Historian named Yale librarian
Frank M. Turner ’71PhD (history), John Hay Whitney Professor of History at Yale, was named University Librarian for a term of five years beginning September 1, 2010. He has served as interim University Librarian since last January and as director of the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library since 2003. Turner served as provost of the University from 1988 to 1992.
A distinguished intellectual historian, he has explored numerous facets of Victorian intellectual life in books and articles. His John Henry Newman: The Challenge to Evangelical Religion, published by Yale Press in 2002, describes Newman’s career in the Church of England and the motivations and circumstances leading to his conversion to Roman Catholicism. Turner has also edited Newman’sApologia Pro Vita Sua and his Idea of a University for Yale University Press. His earlier contributions to the history of Victorian thought include Between Science and Religion: The Reaction to Scientific Naturalism in Late Victorian England(1974) and The Greek Heritage in Victorian Britain (1981), both published by Yale University Press, and Contesting Cultural Authority: Essays in Victorian Intellectual Life (1993), published by Cambridge University Press. The Western Heritage, coauthored with Donald Kagan and Steven Ozment, is in its tenth edition and has long been regarded as one of the leading textbooks on Western civilization.
Alumnus appointed president of Transylvania University
Owen Williams ’09PhD (history) has become president of Transylvania University, a 230-year-old liberal arts college in Lexington, Kentucky. Williams earned an AB in philosophy from Dartmouth in 1974 and an MA in intellectual history from Cambridge University in 1976, then spent 24 years on Wall Street as director of the government bond department at Salomon Brothers, executive director at Goldman Sachs, and chairman of Bear Stearns Asia. A decade ago, he enrolled in the Graduate School for a PhD. While at Yale, he completed an MSL degree at the Law School in 2007 and was an articles editor for the Yale Journal of Law and the Humanities and coordinated the Yale Legal History Forum. His dissertation, “Unequal Justice Under Law: The Supreme Court and America’s First Civil Rights Movement, 1857–1883,” examined how the United States Supreme Court impaired African Americans’ access to juries, voting booths, and public spaces after the Civil War. David Blight was his advisor.
Overcoming depression fast
Yale researchers have discovered the mechanism that allows one antidepressant to take effect in hours, rather than in the weeks required for most antidepressants currently on the market. The findings were described in the journal Science, and graduate student Nanxin Li (psychology) was first author. According to Li and his advisor Ronald S. Duman, the Elizabeth Mears and House Jameson Professor of Psychiatry and Pharmacology, the drug ketamine acts on a pathway that rapidly produces new synaptic connections between neurons—a process known as synaptogenesis. In addition, they were able to pinpoint a critical enzyme in the pathway, mTOR, which controls protein synthesis necessary for new synaptic connections. These findings may speed development of a safe, rapid, and easy-to-administer drug, but without the side effects and abuse potential of ketamine. “It’s like a magic drug—one dose can work rapidly and last for seven to 10 days,” said Duman.
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