Professors Emeriti

Professors
Emeriti

BY LINDSEY FIELDER
Rice News staff

With a cumulative
total of more than 130 years at Rice under their belts,
four faculty members joined the ranks of professors emeriti
this year.

Stephen Baker

Stephen Baker,
professor emeritus of physics, joined the faculty at Rice
in 1963 to pursue research in the Bonner Nuclear Laboratory
on high-energy scattering using polarized nuclear projectiles
and targets. During his time at the university, he worked
in gravitational physics at NASA’s Johnson and Marshall
space centers. He served on the Faculty Council and the
examining committee for the advanced placement physics exam.
He was also acting master of Wiess College and master of
Hanszen College.

John Polking,
professor emeritus of mathematics, has been a Rice faculty
member for 31 years. He was the chair of the mathematics
department from 1979 to 1982. His research interests have
been partial differential equations and several complex
variables. He has published many books and articles and
lectured internationally about his work. Polking has created
several software packages that use the computer to illustrate
the basic concepts of higher math.

John Polking

He served as
chair of the graduate committee from 1987 to 1995 and still
serves as a member. As the chair of the faculty steering
committee of the Cain Project, he has worked to introduce
writing projects into the mathematics curriculum. Polking
has also worked with the Rice School Math Project to improve
the math education in grade schools across Texas.

In the national
math community, he has served as director of several organizations,
including the Division of Mathematical Sciences at the National
Science Foundation and the Institute for Advanced Studies/Park
City Mathematics Institute. He has also held numerous elected
positions in the American Mathematics Society.

Anne Schnoebelen,
the Joseph and Ida Kirkland Mullen Professor Emerita of
Music, was a founding member of the Shepherd School of Music
in 1974 and has been hailed as an indispensable presence
ever since. In her 30 years at Rice, she has served as chair
of the musicology department, director of graduate studies
and interim dean.

Anne Schnoebelen

Schnoebelen’s
research interests include Italian Baroque vocal music,
Bolognese music of the 17th and 18th centuries and performance
practices. Among her major publications is the copious annotated
edition of the letters of the 18th-century polymath Padre
Martini, which has become a resource to scholars and performers
alike. She edited the 10-volume collection of “17th-Century
Italian Sacred Music,” a major contribution to Baroque
scholarship. Among the numerous grants Schnoebelen has won
are awards from the National Endowment for the Humanities
and the American Council of Learned Societies.

Madeleine
Alcover, professor emerita of French, came to Rice in
1975 from Indiana University at Bloomington. During Alcover’s
29-year tenure, her research interests have included French
17th- and 18th-century writers and clandestine literature.
Her main concentration has been in comedy, free thought
and enlightenment. She has written many articles on Corneille,
Fénelon, Guilleragues, Pascal, Madeleine de Scudéry
and Voltaire. In 1996, she received a Carmargo Foundation
Fellowship to complete a paper about Cyrano.