What does Margaret Byrne Professor mean?

A lot of historians and history professors have this title. I think it is an award or order, but I am not sure. I have also found professors in other domains have their names the same way. Any help?

Eros123 said:

A lot of historians and history professors have this title. I think it is an award or order, but I am not sure. I have also found professors in other domains have their names the same way. Any help?

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I've never seen it written like that. Do you have some examples?

I can't post link, but google thisL
"He is the Margaret Byrne Professor of American History[SUP]"

"Henry W. Putnam Professor of Religion"
[/SUP]

Eros123 said:

A lot of historians and history professors have this title. I think it is an award or order, but I am not sure. I have also found professors in other domains have their names the same way. Any help?

Click to expand...

Any help, please?

Please, be a little patient.

I'm not exactly sure what this means, but I've seen it before. This [name] professor of discipline X title is not limited to history professors.

Paula S. Fass is Margaret Byrne Professor of History at the University of California at Berkeley. She is a renown teacher and widely influential historian whose most recent book, Inheriting the Holocaust (2009) is a memoir about her family and her experiences as a child of Holocaust survivors.
(Paula S. Fass | Department of History, UC Berkeley)

Richard White, the Margaret Byrne Professor of American History, is widely regarded as one of the nation’s leading scholars in three related fields: the American West, Native American history and environmental history.
(Richard White | The Bill Lane Center for the American West)

Here's another example:

Robert J. Shiller is Arthur M. Okun Professor of Economics at Yale University and a Fellow at the International Center for Finance at the Yale School of Management.
(Open Yale Courses | Financial Markets (2011))

Before serving on the C.E.A., he was a professor at Yale University, and afterwards was a fellow at the Brookings Institution in Washington, D.C.
(Arthur Melvin Okun - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia)

My guess is that Margaret Byrne was a professor of history as well and the the two aforementioned people hold the same position that she once held.

People who give significant gifts to universities are said to give an "endowment." In some cases, they endow funds to support a certain academic in a chosen field. They name the "chair" or "professorship" after the person who gave the endowment (or the name that person chooses.)

So, if I gave a bunch of money to a college to fund a professorship in English or Engineering, then a position of "SoothingDave Professor" would be created. As a person was chosen to fill the position, he would be the SoothingDave Professor."

Thank you. That is very illuminating. Gods' blessings.

And there should be a comma before 'professor' if the person named is just a professor. If there is no comma, it's what is known as 'a named chair' or (to use SD's word) 'an endowed chair'.

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