston, who was awarded the rank in 1920, and was joined later that year by school administrator Frank E. Spaulding, biochemist Lafayette Mendel, and astronomer Ernest William Brown.^[1][4] By the mid-1920s, the endowment allowed eighteen Sterling Professors to be appointed.^[5] In 1958, the Yale Corporation capped the number of simultaneous appointments at 27,^[1] but further endowment growth allowed this number to expand to 40 by 2011.^[2] In addition to currently appointed faculty, a number of former Sterling Professors retain emeritus appointments at the university and continue to teach.^[2]

The first woman to be named Sterling Professor was cell biologist Marilyn Farquhar, in 1987.^[1] After Farquhar left Yale in 1989, Middle English scholar Marie Borroff and geneticist Carolyn Slayman were the next women appointed, in 1991.^[1] Among the youngest appointees were John Farquhar Fulton, made Sterling Professor of Physiology in 1929 at age 30,^[6] and later-U.S Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas, appointed in 1932 at the age of 33.^[7] Joan Steitz and Thomas Steitz, biochemists appointed in 1999 and 2001 respectively, were the first married couple to have both held the appointment. In 2021, Michael Della Rocca and Christine Hayes, professors of philosophy and religious studies, respectively, became the second married couple to be named Sterling Professors.^[8]

List of Sterling Professors

Current

Name	Field	Appointed	Notability	Reference
Bruce Ackerman	Law and Political Science	1987	Political philosophy; constitutional law	[1]
Rolena Adorno	Spanish	2012	Colonial Latin American Literature	[9]
Akhil Amar	Law and Political Science	2008	Constitutional law	[10]
Elijah Anderson	Sociology	2018	Urban ethnography, cultural theory	[11]
Harold Attridge	Divinity	2012	New Testament scholarship; Dean of Yale Divinity School (2002–2012)	[12]
R. Howard Bloch	French	2005		[13]
Ronald Breaker	Molecular, Cellular and Developmental Biology	2017	Discovery of riboswitches
David Bromwich	English	2006	Literary criticism; writings on politics, philosophy, education	[14]
David Blight	History	2019	Historian of the American Civil War and the Reconstruction era	[15]
Francesco Casetti	Film and Media Studies, Humanities Program	2021	film's cultural impact; spectatorship; visual media; semiotics	[16]
Nicholas A Christakis	Sociology, Medicine, Network Science	2018	contributions in network science; biosocial science; and public health	[17]
Ronald Coifman	Mathematics	2021	contributions to pure mathematics, leading the field in adapting to the capabilities of the digital computer	[18]
Michael Della Rocca	Philosophy	2021	Early Modern Philosophy, Rationalism, Contemporary Metaphysics	[19][8]
Michael Donoghue	Ecology and Evolutionary Biology	2011	plant evolution; TreeBASE; Director of the Peabody Museum of Natural History (2003–2008)	[20]
Richard A. Flavell	Immunology	2002		[21]
Alan Gerber	Political Science	2022	Political Behavior, application of experimental methods to politics	[22]
Steven Girvin	Physics	2024	Condensed Matter Physics	[23]
Roberto González Echevarría	Hispanic and Comparative Literature	1995	National Humanities Medal	[1][24]
Arthur Horwich	Genetics and Pediatrics	2007	Chaperonin action	[25]
William L. Jorgensen	Chemistry	2009	Computational chemistry	[26]
Harold Koh	International Law	2003	Dean of Yale Law School; Legal Adviser to Department of State	[27]
Anthony Kronman	Law	2003	Dean of Yale Law School	[28]
Giuseppe Mazzotta	Italian Language and Literature	2003		[29]
Ruslan Medzhitov	Immunobiology	2017	Innate immunity	[30]
Mary Miller	History of Art	2008	Mesoamerican art; Mayan history; Dean of Yale College (2008–2014)	[31]
Scott Miller	Chemistry	2024	Organic chemistry	[32]
William Nordhaus	Economics	2001	Economics of climate change; 2018 Nobel Prize in Economics	[33][34]
Thomas D. Pollard	Molecular, Cellular and Developmental Biology	2006	Dean of the Yale Graduate School of Arts & Sciences	[35]
Robert Post	Law	2017	Constitutional law, First Amendment, Dean of Yale Law School (2009-2017)	[36]
Anna Marie Pyle	Molecular Biology	2018	RNA Folding	[37]
David Quint	Comparative Literature	2006		[38]
Roberta Romano	Law	2011	Corporate law	[39][40]
James Rothman	Cell Biology	2017	Research on vesicles; winner of 2013 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine	[41]
Robert J. Schoelkopf	Physics and Applied Physics	2013	Inventor of the single-electron transistor, the transmon, and circuit quantum electrodynamics.	[42]
Alan Schwartz	Law	2001	Legal scholar of corporate finance and governance
Ian Shapiro	Political Science	2005	Democratic theorist and methodological realist	[43]
Robert Shiller	Economics	2013	Real estate and financial markets; market bubbles; 2013 Nobel Prize in Economics	[44]
Daniel Spielman	Computer Science	2018	error-correcting codes; Kadison–Singer Conjecture	[45]
Dieter Söll	Molecular Biophysics and Biochemistry	2006		[46]
Joan Steitz	Molecular Biophysics and Biochemistry	1999		[47]
Ruth Yeazell	English	2018	gender studies	[48]
Akiko Iwasaki	Molecular, Cellular and Developmental Biology; Immunology	2022	COVID-19, human immune defense against viruses, vaccine methodology	[49]
Sherman Weissman	Genetics
Peter Salovey	Psychology	2024	President Emeritus of Yale University; Emotional Intelligence; Health Psychology	[50]

Emeritus

Name	Field	Appointed	Notability	Reference
Robert Adair	Physics	1988		[1][51]
Sidney Altman	Biology	1989	Nobel Prize in Chemistry; Dean of Yale College	[1]
Marie Borroff	English	1991	Middle English translation and criticism	[1][52]
Peter Brooks	Comparative Literature and French	2001		[53][54]
Guido Calabresi	Law	1978	Dean of Yale Law School (1985–1994)	[55]
Mirjan Damaška	Law	1996	Scholar of comparative criminal law	[56][57]
Owen M. Fiss	Law		Legal theorist	[58]
Gerhard Giebisch	Cellular and Molecular Physiology	1970	Renal transport physiology	[1][59]
Christine Hayes	Religious Studies	2021	Talmudic-midrashic Studies and Jewish Law	[60]
Marcia Johnson	Psychology	2011	Memory research; source-monitoring error and reality monitoring	[61]
Alice Kaplan	French	2020	Director of the Whitney Humanities Center	[62]
Alan E. Kazdin	Psychology	2015	Director of the Yale Parenting Center and Child Conduct Clinic	[63]
Howard Lamar	History	1994	Historian of the American frontier	[1][64]
John H. Langbein	Law and Legal History	2001	Anglo-American and European legal history	[65]
Jerry L. Mashaw	Law	1995	Administrative law
David Mayhew	Political Science	1998	American electoral politics; divided government	[1][66]
Peter Moore	Chemistry	2002	Discovery of ribosome large subunit's atomic structure with Thomas Steitz	[67]
Annabel Patterson	English	2001		[68]
Peter C. B. Phillips	Economics	1989	Econometrician; finite-sample theory; time series regression	[69]
Joseph Roach	Theater	2008	History of theater and dramatic literature	[70]
Robert G. Shulman	Molecular Biophysics and Biochemistry	1994	Nuclear Magnetic Resonance techniques in biochemistry	[71][72]
Jonathan Spence	History	1993	Historian of China; President of the American Historical Association	[1][73]
John C. Tully	Chemistry	2006		[74]

Left

Name	Field	Appointed	Notability	Reference
Nancy Cott	History and American Studies	2001	Historian of marriage, gender, and sexuality	[75]
Samuel J. Danishefsky	Chemistry	1989		[76]
Marilyn Farquhar	Medicine	1987		[1][77]
Richard P. Lifton	Genetics	2002	Genetics of hypertension	[78]
Ira Mellman	Cell Biology	2002	Discovery of endosomes	[79]
Alanna Schepartz	Chemistry	2017	Chemical and synthetic biology
Samuel O. Thier	Medicine	1975	Effects of health policy on academic institutions
Sharon Hammes-Schiffer	Chemistry	2021	Theoretical chemistry	[80]
Menachem Elimelech	Chemical and Environmental Engineering	2021	Water Science and Technology; Water-Energy Nexus	[81][82]

Deceased

Name	Field	Appointed	Notability	Reference
Erich Auerbach	Romance Philology	1956	Literary critic; Mimesis: The Representation of Reality in Western Literature	[83]
E. Wight Bakke	Economics	1940	Economic sociologist of labor and unemployment	[84]
Frank A. Beach	Psychology	1952	Ethologist; Patterns of Sexual Behavior	[85]
Samuel Flagg Bemis	Diplomatic History and International Relations	1945	Historian of United States diplomacy; 1927 Pulitzer Prize for History; 1950 Pulitzer Prize for Biography	[86]
Thomas G. Bergin	Romance Languages and Literature	1957	Scholar of Italian literature and Dante Alighieri	[87]
Jerome A. Berson	Chemistry	1992		[88]
Alexander Bickel	Law	1974	US Supreme Court historian and scholar of judicial restraint	[89]
Boris Bittker	Law	1970	Scholar of tax law; proponent of black reparations	[90][91]
Charles Black	Law	1975		[92]
Francis Gilman Blake	Medicine	1927	Dean of the Yale School of Medicine	[93][94]
Brand Blanshard	Philosophy	1945		[95]
Harold Bloom	Humanities	1983	Literary criticism; The Anxiety of Influence; The Western Canon	[1]
Leonard Bloomfield	Linguistics	1940	Bloomfieldean linguistics	[96]
Edwin Borchard	International Law	1929	Scholar of wrongful conviction
David Allan Bromley	Sciences	1994	Nuclear physicist; Science Adviser to George H. W. Bush; Dean of Engineering (1994–2000)	[97]
C. F. Tucker Brooke	English	1949	Scholar of Elizabethan dramatic literature and Shakespeare Apocrypha; Founder of The Yale Shakespeare	[98]
Ernest William Brown	Mathematics	1921	Lunar theory	[4][99]
Robert L. Calhoun	Historical Theology	1963		[100]
Brevard Childs	Divinity	1992	Canonical criticism	[1][101]
Charles Edward Clark	Law	1929	Dean of Yale Law School (1929–1939); Judge for the U.S. Second Circuit Court of Appeals (1939–1963)	[102]
Donald J. Cohen	Child Psychiatry	2000	Tourette's syndrome; Autism	[103][104]
Wilbur Cross	English	1922	Dean of the Graduate School (1916–1930); Governor of Connecticut (1931–1939)	[105][106]
Donald Crothers	Chemistry	1997	Physical chemistry of nucleic acids	[107][108]
Harvey Cushing	Neurology	1933	Neurosurgery pioneer; Cushing's disease	[6][109]
Robert A. Dahl	Political Science	1964	Democratic theorist; polyarchy; pluralism; Johan Skytte Prize (1995)	[110][111]
David Brion Davis	American History	1978	Historian of American slavery; 1967 Pulitzer Prize for History	[112]
Peter Demetz	Germanic Language and Literature		President of the Modern Language Association	[113]
Leonard W. Doob	Psychiatry	1997	1960 Guggenheim Fellow	[114]
William O. Douglas	Law	1931	Associate Justice of the United States Supreme Court	[7][115]
J. G. Dusser de Barenne	Physiology	1930		[6][116]
Alvan Feinstein	Medicine and Epidemiology	1991		[117]
William Fellner	Economics	1959		[118]
Albert Feuillerat	French	1929		[119]
Frederic Brenton Fitch	Philosophy	1974	Logician; symbolic and combinatory logic; Fitch-style calculus	[120]
John Farquhar Fulton	Physiology and History of Medicine	1930	Primate neurophysiology	[6]
Raymond Fuoss	Chemistry	1945		[121]
Ralph Henry Gabriel	History	1948		[1][122]
John Gassner	Playwriting	1956	Drama critic	[123]
Peter Gay	History	1984	Western cultural history; life of Sigmund Freud	[124]
Grant Gilmore	Law	1973		[125]
Albrecht Goetze	Assyriology and Babylonian Literature	1956		[126]
Abraham S. Goldstein	Law	1978	Criminal law scholar; historian of insanity defense; Dean of Yale Law School (1970–1975)	[127]
Henry S. Graves	Forestry	1922	Founder of Yale School of Forestry; Chief of the United States Forest Service	[105]
Ross Granville Harrison	Biology	1927	Embryologist; inventor of artificial tissue culture	[77][128]
Geoffrey Hartman	English and Comparative Literature		Literary criticism; deconstructionism	[129]
Eric A. Havelock	Classics	1963		[130]
Heinrich E. K. Henel	German	1963		[131]
Hajo Holborn	History	1959	Historian of modern Germany	[132]
John Hollander	English	1995	Poet; translator; scholar of prosody	[133]
Carl Hovland	Psychology	1947		[134]
Vernon Hughes	Physics	1978		[51][135]
Clark L. Hull	Psychology	1947	Learning theorist; Drive reduction theory	[136]
G. Evelyn Hutchinson	Zoology	1952	Limnologist; "Father of modern ecology"	[137]
Treat Baldwin Johnson	Chemistry	1928		[138]
John Johnston	Chemistry	1920		[1][139]
Donald Kagan	Classics and History	2002	Historian of the Peloponnesian War, Dean of Yale College	[140]
Eugen Kahn	Psychiatry and Mental Hygiene	1930		[141]
Andrew Keogh	Bibliography	1924	Yale University Librarian (1916–1938)	[142]
Friedrich Kessler	Law	1964		[143]
John Gamble Kirkwood	Chemistry	1956	Kirkwood approximation	[144][145]
Adolph Knopf	Physical Geology	1938		[146]
George Kubler	History of Art	1975	Art historian of Pre-Columbian and Ibero-American Art	[147][148][149]
Kenneth Scott Latourette	Missions and Oriental History	1949	Historian of Christianity and Christian missions	[150]
Theodore Lidz	Psychiatry		Schizophrenia researcher	[151]
Charles E. Lindblom	Political Science and Economics		Critique of polyarchy; Incrementalism; The Science of "Muddling Through"	[152]
Ralph Linton	Anthropology	1946		[153]
Juan Linz	Political and Social Science	1989	Regime types; democratic transitions; Johan Skytte Prize (1996)	[154]
Cyril Long	Chemistry	1938	Dean of the Yale School of Medicine; diabetes researcher	[155]
Robert S. Lopez	History	1970	Director of Peabody Museum of Natural History (1922–1938); proponent of orthogenetic evolutionary theory	[156]
Charles T. Loram	Education	1930		[157]
Floyd Lounsbury	Anthropology		American Indian linguist	[158]
Richard Swann Lull	Paleontology	1927	Director of Peabody Museum of Natural History (1922–1938); proponent of orthogenetic evolutionary theory	[159]
Maynard Mack	English	1965	Shakespeare scholar; Biographer of Alexander Pope	[160][161]
Paul de Man	Comparative Literature and French	1979	Major figure in literary deconstruction and Yale school	[162]
Benoit Mandelbrot	Mathematical Sciences	1999	Fractal geometry; Mandelbrot set	[163]
Louis L. Martz	English	1971		[1][164]
Georges C. May	French	1971	Scholar of the French Enlightenment; Dean of Yale College (1963–1971); Yale Provost (1979–1981)	[165]
Edwin McClellan	Japanese Literature	1999	Translator of Japanese literature	[66][166]
Myres McDougal	International Law	1958	Founder of New Haven School of Jurisprudence	[167][168]
Lafayette Mendel	Physiological Chemistry	1921		[169]
Clarence W. Mendell	Latin Language and Literature	1947	Dean of Yale College (1926–1937)
María Rosa Menocal	Humanities	2006		[170][171]
James W. Moore	Law	1943	Legal realist	[172]
Underhill Moore	Law	1929		[7]
Edmund Morgan	History	1965	Biographer of Ben Franklin; historian of Puritanism; Pulitzer Special Citation (2006); National Humanities Medal	[173]
John Spangler Nicholas	Biology	1939		[174][175]
H. Richard Niebuhr	Theology and Christian Ethics	1954	Historian of American religion and theology	[176]
F. S. C. Northrop	Philosophy and Law	1947		[177]
Wallace Notestein	English History	1928	Historian of witchcraft	[178]
Julian J. Obermann	Semitic Languages	1951		[179]
Øystein Ore	Mathematics	1931		[1][180]
George E. Palade	Cell Biology	1975	Discovery of ribosome; protein transport; 1974 Nobel Prize in Physiology and Medicine	[77][181]
Edwards A. Park	Pediatrics	1922		[105]
Jaroslav Pelikan	History	1972	Historian of Christianity and Christian theology; Kluge Prize awardee (2004)	[182]
Henri Peyre	French	1938	1930 Guggenheim Fellow; President of the Modern Language Association	[183]
Jerome J. Pollitt	Classical Archeology and History	1995	Hellenistic architecture and sculpture	[184]
Frederick A. Pottle	English	1944	Editor of James Boswell's papers	[185]
Martin Price	English	1978	1957 Guggenheim Fellow	[186]
Eduard Prokosch	Germanic Languages	1930		[187]
Lloyd George Reynolds	Economics	1952	1954 Guggenheim Fellow	[188][189]
Frederic M. Richards	Molecular Biophysics and Biochemistry	1989		[190]
Abraham Robinson	Mathematics	1967	Non-standard analysis	[191]
James Harvey Rogers	Political Economy	1931	Economic policy advisor to Franklin Roosevelt administration; monetary policy theorist	[192]
Franz Rosenthal	Near Eastern Languages and Literatures	1964	Scholar of Islamic and Arabic literature	[193]
Michael Rostovtzeff	Ancient History and Classical Archeology	1925	Social and economic historian of Ancient Greece and the Roman Empire	[194][195]
Eugene V. Rostow	Law and Public Affairs	1964	Dean of Yale Law School (1955–1965)	[196]
Frank Ruddle	Biology	1988	Founder of Human Genome Project	[1][197]
Edward Sapir	Anthropology and Linguistics	1931	Founder of descriptive linguistics; Sapir–Whorf hypothesis	[198]
Herbert Scarf	Economics	1979		[199]
James C. Scott	Political Science	2001	Peasant resistance; non-state spaces; infrapolitics; Seeing Like a State	[200]
Vincent Scully	History of Art	1983		[201]
Milton Senn	Pediatrics and Psychiatry	1964		[1][202]
Charles Seymour	History	1922	Biographer of Woodrow Wilson; Yale President (1937–1950); Yale Provost (1928–1937)	[203][105]
Harry Shulman	Law	1940	Dean of Yale Law School (1954–1955); labor arbitration scholar	[204]
Edmund Ware Sinnott	Botany	1940	Dean of the Yale Graduate School; Plant morphogenesis	[205]
Carolyn Slayman	Genetics	1991		[1]
Albert J. Solnit	Pediatrics and Psychiatry	1970		[206]
Frank E. Spaulding	School Administration	1921		[4]
Nicholas J. Spykman	International Relations	1934		[207]
Thomas Steitz	Molecular Biophysics and Biochemistry	2001	2009 Nobel Prize in Chemistry; discovery of ribosome large subunit's atomic structure with Peter Moore	[208]
Thomas W. Swan	Law	1922	Dean of the Yale Law School (1916–1927); Judge for the U.S. Second Circuit Court of Appeals	[105]
Chauncey Brewster Tinker	English Literature	1923	Rare books collector	[209]
James Tobin	Economics	1957	Nobel Laureate in Economics	[210]
Karl Turekian	Geology and Geophysics	2003	Geochemistry; radiogenic isotope; environmental history and global environmental change	[211][212]
Charles Hyde Warren	Geology	1922	Dean of the Sheffield Scientific School (1922–1945)	[105]
Hermann J. Weigand	Germanic Literature		1954 Guggenheim Fellow	[213]
Luther Allan Weigle	Religious Education	1924	Dean of the Yale Divinity School	[214]
Paul Weiss	Philosophy	1962	Philosopher of metaphysics; 1937 Guggenheim Fellow	[215]
René Wellek	Comparative Literature	1952		[216]
Harry H. Wellington	Law	1983	Dean of Yale Law School (1975–1985)	[217]
Stanley T. Williams	American Literature	1944	Literary scholar of Washington Irving and Herman Melville	[218]
William Kurtz Wimsatt Jr.	English	1974	Early theorist of New Criticism; progenitor of intentional fallacy	[219]
Walter Jacob Wohlenberg	Mechanical Engineering	1949	Dean of the School of Engineering (1948–1955)
Arnold O. Wolfers	International Relations	1949	Realist international relations theory	[220]
C. Vann Woodward	History	1961	Historian of the American South; Pulitzer Prize for History (1982)	[211][221]
Karl Young	English	1938		[222]
Edward Zigler	Psychology	1976	Child psychologist; architect of Head Start Program	[1][223]