by Lauren Gottlieb
Executive News Editor

With the announcement two weeks ago of this year’s Nobel Prizes came news that two members of the Wesleyan community have been named as laureates. Former Visiting Professor of English VS Naipaul has received the Nobel Prize for Literature, and current Wesleyan parent and honorary degree recipient Barry Sharpless has received the Nobel Prize in Chemistry.

“I think it’s really cool that people with such strong connections to the University have been named as top in their fields,” said Michelle Wolman ’02.

Indeed, the announcement has sent ripples of excitement through many of those students and faculty who are familiar with the works of these laureates.

“Wesleyan should be very proud and thrilled because this is the closest Wes has ever come to a Nobel Prize,” said Professor Phyllis Rose of the Prize awarded to Naipaul.

Rose recruited Naipaul as the first professor to occupy the Visiting Professorship for a Creative Writer in 1977.

“He was doing post-colonial studies before that field had a name,” Rose said. “Before anyone was teaching that kind of course, he was teaching it here at Wes.”

Trinidadian by birth, Indian by descent and British in nationality, Naipaul compels readers “to see the presence of suppressed histories,” the Swedish Academy said in its citation. He is renowned for his work in nonfiction on geopolitical happenings all around the world, including one of his first works, A House for Mr. Biswas (1961), and one of his more recent, A Way in the World (1994).

According to Rose, Naipaul was ahead of his time in appreciating the significance of events in developing parts of the world, such as South Asia and the Middle East.

“Naipaul understood ten years ago that these places were going to be angry. You could say he was a student of anger,” Rose said

Naipaul taught at Wesleyan for only one year, but his time here is significant in that it was both the first and last time Naipaul ever taught in a University.

According to those who knew him personally, however, Naipaul was not very well disposed to working in the University setting, and was not at all well-liked.

“He applied his deep and powerful experiences in Third World countries to the mostly benign world at Wesleyan. It created an almost comical imbalance,” said one of Naipaul’s former students, Banning Eyre ’80. “When the class was late with a paper, it wasn’t annoying, it was a violation of trust. He was wounded by it.”

Rose suggested that this only reflects one of the more interesting elements of Naipaul’s personality.

“Naipaul is known for his grumpiness and pessimistic, sour view of human nature,” Rose said. “Even when he was called and told he had won the Nobel Prize, he asked, ‘Is this some kind of hoax?’”

Chemistry laureate Barry Sharpless, a Wes parent of ’99 and ’04 and an honorary degree recipient in ’99, also had an interesting time receiving the news of his Nobel Prize.

“I was the only one here when they called at three in the morning,” said Ike Sharpless ’04, Barry Sharpless’s son who is currently at home in California. “I was sleeping and I heard the phone ringing and I figured someone else would get it. They eventually woke up my Dad at around five.”

Sharpless, a researcher at the Scripps Research Institute in San Diego, takes the Nobel primarily for his work in developing molecules that can catalyze important chemical reactions so that only one of two “mirror-image” forms is reproduced. Such knowledge could have prevented the thalidomide disaster in the 1960s, which was caused by a molecule with the harmful mirror image, reported MIT News.

“It basically applies to all chemistry nowadays,” Ike Sharpless said. “Though my definition is probably the worst one you could receive. I’m a COL major. I don’t study chemistry.”

Sharpless has spoken at Wesleyan on several occasions, and frequently recounts his ironic tale of having been accepted to many Ivy League schools, but rejected by Wesleyan, his first choice.

“Every time he speaks at Wes he always says, ‘It’s so nice to finally be welcomed here,’” said Jan Sharpless, his wife. “We’re all very fond of the place.”

Though neither Sharpless nor Naipaul are current members of the Wesleyan community, the administration claims their recent honor as Nobel laureates as a testimony to Wesleyan’s own merit.

“These connections provide yet more evidence of Wesleyan’s academic strength,” said Justin Harmon, director of University communications. “This is a place where talented people want to teach.”

This year’s Nobel Prize awards to Naipul and Sharpless were not the first awards received by members of the Wes community. Many of those people awarded honorary degrees by the University have gone on to receive Nobel awards, as well. These include the writer Tony Morrisson H’83, the poet Seamus Heaney H’90, and the economist Amartya Sen H’95, who was also a Wes parent ’00.

Wesleyan has also awarded honorary degrees to three individuals who won the Nobel Peace Prize: Martin Luther King, who received both in 1964; Elie Wiesel H’79 (prize in 1986); and Bishop DesmondTutu H’90, who had already received the prize in 1984.

This year’s Nobel Prizes will be formally awarded to Naipaul and Sharpless at the Prize Award Ceremony in Stockholm, Sweden, on December 10, the Anniversary of Alfred Nobel’s death.