Four faculty receive Hilldale awards

Four faculty members have been awarded the prestigious Hilldale Award in recognition of a distinguished contribution to teaching, research, and extension/outreach.

The award acknowledges top professors in four divisions of the university: humanities, social sciences, physical sciences and biological sciences. Recipients are nominated by their peers and selected by a divisional committee.

The award originated in 1987 with former Chancellor Irving Shain and is made possible by the Hilldale Fund, which receives income from the operation of the Hilldale Shopping Mall. Each recipient receives a cash award of $7,500 and the opportunity to share their knowledge and expertise by presenting a lecture.

This year’s recipients are:

Frederick Buttel, professor and chair, Department of Rural Sociology, professor of environmental studies

Buttel is a leading scholar in rural sociology who has devoted his research to four major areas of study, including the sociology of agriculture, environmental sociology, technological change in agriculture, and national and global activism relating to environmental and agricultural policies. 

Buttel is co-director of the Program on Agricultural Technology Studies, a senior fellow at the Center on World Affairs and the Global Economy, and a member of the executive committee of the Science and Technology Studies Program.

Buttel was elected a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in 1987 and appointed chair of the AAAS Section K Electorate Nominating Committee in 2000. He has also served as President of the Rural Sociological Society, the Agriculture, Food, and Human Values Society, and the Environment and Society Research Committee of the International Sociological Association. Buttel has authored or edited 12 books. His The Rural Sociology of the Advanced Societies, edited in 1980 with Howard Newby, substantially remade and revitalized the field of rural sociology, and his Environment, Energy, and Society (second edition, 2002) has been one of the central books in environmental sociology. Buttel is currently co-editor of Society and Natural Resources and editor of Research in Rural Sociology and Development, and serves on the editorial boards of eight other journals. 

Buttel is the author of more than 215 refereed articles and book chapters and of an additional 150 reviews and technical publications. 

Buttel earned B.S and M.S., degrees from UW–Madison, followed by a masterís in forestry and environmental studies at Yale and a doctorate in sociology at UW–Madison.

Jim Dahlberg, professor of biomolecular chemistry

Dahlberg is a senior investigator whose research on the basic structure and metabolism of nucleic acids, particularly RNA, has had profound impact on the view of nucleic acid metabolism in relation of both normal cells and disease states.

Dahlberg has worked at as a postdoctoral fellow at M.R.C. Laboratory of Molecular Biology in Cambridge and the Institut de Biologie Moleculaire at the Universite de Geneve. He has also worked at the M.R.C. Mammalian Genone Unit in Edinburgh, California Institute of Technology and the Istituto di Biologia Cellulare e Moleculare in Rome.

Dahlberg has co-edited six books and has been apart of seven editorial boards including the RNA and Science boards. In 2000, he co-chaired the Fifth Annual Meeting of the RNA Society in Madison.

Dahlberg has served on 20 departmental and university committees since 1969 and serves on six to eight Ph.D. thesis committees and prelim committees for the departmental and campus wide journal club and seminar courses.

He also is apart of the interdepartmental predoctoral training programs in Molecular Biosciences, Genetics, Bacteriology and Biotechnology. He is a member of the National Academy of Sciences, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the European Molecular Biology Organization.

Dahlberg earned his bachelors of the arts from Haverford College and his doctorate from the University of Chicago.

Carl de Boor, P.L. Chebyshev Professor of Mathematics and Computer Science and Steenbock Professor Mathematical Sciences

De Boor is a worldwide leader and authority in the theory and application of spline functions. His unique approach to splines has become the prevalent way that splines are viewed today.

He has published over 140 papers and five books including “A Practical Guide to Splines” in 1978, which has become the standard reference for scientists and engineers for the applications of splines.

He later wrote a complete collection of spline routines for Matlab, the most popular scientific computing software package. Through his work, de Boor has made UW a major international center in Approximation Theory and Numerical Analysis.

De Boor was a member at the former Mathematics Research Center for 15 years and ran the visitor program, which allowed him to mentor the development of numerous UW graduate students, junior faculty and visitors. De Boor is a member of the National Academy of Sciences and the National Academy of Engineering. He has also been elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the Leopoldina Academy and as a foreign member of the Polish Academy of Sciences. He is in his second 10 year term as the Steenbock Professor of the Mathematical Sciences.

De Boor received an honorary degree from Purdue University and was awarded the John von Neumann Prize of the Society of Industrial and Applied Mathematics. De Boor earned his undergraduate degree from Universität Hamburg, his G.A.S. at Harvard University and his doctorate at the University of Michigan.

David Woodward, Arthur H. Robinson Professor of Geography

Woodward is a renowned scholar in the history of cartography as well as in graphic representation of spatial knowledge. His expertise lies in medieval world maps and Italian Renaissance cartography, but he is also a recognized authority on British and American maps from the 18th century onward.

An early interest in the craft of cartographers led him to write a dissertation in which he analyzed the effect of the form of 19th century American maps on their content, which he published as “The All-American Map.” He also edited and wrote a pivotal chapter for a book called “Five Centuries of Map Printing,’ which helped historians of cartography become aware of the role that technique plays in shaping map content. In 1995 Woodward gave the Panizzi lectures at the British Library, which explored the roles of author, disseminator and consumer in Italian maps. At this same time he was elected as a corresponding Fellow of the British Academy.

For the past 20 years, Woodward has also been working on The History of Cartography Project. The project was conceived in 1977 and founded by Woodward and Brian Harley. The project is a research, editorial and publishing venture drawing international attention to the history of maps and map making.

Another project Woodward conceived and directed was the Cultural Map of Wisconsin, which depicts the cultural sites through the state’s entire history. He has received the R. V. Tooley Award for contribution to the history of cartography and the James Henry Breasted Prize for Volume 2.3 of the “History of Cartography.”

Woodward received his bachelors of the arts from University of Wales, Swanesa and his masters of the arts and doctorate from UW–Madison.