Roger Sperry and Peter Wyllie of Caltech...
Roger Sperry and Peter Wyllie of Caltech are among 44 international scientists who have been elected foreign members of the Soviet Union’s Academy of Sciences. Sperry won the 1981 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine and is professor of psychobiology. Wyllie is a professor of geology.
Christof Koch, assistant professor of computation and neural systems at Caltech, has been awarded a four-year, $150,000-grant from the James S. McDonnell Foundation. The grant represents matching funds for the Presidential Young Investigator Award received by Koch from the National Science Foundation. Koch is doing research aimed at developing neural-network-based computer chips capable of human-like vision.
Julio-Cesar Marin of Mark Keppel High School in Alhambra is one of three Los Angeles County teachers to win the Jaime Escalante Mathematics Teacher Awards for outstanding teaching abilities. The three, who were awarded $1,000 each by the Los Angeles Educational Partnership, were selected from among 106 teachers nominated in essays written by current and former students. The partnership established the awards with a $25,000 grant from the ARCO Foundation to honor teachers who excel in motivating students to achieve in mathematics. Among the seven finalists were Lillian Kimura of Mark Keppel and Christopher Healy of Mountain View High School in El Monte. The partnership is a nonprofit education fund that generates and channels private resources to strengthen the quality of education in Los Angeles area schools.
Amy Ibarra of El Monte has been elected secretary of the Hispanic Caucus of the California Democratic Party. Ibarra has been a member of the Mexican American Political Assn. since 1967.
James H. Williams has been appointed dean of the College of Arts at Cal Poly Pomona. Williams, a professor in the Ethnic and Women’s Studies Department, has served as acting dean and as associate dean for business affairs of the College of Arts.
Vern L. Bengston of South Pasadena, a USC sociologist, has been named president-elect of the Gerontological Society of America. The 9,000-member GSA is the world’s largest organization of researchers in aging.
John B. Wilson, a retired San Marino orthodontist, and his wife Helen, have donated $4.4 million to the USC School of Dentistry. Half the money is unrestricted funds and half will go to the school’s library learning center.
Msgr. William J. Barry of Our Lady of the Assumption Catholic Church in Claremont, has been named to the county Commission on Human Relations. The goal of the commission is to eradicate prejudice, intolerance and discrimination based on race, religion, sex, sexual orientation, national origin, age and such socioeconomic factors as marital status and physical handicaps.
