"He is one of the greatest living economists,"said Assistant Professor of Economic Douglas W.Elmendorf.

Solow made a "pioneering contribution" oneconomic growth that still stands as essentialscholarship in the field, according to Elmendorf.

"As a teacher, he was a really crucial personin training a generation of economists who didtheir Ph.Ds at MIT," said Elmendorf, who also saidthat Solow is "a very good writer, which is notuniversal among economists."

Joan Argetsinger Steitz

Steitz, a professor of biochemistry at YaleMedical School, is known for her discovery ofsmall ribonuclear proteins--called SNURPS--thatare important in RNA splicing, said Professor ofBiochemistry and Molecular Biology Tom Maniatis.

Splicing removes the "junk" segments, calledintrons, which are noncoding sequences of RNA.

Steitz was the first to realize that patientswith lupus erythematosis, an autoimmune disease,produce antibodies to SNURPS, Maniatis said. Usingthese antibodies, she was able to isolate andcharacterize the function of SNURPS, whichrecognize the splicing sites of these introns.

Maniatis called Steitz a "major figure inmolecular biology." Steitz received two degreesfrom Harvard: a masters in 1967 and a Ph.D in1968.

Dominique de Menil

De Menil "has one of the greatest natural eyesof anyone in the art world," said J. Carter Brown,Director of the National Gallery of art inWashington, D.C.

Brown said De Menil is known for herversatility--her collection ranges from surrealismto African art.

"She understood that creativity does not belongin one race," he said.

De Menil built a museum for her own artcollection in Houston, Brown said. "The collectionis so interesting as a work of art," he said.

Boardman Professor of Fine arts John Shearmansaid he associates De Menil with Image of theBlack, an archive of photographs.

Edward Carroll Stone