What Brown needs are more Famous professors

Colleges and Universities A-Z Brown University
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<p>We’ve got lots of great professors, and we’ve got lots of productive professors, and we have a lot of above-average professors. Our humanities departments are already unmatched. </p>

<p>But in the sciences and research, which is really what determines modern university quality. If we only had more Nobel Laureates doing research in some of our strengths (particle physics, applied mathematics, developmental and growth economics, or possibly Neuroscience), we definitely would no longer have to worry about any college or university rankings out there. Since we’re such a small school, one or two more Nobel laureates for each department, produced by research at our school, will be enough to reap a tremendous image change for our school. I wonder why that hasn’t happened yet : US News says developmental economics is 8th in the country, and applied mathematics is 5th in the country. But the only Nobel laureates we’ve had in the economics department is Vernon Smith and George Stigler WHO stayed here for 1~1 and 1/2 years at most. We have one Fields medalist in the applied math department, and considering size ratios we should have 2 if we’re to be one of the really best out there.
In terms of physics, we ditched Lars Onsager because of lack of money, but fortunately he did enough important stuff while being a lecturer here. </p>

<p>Leon Cooper (surprisingly) came here 1 year after he did the BCS theory. Being a man of his caliber, I wonder why he hadn’t chosen schools like the University of Chicago, Cornell, Harvard, Princeton, Columbia (his alma mater), Berkeley, and such. Or he could have had stayed in the University of Illinois, where his colleague, Peter Schreiffer, stayed for the rest of his life. Nonetheless, we need just the stuff that drew Cooper to our school. I don’t exactly know what that is, but anyway. </p>

<p>*Just to have in mind, my estimations of possible Nobel from our faculty:</p>

<p>1) Gerald Guralnik (Sakurai Prize; wrote the best Higgs boson paper )
2) Oded Galor (look up Unified Growth Theory in Wiki)
3) Ross Levine (the 13th most cited economist in the world)
4) David N Weil (wrote famous paper on Solow with Mankiw and D.Romer in 1993)
5) John M.Kosterlitz (look up Kosterlitz-Thouless transition in Wiki)
6) Peter Howitt (pres. of the Canadian Econ Society; published bestseller book with Peter Aghion at Harvard/look up Peter Aghion in Wiki)
7) John Donoghue (look up Cyberkinetics or BrainGate; his research is anticipated much by people like Nobel laureate Eric Kandel, neuroscientist at Columbia).</p>

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<p>*More runner-ups :
8) Carlos Fuentes (the next generation of Luis Borges; the most influential Spanish writer in the Spanish speaking world today. Already nominated by Thomson Reuters for possible Nobel last year).
9) Chinua Achebe (the most influential African writer in the African Continent. Already nominated by Thomson Reuters for possible Nobel last year.)</p>

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<p>“If we only had more Nobel Laureates doing research in some of our strengths (particle physics, applied mathematics, developmental and growth economics, or possibly Neuroscience), we definitely would no longer have to worry about any college or university rankings out there. Since we’re such a small school, one or two more Nobel laureates for each department, produced by research at our school, will be enough to reap a tremendous image change for our school.”</p>

<p>Well, I suppose more Nobel Laureates would help the rankings of any university. Why you you worried about Brown’s rankings? What is the image of your school that you think needs to be changed? How would more Nobel Laureates change that image?</p>

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<p>So OP is saying we should go out of our way to hire Nobel Laureates for purposes of improving our university rankings.</p>

<p>Not sure if I could agree with that.</p>

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<p>All else equal, it is better to have more Nobel laureates on one’s faculty than fewer. Whether one should embark on a strategy of acquiring potential or actual laureates is less clear. George Mason University’s peer assessment was not helped much by hiring Buchanan and Smith. The mere fact that GMU was able to hire them speaks volumes about the value other universities place on having a Nobel laureate. (In fact, Smith soon bolted for Chapman University.) </p>

<p>OP, this has been discussed in other threads. See <a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/college-search-selection/940692-browns-faculty-not-second-its-peers.html[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/college-search-selection/940692-browns-faculty-not-second-its-peers.html&lt;/a&gt; Even your writing style is like that of the other OP.</p>

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<p>^and isn’t chinua achebe already on our faculty?</p>