Dubbed "the Socrates of the civil rights movement" by Nat Hentoff, Rustin worked as an organizer of the Congress of Racial Equality and director of the first New York City public school boycott. He has been arrested 23 times for the causes of civil rights and peace, once spending 22 days on a chain gang in North Carolina. Since 1964, he has served as executive director of the A. Philip Randolph Institute, a service center and clearinghouse for civil rights groups.

His citation reads: Though the fight is not yet won, his life exemplifies the unflagging struggle for opportunity and justice.

Consistently voted the most trusted man in America, Cronkite, who delivered yesterday's Class Day address, has been the managing editor and anchorman of the CBS Evening News since 1962. The nation's preeminent broadcaster, he was once described by author David L. Halberstam '55 as "the definitive centrist American who reflects the essential decency of American society as much as anyone can."

Since his days as a newspaper reporter for the Houston Post and a wire services reporter--he waded ashore with the Allied troops at Normady--Cronkite has consistently downplayed his achievements. "I don't understand my impact or my success," he once told an interviewer. "That my delivery is straight, even dull at times, is probably a valid criticism. But I built my reputation on honest, straightforward reporting. To do anything else would be phony. I'd be selling myself and not the news."

Cronkite's citation reads: In an era of instant news, he is a preeminent figure in contemporary journalism, friendly, reliable, percipient, forever telling us 'the way it is.'

Dubbed the "poet's painter," Frankenthaler has been one of the leading figures in the second generation of abstract expressionist artists. Her "bleeding edge" techniques and pale, free-flowing colors have earned her a reputation as a constantly improvising but singular voice in modern art. "Her paintings have the quality of some delicate, nameless organism, which opens and closes almost imperceptibly beneath our gaze," one critic wrote.

Frankenthaler's works have been exhibited throughout the world; her most acclaimed include Jacob's Ladder, awarded a first prize at the 1959 Biennale de Paris, Trojan Gates and Blue Territory. Frankenthaler once told an interviewer, "Painting is a matter of making some kind of beautiful order out of human feeling and experience."

Her citation reads: Her influence as teacher and artist has beautifully refined the rough edges of abstract art.

An expert in contemporary British history and the author of several works on modern Western Europe, Lyman has been president of Stanford since 1970. Lyman, who received both his masters and doctoral degrees from Harvard, will leave Stanford this month to head the Rockefeller Foundation.

One of a wave of university presidents brought in to quell unrest on college campuses during the late 1960s and early 1970s, Lyman served as provost of the university for three-and-a-half years before his appointment as president. An organizer of one of the country's first teach-ins on the Vietnam War, he became less vocal publicly after assuming the presidency. He is credited with introducing important changes in Stanford's admissions and curricular policies.

Lyman's citation reads: Proudly we greet this son of Harvard, Stanford's leader in troubled times, spokesman for all of higher education, ever alert to new paths toward academic excellence and high achievement.

Mayr, Agassiz Professor of Zoology Emeritus at Harvard, is one of the world's foremost experts on evolution, although his work of more than four decades spans the gamut of ornithology, systematics and the history and philosophy of biology. Director of the University's Museum of Comparative Zoology from 1961 to 1970, he has written many volumes on evolution, including Populations, Species and Evolution, Systematics and the Origins of Species and Evolution and the Diversity of Life.

Although much of his work has focused on the study of birds, Mayr once wrote that "as a lifelong naturalist, I have been interested in the well-nigh inconceivable diversity of the living world, its origin and meaning." Born in Germany and educated at the University of Berlin, he has dedicated his scientific career, in his own words, to "a clarification of evolutionary concepts and processes."

Mayr's citation. The learned heir of Audobon and Agassiz, he guided a great research museum to new pinnacles of distinction.

A member of the Harvard Corporation from 1970-1979, Blum is widely recognized as one of the foremost authorities on 20th-century American history. He has taught at Yale since 1957 and is the first holder of the Woodward chair in American history.