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A Sterling Professorship is the highest academic rank at Yale University, awarded to a tenured faculty member considered one of the best in his or her field. Traditionally, there are only 27 at any one time, though there are currently 40.

The professorships are named for and funded by an approximately $10 million endowment left by John William Sterling of the Yale Class of 1864.

The first Sterling Professor was the chemist John Johnson, who was awarded the rank in 1920.

Other past recipients include Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas (Law), Wilbur Lucius Cross (English), Jaroslav Pelikan (history), Nobel Prize winner James Tobin (Economics), and C. Vann Woodward (History).

Among the most famous current Sterling Professors are legal scholar Bruce Ackerman, Nobel Prize-winning chemist Sidney Altman, literary critic Harold Bloom, economist William Nordhaus, political scientist James C. Scott, historian of China Jonathan Spence, medieval scholar María Rosa Menocal and Head Start founder Edward Zigler. Current Sterling Professors Emeriti include political scientists Robert A. Dahl and Charles E. Lindblom, Pulitzer Prize-winning historian David Brion Davis, mathematician Benoît Mandelbrot, historian and former Yale President Howard Lamar and architectural historian Vincent Scully.

Yale recently awarded Sterling Professorships to María Rosa Menocal, John C. Tully, Thomas D. Pollard, Dieter Söll, David Bromwich, and David Louis Quint.

• Bruce Ackerman, Law and Political Science
• Sidney Altman, Molecular Cellular and Developmental Biology and Chemistry
• R. Howard Bloch, French
• Harold Bloom, Humanities and English
• Peter Brooks, Comparative Literature and French
• Guido Calabresi, Law
• Mirjan Damaska, Law
• Owen Fiss, Law
• Richard Flavell, Immunobiology
• Gerhard Giebisch, Physiology
• Roberto Gonzalez Echevarria, Hispanic and Comparative Literature
• Donald Kagan, Classics and History
• Anthony Kronman, Law
• John Langbein, Law and Legal History
• Richard Lifton, Genetics
• Juan Linz, Political and Social Science
• Benoît Mandelbrot, Maths
• Jerry Mashaw, Law
• David Mayhew, Political Science
• Giuseppe Mazzotta, Italian Language and Literature
• Ira Mellman, Cell Biology
• Peter Moore, Chemistry and Molecular Biophysics and Biochemistry
• William Nordhaus, Economics
• Annabel Patterson, English
• Peter C. B. Phillips, Economics
• Frank Ruddle, Molecular Cellular and Developmental Biology
• Herbert Scarf, Economics
• Alan Schwartz, Law
• James C. Scott, Political Science
• Ian Shapiro, Political Science
• Carolyn Slayman, Genetics
• Jonathan Spence, History
• Joan A. Steitz, Molecular Biophysics and Biochemistry
• Thomas Steitz, Molecular Biophysics and Biochemistry
• Karl Turekian, Geology and Geophysics
• Sherman Weissman, Genetics and Medicine
• Edward Zigler, Child Study Center
• María Rosa Menocal, Humanities
• Thomas D. Pollard, Molecular, Cellular, and Developmental Biology
• Dieter Söll, Molecular Biophysics and Biochemistry
• John C. Tully, Chemistry
• David Bromwich, English
• David Louis Quint, Comparative Literature