HUNTER RAWLINGS

Hunter Rawlings III was the 10th President of Cornell University from 1995 to 2003. During my last year as a PhD student at Cornell, in 1995, Rawlings assumed the Office of the Presidency from FHT Rhodes. Some time in 1995 I went to one of Rawlings' speeches on campus. He was a very quick wit and a great communicator. Rawlings was an effective leader of several capital campaigns launched by the University during his tenure. He moved to create the Weill Center for Cell and Molecular Biology on campus and he presided over the creation of the Weill Cornell School of Medicine in Qatar. He introduced several University initiatives in computational biology and information science and technology, and in materials science, and in several other technology areas. I briefly met, and shook hands with Rawlings, once in 1997 during the Spring graduation ceremony that I attended after getting my PhD degree in January, 1996. There was no time to talk, only a quick hand shake and "congragulations" from him. Rawlings' background is in Classics, and among his achievements, in this area, is a learned work in Greek History concerning the Greek figure Thucydides. In 2005-2006 and 2016-2017 he served as interim University President. On several occasions since 2020 I may have heard Rawlings indirectly addressing me with supportive words...but these conversations cannot be verified.