# Sterling Professor

Sterling Professor, the highest academic rank at Yale University, is awarded to a tenured faculty member considered the best in their field. It is akin to the rank of distinguished professor at other universities.
The appointment, made by the President of Yale University and confirmed by the Yale Corporation, can be granted to any Yale faculty member, and up to forty professors can hold the title at the same time. The position was established through a 1918 bequest from John William Sterling, and the first Sterling Professor was appointed in 1920.

## History

The professorships are named for and funded by a $15-million bequest left by John W. Sterling, partner in the New York law firm Shearman & Sterling and an 1864 graduate of Yale College. In addition to financing the university's largest construction projects throughout the 1920s, including the Sterling Memorial Library and flagship facilities for many of its professional schools, Sterling stipulated the bequest would allow "to some extent, the foundation of Scholarships, Fellowships or Lectureships, the endowment of new professorships and the establishment of special funds for prizes." Sterling's trustees eventually left the university more than $5 million for this purpose—about $225,000 per chair.
The first Sterling Professor was chemist John Johnston, who was awarded the rank in 1920, and was joined later that year by school administrator Frank E. Spaulding, biochemist Lafayette Mendel, and astronomer Ernest William Brown. By the mid-1920s, the endowment allowed eighteen Sterling Professors to be appointed. In 1958, the Yale Corporation capped the number of simultaneous appointments at 27, but further endowment growth allowed this number to expand to 40 by 2011. In addition to currently appointed faculty, a number of former Sterling Professors retain emeritus appointments at the university and continue to teach.
The first woman to be named Sterling Professor was cell biologist Marilyn Farquhar, in 1987. After Farquhar left Yale in 1989, Middle English scholar Marie Borroff and geneticist Carolyn Slayman were the next women appointed, in 1991. Among the youngest appointees were John Farquhar Fulton, made Sterling Professor of Physiology in 1929 at age 30, and later-U.S Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas, appointed in 1932 at the age of 33. Joan Steitz and Thomas Steitz, biochemists appointed in 1999 and 2001 respectively, were the first married couple to have both held the appointment. In 2021, Michael Della Rocca and Christine Hayes, professors of philosophy and religious studies, respectively, became the second married couple to be named Sterling Professors.

## List of Sterling Professors
### Current

| Name | Field | Appointed | Notability |
| Bruce Ackerman | Law and Political Science | 1987 | Political philosophy; constitutional law |
| Rolena Adorno | Spanish | 2012 | Colonial Latin American Literature |
| Akhil Amar | Law and Political Science | 2008 | Constitutional law |
| Elijah Anderson | Sociology | 2018 | Urban ethnography, cultural theory |
| Harold Attridge | Divinity | 2012 | New Testament scholarship; Dean of Yale Divinity School (2002–2012) |
| R. Howard Bloch | French | 2005 | |
| Ronald Breaker | Molecular, Cellular and Developmental Biology | 2017 | Discovery of riboswitches |
| David Bromwich | English | 2006 | Literary criticism; writings on politics, philosophy, education |
| David Blight | History | 2019 | Historian of the American Civil War and the Reconstruction era |
| Francesco Casetti | Film and Media Studies, Humanities Program | 2021 | film's cultural impact; spectatorship; visual media; semiotics |
| Nicholas A Christakis | Sociology, Medicine, Network Science | 2018 | contributions in network science; biosocial science; and public health |
| Ronald Coifman | Mathematics | 2021 | contributions to pure mathematics, leading the field in adapting to the capabilities of the digital computer |
| Michael Della Rocca | Philosophy | 2021 | Early Modern Philosophy, Rationalism, Contemporary Metaphysics |
| Michael Donoghue | Ecology and Evolutionary Biology | 2011 | plant evolution; TreeBASE; Director of the Peabody Museum of Natural History (2003–2008) |
| Menachem Elimelech | Chemical and Environmental Engineering | 2021 | Water Science and Technology; Water-Energy Nexus |
| Richard A. Flavell | Immunology | 2002 | |
| Alan Gerber | Political Science | 2022 | Political Behavior, application of experimental methods to politics |
| Steven Girvin | Physics | 2024 | Condensed Matter Physics |
| Roberto González Echevarría | Hispanic and Comparative Literature | 1995 | National Humanities Medal |
| Arthur Horwich | Genetics and Pediatrics | 2007 | Chaperonin action |
| William L. Jorgensen | Chemistry | 2009 | Computational chemistry |
| Harold Koh | International Law | 2003 | Dean of Yale Law School; Legal Adviser to Department of State |
| Anthony Kronman | Law | 2003 | Dean of Yale Law School |
| Giuseppe Mazzotta | Italian Language and Literature | 2003 | |
| Ruslan Medzhitov | Immunobiology | 2017 | Innate immunity |
| Mary Miller | History of Art | 2008 | Mesoamerican art; Mayan history; Dean of Yale College (2008–2014) |
| Scott Miller | Chemistry | 2024 | Organic chemistry |
| William Nordhaus | Economics | 2001 | Economics of climate change; 2018 Nobel Prize in Economics |
| Peter C. B. Phillips | Economics | 1989 | Highly cited econometrician; finite-sample theory; time series regression |
| Thomas D. Pollard | Molecular, Cellular and Developmental Biology | 2006 | Dean of the Yale Graduate School of Arts & Sciences |
| Robert Post | Law | 2017 | Constitutional law, First Amendment, Dean of Yale Law School (2009-2017) |
| Anna Marie Pyle | Molecular Biology | 2018 | RNA Folding |
| David Quint | Comparative Literature | 2006 | |
| Roberta Romano | Law | 2011 | Corporate law |
| James Rothman | Cell Biology | 2017 | Research on vesicles; winner of 2013 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine |
| Robert J. Schoelkopf | Physics and Applied Physics | 2013 | Inventor of the single-electron transistor, the transmon, and circuit quantum electrodynamics. |
| Alan Schwartz | Law | 2001 | Legal scholar of corporate finance and governance |
| James C. Scott | Political Science | 2001 | Peasant resistance; non-state spaces; infrapolitics; Seeing Like a State |
| Ian Shapiro | Political Science | 2005 | Democratic theorist and methodological realist |
| Robert Shiller | Economics | 2013 | Real estate and financial markets; market bubbles; 2013 Nobel Prize in Economics |
| Daniel Spielman | Computer Science | 2018 | error-correcting codes; Kadison–Singer Conjecture |
| Dieter Söll | Molecular Biophysics and Biochemistry | 2006 | |
| Joan Steitz | Molecular Biophysics and Biochemistry | 1999 | |
| Ruth Yeazell | English | 2018 | gender studies |
| Akiko Iwasaki | Molecular, Cellular and Developmental Biology; Immunology | 2022 | COVID-19, human immune defense against viruses, vaccine methodology |
| Sherman Weissman | Genetics | | |
| Peter Salovey | Psychology | 2024 | President Emeritus of Yale University; Emotional Intelligence; Health Psychology |

### Emeritus

| Name | Field | Appointed | Notability |
| Robert Adair | Physics | 1988 | |
| Sidney Altman | Biology | 1989 | Nobel Prize in Chemistry; Dean of Yale College |
| Marie Borroff | English | 1991 | Middle English translation and criticism |
| Peter Brooks | Comparative Literature and French | 2001 | |
| Guido Calabresi | Law | 1978 | Dean of Yale Law School (1985–1994) |
| Mirjan Damaška | Law | 1996 | Scholar of comparative criminal law |
| Peter Demetz | Germanic Language and Literature | | President of the Modern Language Association |
| Owen M. Fiss | Law | | Legal theorist |
| Gerhard Giebisch | Cellular and Molecular Physiology | 1970 | Renal transport physiology |
| Christine Hayes | Religious Studies | 2021 | Talmudic-midrashic Studies and Jewish Law |
| Marcia Johnson | Psychology | 2011 | Memory research; source-monitoring error and reality monitoring |
| Alice Kaplan | French | 2020 | Director of the Whitney Humanities Center |
| Alan E. Kazdin | Psychology | 2015 | Director of the Yale Parenting Center and Child Conduct Clinic |
| Howard Lamar | History | 1994 | Historian of the American frontier |
| John H. Langbein | Law and Legal History | 2001 | Anglo-American and European legal history |
| Jerry L. Mashaw | Law | 1995 | Administrative law |
| David Mayhew | Political Science | 1998 | American electoral politics; divided government |
| Peter Moore | Chemistry | 2002 | Discovery of ribosome large subunit's atomic structure with Thomas Steitz |
| Annabel Patterson | English | 2001 | |
| Jerome J. Pollitt | Classical Archeology and History | 1995 | Hellenistic architecture and sculpture |
| Joseph Roach | Theater | 2008 | History of theater and dramatic literature |
| Robert G. Shulman | Molecular Biophysics and Biochemistry | 1994 | Nuclear Magnetic Resonance techniques in biochemistry |
| Jonathan Spence | History | 1993 | Historian of China; President of the American Historical Association |
| John C. Tully | Chemistry | 2006 | |
| Edward Zigler | Psychology | 1976 | Child psychologist; architect of Head Start Program |

### Left

| Name | Field | Appointed | Notability |
| Nancy Cott | History and American Studies | 2001 | Historian of marriage, gender, and sexuality |
| Samuel J. Danishefsky | Chemistry | 1989 | |
| Marilyn Farquhar | Medicine | 1987 | |
| Richard P. Lifton | Genetics | 2002 | Genetics of hypertension |
| Ira Mellman | Cell Biology | 2002 | Discovery of endosomes |
| Alanna Schepartz | Chemistry | 2017 | Chemical and synthetic biology |
| Samuel O. Thier | Medicine | 1975 | Effects of health policy on academic institutions |
| Sharon Hammes-Schiffer | Chemistry | 2021 | Theoretical chemistry |

### Deceased

| Name | Field | Appointed | Notability |
| Erich Auerbach | Romance Philology | 1956 | Literary critic; Mimesis: The Representation of Reality in Western Literature |
| E. Wight Bakke | Economics | 1940 | Economic sociologist of labor and unemployment |
| Frank A. Beach | Psychology | 1952 | Ethologist; Patterns of Sexual Behavior |
| Samuel Flagg Bemis | Diplomatic History and International Relations | 1945 | Historian of United States diplomacy; 1927 Pulitzer Prize for History; 1950 Pulitzer Prize for Biography |
| Thomas G. Bergin | Romance Languages and Literature | 1957 | Scholar of Italian literature and Dante Alighieri |
| Jerome A. Berson | Chemistry | 1992 | |
| Alexander Bickel | Law | 1974 | US Supreme Court historian and scholar of judicial restraint |
| Boris Bittker | Law | 1970 | Scholar of tax law; proponent of black reparations |
| Charles Black | Law | 1975 | |
| Francis Gilman Blake | Medicine | 1927 | Dean of the Yale School of Medicine |
| Brand Blanshard | Philosophy | 1945 | |
| Harold Bloom | Humanities | 1983 | Literary criticism; The Anxiety of Influence; The Western Canon |
| Leonard Bloomfield | Linguistics | 1940 | Bloomfieldean linguistics |
| Edwin Borchard | International Law | 1929 | Scholar of wrongful conviction |
| David Allan Bromley | Sciences | 1994 | Nuclear physicist; Science Adviser to George H. W. Bush; Dean of Engineering (1994–2000) |
| C. F. Tucker Brooke | English | 1949 | Scholar of Elizabethan dramatic literature and Shakespeare Apocrypha; Founder of The Yale Shakespeare |
| Ernest William Brown | Mathematics | 1921 | Lunar theory |
| Robert L. Calhoun | Historical Theology | 1963 | |
| Brevard Childs | Divinity | 1992 | Canonical criticism |
| Charles Edward Clark | Law | 1929 | Dean of Yale Law School (1929–1939); Judge for the U.S. Second Circuit Court of Appeals (1939–1963) |
| Donald J. Cohen | Child Psychiatry | 2000 | Tourette's syndrome; Autism |
| Wilbur Cross | English | 1922 | Dean of the Graduate School (1916–1930); Governor of Connecticut (1931–1939) |
| Donald Crothers | Chemistry | 1997 | Physical chemistry of nucleic acids |
| Harvey Cushing | Neurology | 1933 | Neurosurgery pioneer; Cushing's disease |
| Robert A. Dahl | Political Science | 1964 | Democratic theorist; polyarchy; pluralism; Johan Skytte Prize (1995) |
| David Brion Davis | American History | 1978 | Historian of American slavery; 1967 Pulitzer Prize for History |
| Leonard W. Doob | Psychiatry | 1997 | 1960 Guggenheim Fellow |
| William O. Douglas | Law | 1931 | Associate Justice of the United States Supreme Court |
| J. G. Dusser de Barenne | Physiology | 1930 | |
| Alvan Feinstein | Medicine and Epidemiology | 1991 | |
| William Fellner | Economics | 1959 | |
| Albert Feuillerat | French | 1929 | |
| Frederic Brenton Fitch | Philosophy | 1974 | Logician; symbolic and combinatory logic; Fitch-style calculus |
| John Farquhar Fulton | Physiology and History of Medicine | 1930 | Primate neurophysiology |
| Raymond Fuoss | Chemistry | 1945 | |
| Ralph Henry Gabriel | History | 1948 | |
| John Gassner | Playwriting | 1956 | Drama critic |
| Peter Gay | History | 1984 | Western cultural history; life of Sigmund Freud |
| Grant Gilmore | Law | 1973 | |
| Albrecht Goetze | Assyriology and Babylonian Literature | 1956 | |
| Abraham S. Goldstein | Law | 1978 | Criminal law scholar; historian of insanity defense; Dean of Yale Law School (1970–1975) |
| Henry S. Graves | Forestry | 1922 | Founder of Yale School of Forestry; Chief of the United States Forest Service |
| Ross Granville Harrison | Biology | 1927 | Embryologist; inventor of artificial tissue culture |
| Geoffrey Hartman | English and Comparative Literature | | Literary criticism; deconstructionism |
| Eric A. Havelock | Classics | 1963 | |
| Heinrich E. K. Henel | German | 1963 | |
| Hajo Holborn | History | 1959 | Historian of modern Germany |
| John Hollander | English | 1995 | Poet; translator; scholar of prosody |
| Carl Hovland | Psychology | 1947 | |
| Vernon Hughes | Physics | 1978 | |
| Clark L. Hull | Psychology | 1947 | Learning theorist; Drive reduction theory |
| G. Evelyn Hutchinson | Zoology | 1952 | Limnologist; "Father of modern ecology" |
| Treat Baldwin Johnson | Chemistry | 1928 | |
| John Johnston | Chemistry | 1920 | |
| Donald Kagan | Classics and History | 2002 | Historian of the Peloponnesian War, Dean of Yale College |
| Eugen Kahn | Psychiatry and Mental Hygiene | 1930 | |
| Andrew Keogh | Bibliography | 1924 | Yale University Librarian (1916–1938) |
| Friedrich Kessler | Law | 1964 | |
| John Gamble Kirkwood | Chemistry | 1956 | Kirkwood approximation |
| Adolph Knopf | Physical Geology | 1938 | |
| George Kubler | History of Art | 1975 | Art historian of Pre-Columbian and Ibero-American Art |
| Kenneth Scott Latourette | Missions and Oriental History | 1949 | Historian of Christianity and Christian missions |
| Theodore Lidz | Psychiatry | | Schizophrenia researcher |
| Charles E. Lindblom | Political Science and Economics | | Critique of polyarchy; Incrementalism; The Science of "Muddling Through" |
| Ralph Linton | Anthropology | 1946 | |
| Juan Linz | Political and Social Science | 1989 | Regime types; democratic transitions; Johan Skytte Prize (1996) |
| Cyril Long | Chemistry | 1938 | Dean of the Yale School of Medicine; diabetes researcher |
| Robert S. Lopez | History | 1970 | Director of Peabody Museum of Natural History (1922–1938); proponent of orthogenetic evolutionary theory |
| Charles T. Loram | Education | 1930 | |
| Floyd Lounsbury | Anthropology | | American Indian linguist |
| Richard Swann Lull | Paleontology | 1927 | Director of Peabody Museum of Natural History (1922–1938); proponent of orthogenetic evolutionary theory |
| Maynard Mack | English | 1965 | Shakespeare scholar; Biographer of Alexander Pope |
| Paul de Man | Comparative Literature and French | 1979 | Major figure in literary deconstruction and Yale school |
| Benoit Mandelbrot | Mathematical Sciences | 1999 | Fractal geometry; Mandelbrot set |
| Louis L. Martz | English | 1971 | |
| Georges C. May | French | 1971 | Scholar of the French Enlightenment; Dean of Yale College (1963–1971); Yale Provost (1979–1981) |
| Edwin McClellan | Japanese Literature | 1999 | Translator of Japanese literature |
| Myres McDougal | International Law | 1958 | Founder of New Haven School of Jurisprudence |
| Lafayette Mendel | Physiological Chemistry | 1921 | |
| Clarence W. Mendell | Latin Language and Literature | 1947 | Dean of Yale College (1926–1937) |
| María Rosa Menocal | Humanities | 2006 | |
| James W. Moore | Law | 1943 | Legal realist |
| Underhill Moore | Law | 1929 | |
| Edmund Morgan | History | 1965 | Biographer of Ben Franklin; historian of Puritanism; Pulitzer Special Citation (2006); National Humanities Medal |
| John Spangler Nicholas | Biology | 1939 | |
| H. Richard Niebuhr | Theology and Christian Ethics | 1954 | Historian of American religion and theology |
| F. S. C. Northrop | Philosophy and Law | 1947 | |
| Wallace Notestein | English History | 1928 | Historian of witchcraft |
| Julian J. Obermann | Semitic Languages | 1951 | |
| Øystein Ore | Mathematics | 1931 | |
| George E. Palade | Cell Biology | 1975 | Discovery of ribosome; protein transport; 1974 Nobel Prize in Physiology and Medicine |
| Edwards A. Park | Pediatrics | 1922 | |
| Jaroslav Pelikan | History | 1972 | Historian of Christianity and Christian theology; Kluge Prize awardee (2004) |
| Henri Peyre | French | 1938 | 1930 Guggenheim Fellow; President of the Modern Language Association |
| Frederick A. Pottle | English | 1944 | Editor of James Boswell's papers |
| Martin Price | English | 1978 | 1957 Guggenheim Fellow |
| Eduard Prokosch | Germanic Languages | 1930 | |
| Lloyd George Reynolds | Economics | 1952 | 1954 Guggenheim Fellow |
| Frederic M. Richards | Molecular Biophysics and Biochemistry | 1989 | |
| Abraham Robinson | Mathematics | 1967 | Non-standard analysis |
| James Harvey Rogers | Political Economy | 1931 | Economic policy advisor to Franklin Roosevelt administration; monetary policy theorist |
| Franz Rosenthal | Near Eastern Languages and Literatures | 1964 | Scholar of Islamic and Arabic literature |
| Michael Rostovtzeff | Ancient History and Classical Archeology | 1925 | Social and economic historian of Ancient Greece and the Roman Empire |
| Eugene V. Rostow | Law and Public Affairs | 1964 | Dean of Yale Law School (1955–1965) |
| Frank Ruddle | Biology | 1988 | Founder of Human Genome Project |
| Edward Sapir | Anthropology and Linguistics | 1931 | Founder of descriptive linguistics; Sapir–Whorf hypothesis |
| Herbert Scarf | Economics | 1979 | |
| Vincent Scully | History of Art | 1983 | |
| Milton Senn | Pediatrics and Psychiatry | 1964 | |
| Charles Seymour | History | 1922 | Biographer of Woodrow Wilson; Yale President (1937–1950); Yale Provost (1928–1937) |
| Harry Shulman | Law | 1940 | Dean of Yale Law School (1954–1955); labor arbitration scholar |
| Edmund Ware Sinnott | Botany | 1940 | Dean of the Yale Graduate School; Plant morphogenesis |
| Carolyn Slayman | Genetics | 1991 | |
| Albert J. Solnit | Pediatrics and Psychiatry | 1970 | |
| Frank E. Spaulding | School Administration | 1921 | |
| Nicholas J. Spykman | International Relations | 1934 | |
| Thomas Steitz | Molecular Biophysics and Biochemistry | 2001 | 2009 Nobel Prize in Chemistry; discovery of ribosome large subunit's atomic structure with Peter Moore |
| Thomas W. Swan | Law | 1922 | Dean of the Yale Law School (1916–1927); Judge for the U.S. Second Circuit Court of Appeals |
| Chauncey Brewster Tinker | English Literature | 1923 | Rare books collector |
| James Tobin | Economics | 1957 | Nobel Laureate in Economics |
| Karl Turekian | Geology and Geophysics | 2003 | Geochemistry; radiogenic isotope; environmental history and global environmental change |
| Charles Hyde Warren | Geology | 1922 | Dean of the Sheffield Scientific School (1922–1945) |
| Hermann J. Weigand | Germanic Literature | | 1954 Guggenheim Fellow |
| Luther Allan Weigle | Religious Education | 1924 | Dean of the Yale Divinity School |
| Paul Weiss | Philosophy | 1962 | Philosopher of metaphysics; 1937 Guggenheim Fellow |
| René Wellek | Comparative Literature | 1952 | |
| Harry H. Wellington | Law | 1983 | Dean of Yale Law School (1975–1985) |
| Stanley T. Williams | American Literature | 1944 | Literary scholar of Washington Irving and Herman Melville |
| William Kurtz Wimsatt Jr. | English | 1974 | Early theorist of New Criticism; progenitor of intentional fallacy |
| Walter Jacob Wohlenberg | Mechanical Engineering | 1949 | Dean of the School of Engineering (1948–1955) |
| Arnold O. Wolfers | International Relations | 1949 | Realist international relations theory |
| C. Vann Woodward | History | 1961 | Historian of the American South; Pulitzer Prize for History (1982) |
| Karl Young | English | 1938 | |