The College announced the award of Thomas Temple Hoopes Prizes to 49 seniors and their supervisors for excellence in scholarly work and research on Monday. Five seniors and their supervisors also received honorable mentions.

Seniors interviewed yesterday said they were surprised and delighted to receive the award, which includes a prize of $2,500 for each student and an award for the advisers.

Alice Y. Ting '96 said yesterday she will use her award to purchase a plane ticket to Dallas for her boyfriend Michael A. Gelman '96, also a Hoopes recipient, so that the two can spend a week in her home city prior to graduation.

"I would never have been able to afford it if I hadn't won," Ting said.

Ting, who worked with Emery Professor of Organic Chemistry Elias J. Corey, said her thesis focused on the structure of an enzyme which is a precursor to important steroids such as estrogen and cholesterol.

Gelman said his research focused on combinatorial chemistry, which is a method for generating large molecules by mixing and matching smaller parts. Gelman said his research has applications in the areas of signal transduction, intracellular communication and pharmesutical design.

Another prize winner, Cliff W. Chiang '96, took advantage of his joint concentration in English and Visual and Environmental Studies to illustrate Milton's Paradise Lost.

He said his title quote "'If answerable style I can obtain'" was taken from the book and served as a comparison between his own creative attempt and Milton's.

"I sort of saw it as a parallel between what I was doing and what he was doing," Chiang said.

Chiang, who was advised by Baunbaum Professor of Literature Leo Damrosch, the chair of the English Department, said he set his illustrated thesis in the 1930s "to make it accessible to modern audiences."

Another Hoopes winner, Heather L. Clark '96, explored the Irish identity of James Joyce in "Conquest is a Lie: Joyce, Irish Identity and the Politics of the Postcolonial in 'Araby.'"

Clark, an English concentrator who was advised by teaching fellow Dan M. Wiley, said she has spent a lot of time in Ireland. She said her thesis explored new ground in Joycean analysis.

"A lot of people look at [Joyce] as part of the English canon," she said. "I tried to look at him from an Irish perspective."

"I really looked at him from a post-colonial perspective," she added.

Another prize-winning thesis examined the intergroup relations of multi-racial individuals.

Selena D. Fowler '96 interviewed Harvard students and distributed questionnaires to students on campus.