Daily Star, Lebanon
June 12 2004
AUB to award honorary doctorates
4 men to receive doctor of human letters
By Daily Star Staff
BEIRUT: For only the second time since 1969, the American University
of Beirut will be awarding honorary doctorates in a special midday
ceremony in Assembly Hall on commencement day, June 26.
This year the university will award the degree of doctor of humane
letters to four outstanding individuals: mathematician Michael Atiyah,
Carnegie Corporation president Vartan Gregorian, ABC TV anchor Peter
Jennings and world-renowned cellist Yo-Yo Ma, an AUB statement said.
Michael Atiyah, whose father was Lebanese, has carved a name for
himself throughout the 20th and 21st centuries in the world of
mathematics.
He was referred to as one of the greatest living mathematicians. In
March of this year, Atiyah received, in collaboration with professor
Isadore Singer of MIT, the Abel Prize for mathematics, which is almost
the equivalent of the Nobel Prize for this field.
Their Atiyah-Singer index theorem, linking pure mathematics and
theoretical physics, has been described by the Norwegian Academy of
Science, as one of the great landmarks of 20th century mathematics.
Vartan Gregorian, born and raised until the age of 15 in Tabriz,
Iran, was then educated in Beirut at the Armenian College.
He then went on to Stanford University, where he received both his
Bachelors degree and doctorate in history.
He taught at San Francisco State College, University of California, Los
Angeles, the University of Texas and the University of Pennsylvania,
where he became the first dean of Arts and Science.
Peter Jennings, the popular and suave anchor of ABC Evening News
since 1983, established the first American television news bureau in
the Arab world in Beirut in 1972. He conveyed breaking news stories
throughout the Arab world and broadcasts in hotspots in Europe,
the Middle East and Asia.
Yo-Yo Ma, born of Chinese parents in Paris, was playing the cello
when he was four years old.
Moving to New York with his musician parents, he studied at the
Juilliard School and debuted at Carnegie Hall at the age of 9.