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 can be granted to any Yale faculty member and is made by the President of Yale University and confirmed by the Yale Corporation. 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 funding large number of campus buildings like the Sterling Memorial Library, the bequest required "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 NameFieldAppointedNotabilityRefLaw and Political Science1987Political philosophy; constitutional lawSpanish2012Colonial Latin American LiteratureLaw and Political Science2008Constitutional lawSociology2018Urban ethnography, cultural theoryDivinity2012New Testament scholarship; Dean of Yale Divinity School (2002–2012)Economics2025Industrial orginization; applied microeconomicsFrench2005Molecular, Cellular and Developmental Biology2017Discovery of riboswitchesEnglish2006Literary criticism; writings on politics, philosophy, educationHistory2019Historian of the American Civil War and the Reconstruction eraFilm and Media Studies, Humanities Program2021film's cultural impact; spectatorship; visual media; semioticsSociology, Medicine, Network Science2018contributions in network science; biosocial science; and public healthMathematics2021contributions to pure mathematics, leading the field in adapting to the capabilities of the digital computerPhilosophy2021Early Modern Philosophy, Rationalism, Contemporary MetaphysicsEcology and Evolutionary Biology2011plant evolution; TreeBASE; Director of the Peabody Museum of Natural History (2003–2008)Immunology2002Political Science2022Political Behavior, application of experimental methods to politicsPhysics2024Condensed Matter PhysicsHispanic and Comparative Literature1995National Humanities MedalGenetics and Pediatrics2007Chaperonin actionChemistry2009Computational chemistryFrench2020Guggenheim Fellow; Director of Whitney Humanities Center; Scholar of Albert CamusInternational Law2003Dean of Yale Law School; Legal Adviser to Department of StateLaw2003Dean of Yale Law SchoolItalian Language and Literature2003Immunobiology2017Innate immunityHistory of Art2008Mesoamerican art; Mayan history; Dean of Yale College (2008–2014)Chemistry2024Organic chemistryEconomics2001Economics of climate change; 2018 Nobel Prize in EconomicsMolecular, Cellular and Developmental Biology2006Dean of the Yale Graduate School of Arts & SciencesLaw2017Constitutional law, First Amendment, Dean of Yale Law School (2009-2017)Molecular Biology2018RNA FoldingComparative Literature2006Law2011Corporate lawCell Biology2017Research on vesicles; winner of 2013 Nobel Prize in Physiology or MedicinePhysics and Applied Physics2013Inventor of the single-electron transistor, the transmon, and circuit quantum electrodynamics.Law2001Legal scholar of corporate finance and governancePolitical Science2005Democratic theorist and methodological realistEconomics2013Real estate and financial markets; market bubbles; 2013 Nobel Prize in EconomicsComputer Science2018error-correcting codes; Kadison–Singer ConjectureMolecular Biophysics and Biochemistry2006Molecular Biophysics and Biochemistry1999English2018gender studiesMolecular, Cellular and Developmental Biology; Immunology2022COVID-19, human immune defense against viruses, vaccine methodologyGeneticsPsychology2024President Emeritus of Yale University; Emotional Intelligence; Health Psychology
Emeritus NameFieldAppointedNotabilityRefPhysics1988Biology1989Nobel Prize in Chemistry; Dean of Yale CollegeEnglish1991Middle English translation and criticismComparative Literature and French2001Law1978Dean of Yale Law School (1985–1994)Law1996Scholar of comparative criminal lawLawLegal theoristCellular and Molecular Physiology1970Renal transport physiologyReligious Studies2021Talmudic-midrashic Studies and Jewish LawPsychology2011Memory research; source-monitoring error and reality monitoringPsychology2015Director of the Yale Parenting Center and Child Conduct ClinicHistory1994Historian of the American frontierLaw and Legal History2001Anglo-American and European legal historyLaw1995Administrative lawPolitical Science1998American electoral politics; divided governmentChemistry2002Discovery of ribosome large subunit's atomic structure with Thomas SteitzEnglish2001Economics1989Econometrician; finite-sample theory; time series regressionTheater2008History of theater and dramatic literatureMolecular Biophysics and Biochemistry1994Nuclear Magnetic Resonance techniques in biochemistryChemistry2006
Left NameFieldAppointedNotabilityRefHistory and American Studies2001Historian of marriage, gender, and sexualityChemistry1989Medicine1987Genetics2002Genetics of hypertensionCell Biology2002Discovery of endosomesChemistry2017Chemical and synthetic biologyMedicine1975Effects of health policy on academic institutionsChemistry2021Theoretical chemistryChemical and Environmental Engineering2021Water Science and Technology; Water-Energy Nexus
Deceased