Amherst College

James Ingram Merrill was an American poet whose awards include the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry for Divine Comedies. His poetry falls into two... distinct bodies of work: the polished and formalist lyric poetry of his early career, and the epic narrative of occult communication with spirits and angels, titled The Changing Light at Sandover, which dominated his later career. Although most of his published work was poetry, he also wrote essays, fiction, and plays. James Ingram Merrill was born in New York City to Hellen Ingram Merrill and Charles E. Merrill, founding partner of the Merrill Lynch investment firm. He had two older half siblings from his father's first marriage. As a boy, Merrill enjoyed a highly privileged upbringing in economic and educational terms. Merrill's childhood governess taught him French and German, an experience Merrill wrote about in his 1974 poem "Lost in Translation." His parents separated when he was eleven, then divorced when he was thirteen years old. As a teenager, Merrill attended the Lawrenceville School, where he befriended future novelist Frederick Buechner.
more

John W. Dower is an American author and historian. Dower earned a bachelor's degree in American Studies from Amherst College in 1959, and a Ph.D. in... History and Far Eastern Languages from Harvard University in 1972, where he studied under Albert M. Craig. He expanded his doctoral dissertation, a biography of former Japanese Prime Minister Yoshida Shigeru, into the book Empire and Aftermath. Among his other books is a selection of writings by E. Herbert Norman, a study of mutual images during World War II entitled War Without Mercy, and the Pulitzer Prize winning Embracing Defeat about the Occupation of Japan. In 2000 Dower was awarded the Mark Lynton History Prize. Dower was the executive producer of the Academy Award-nominated documentary Hellfire, A Journey from Hiroshima, and was a member of the Committee of Concerned Asian Scholars, sitting on the editorial board of its journal with Noam Chomsky, and Herbert Bix. He has taught at the University of Wisconsin–Madison and the University of California, San Diego, and is a Ford International Professor of History at MIT.
more

Richard Purdy Wilbur is an American poet and literary translator. He was appointed the second Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of... Congress in 1987, and twice received the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry, in 1957 and again in 1989. Wilbur was born in New York City and grew up in North Caldwell, New Jersey. He graduated from Amherst College in 1942 and then served in the United States Army from 1943 to 1945 during World War II. After the Army and graduate school at Harvard University, Wilbur taught at Wesleyan University for two decades and at Smith College for another decade. At Wesleyan, he was instrumental in founding the award-winning poetry series of the University Press. He received two Pulitzer Prizes for Poetry and, as of 2011, teaches at Amherst College. He is also on the editorial board of the literary magazine The Common, based at Amherst College. He married Charlotte Hayes Ward in 1942 after his graduation from Amherst; she was a student at nearby Smith College. When only 8 years old, Wilbur published his first poem in John Martin's Magazine. His first book, The Beautiful Changes and Other Poems, appeared in 1947.
more

Jeffrey Alan Hoffman, Ph.D. is an American former NASA astronaut and currently a professor of aeronautics and astronautics at MIT. Hoffman made five... flights as a space shuttle astronaut, including the first mission to repair the Hubble Space Telescope in 1993, when the orbiting telescope's flawed optical system was corrected. Trained as an astrophysicist, he also flew on 1990 Spacelab shuttle mission that featured the ASTRO-1 ultraviolet astronomical observatory in the shuttle's payload bay. Over the course of his five missions he logged more than 1,211 hours and 21.5 million miles in space. He was also the first Jewish man in space. Hoffman was born to a Jewish family on November 2, 1944, in Brooklyn, New York, but considers Scarsdale, New York, to be his hometown. He graduated from Scarsdale High School, Scarsdale, New York, in 1962, then received a Bachelor of Arts degree in astronomy from Amherst College in 1966, a Doctor of Philosophy in astrophysics from Harvard University in 1971, and a Masters Degree in materials science from Rice University in 1988. Hoffman is an Eagle Scout.
more

M. Lewis Spratlan Jr. is an American music academic and composer of contemporary classical music. Born in Miami, Florida, Spratlan played the oboe... as a youth. He attended Yale University and was a student of Mel Powell and Gunther Schuller. He was also a member of The Spizzwinks at Yale. Spratlan joined the faculty of Amherst College in 1970, and later held the Peter R. Pouncey chair in music. He retired in 2006 and now holds the title of Peter R. Pouncey Professor of Music, Emeritus, at Amherst. He also conducted the Amherst College Orchestra for several years. Spratlan won the Pulitzer Prize in Music in 2000 for a concert performance of Act II of his 3-act opera Life is a Dream, which he began in 1975 and completed in 1978, originally on commission from the New Haven Opera. By the time Spratlan had finished the work, the New Haven Opera had ceased to exist and the opera was not staged. Act II of the opera received its first full performance at Amherst College in January 2000, and subsequently at Harvard University.
more

Archibald MacLeish was an American poet, writer, and the Librarian of Congress. He is associated with the Modernist school of poetry. He received... three Pulitzer Prizes for his work. MacLeish was born in Glencoe, Illinois. His father, Scottish-born Andrew MacLeish, worked as a dry goods merchant. His mother, Martha , was a college professor and had served as president of Rockford College. He grew up on an estate bordering Lake Michigan. He attended the Hotchkiss School from 1907 to 1911 before entering Yale University, where he majored in English, was elected to Phi Beta Kappa, and was selected for the Skull and Bones society. He then enrolled in Harvard Law School, where he served as an editor of the Harvard Law Review. In 1916, he married Ada Hitchcock. His studies were interrupted by World War I, in which he served first as an ambulance driver and later as a captain of artillery. He graduated from law school in 1919, taught law for a semester for the government department at Harvard, then worked briefly as an editor for The New Republic. He next spent three years practicing law.
more

Hermann Joseph Muller was an American geneticist, educator, and Nobel laureate best known for his work on the physiological and genetic effects of... radiation as well as his outspoken political beliefs. Muller frequently warned of the long-term dangers of radioactive fallout from nuclear war and nuclear testing, helping to raise public awareness in this area. He was also the first to describe what since has become termed "irreducible complexity", which has been used as an argument in favor of "intelligent design" by creationists opposed to the theory of evolution. Muller did not find any contradictions between "irreducible complexity" and evolution, but described the phenomenon as the result of evolution. Muller was born in New York City and excelled in the public schools. As an adolescent, he attended a Unitarian church and considered himself a pantheist; in high school he became an atheist. At 16 he entered Columbia College.
more

Robert Lee Frost was an American poet. He is highly regarded for his realistic depictions of rural life and his command of American colloquial... speech. His work frequently employed settings from rural life in New England in the early twentieth century, using them to examine complex social and philosophical themes. A popular and often-quoted poet, Frost was honored frequently during his lifetime, receiving four Pulitzer Prizes for Poetry. Robert Frost was born in San Francisco, California, to journalist William Prescott Frost, Jr., and Isabelle Moodie. His mother was of Scottish descent, and his father descended from Nicholas Frost of Tiverton, Devon, England, who had sailed to New Hampshire in 1634 on the Wolfrana. Frost's father was a teacher and later an editor of the San Francisco Evening Bulletin , and an unsuccessful candidate for city tax collector. After his death on May 5, 1885, the family moved across the country to Lawrence, Massachusetts, under the patronage of William Frost, Sr., who was an overseer at a New England mill.
more