Pierce served in the U.S. Army from 1943 to 1946 in North Africa and Italy, becoming the first African American on the staff of the Army's Criminal Investigation Unit for the Mediterranean theater. His careers in law and politics included posts as an assistant D.A. for New York County, and a New York State General Sessions Court judge. Pierce is survived by his wife, Barbara Penn Wright, and a daughter. In anticipation of its fortieth reunion, the Class of '56 started raising money to endow a series of visiting professorships in honor of outgoing president Frank H.T. Rhodes. The second '56 professor, biomedical scientist Edward Scolnick, comes to campus in February.
More appointments are in the works.
Jeff Hawkins '79, inventor of the Palm Pilot and chairman of Handspring, Inc., named Cornell's 2000 Entrepreneur of the Year. John Fitzpatrick, the Fuertes director of the Cornell Lab of Ornithology and a professor of ecology and evolutionary biology, elected president of the American Ornithologists' Union, the oldest scientific organization in North America. Abnormally high concentrations of ground-level ozone have stunted the growth of white clover plants, used as indicators of the gas's effect on crops. Beehives, like people, run a fever when they get sick. Philip Starks, PhD '99, found that bees raise a hive's temperature by .56 degrees Celsius to prevent a fungus from infecting larvae.