Talk:Quetelet professor

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Untitled

This article doesn't really belong here, and it's filled with errors to boot.

The Quetelet professorship is one of about 400 or 500 chairs at Columbia. It's more prestigious than most but not to the point that it warrants its own article -- unless each of the other chairs gets one too a la List of Professorships at the University of Cambridge.

Calling the chair "a distinction awarded to professors at Columbia" and a "prize" suggests that it is somehow different from other chairs, which it isn't. The article also incorrectly says that there are currently four Quetelet professors, but there is only one and there has never been more than one at any given time. Jeffrey Sachs has been the Quetelet professor since 2003. Jonathan Cole was the Quetelet professor from 1989 until 2001, when he vacated the chair to become the John Mitchell Mason Professor. The other two "current" incumbents listed in the article are dead: Peter Blau died in 2002 and Paul Lazarsfeld in 1976.

The chair's correct name until 2003 was "Quetelet Professor of Social Science", which was fine given that Lazarsfield, Blau and Cole were/are all sociologists. Sachs is an economist with joint appointments in international affairs and health policy, and he goes by "Quetelet Professor of Sustainable Development". I don't know if the name has been formally changed, though. The trustees may have dedicated it to sustainable development, but I think it's more likely that the next incumbent will revert the title to "of Social Science".

Even if this article were accurate the subject would not be worth including here. I know there is a code I could use to formally propose deleting it, but I don't know what it is. Hopefully someone else will.