Seventy-three students have won the prestigious Hoopes prize for outstanding research projects, University officials announced earlier this week.

The estate of Thomas T. Hoopes '19 sponsors the $2,500 prize for each student winner and $700 for each Faculty advisor who nominates a winning project.

Hoopes prize winners are selected for the broad significance and impact of their projects, which are usually senior honors theses.

This year's winning theses covered a vast array of topics--studying everything from new methods of poverty measurements to postmodern adaptations of fairy tales.

Eben E. Kenah '01 wrote a thesis that proposed using mortality rates instead of income level as a measurement of poverty.

Nobel Laureate Amartya K. Sen said Kenah's work was "among the very best senior theses that this University can be proud of producing."

Kenah said comparing incomes across time and space does not always provide a realistic picture.

"Mortality rates are more honest because the most severe consequence of poverty is not people having a low income--it's people dying," Kenah said.

Kenah decided on the topic while working in Bangladesh--where he witnessed police burning a slum, presumably to enhance the country's appearance.

"It would be almost impossible to capture the results of a slum clearance using income statistics," Kenah said.

William Edwards '01 also tackled a weighty social issue--race relations.

Edwards studied the role of bi-racial electoral coalitions coming together to elect blacks to office. He found that such coalitions were surprisingly common in the cities he studied, especially Birmingham, Ala., and Charlotte, N.C.

Hoopes-winning theses, however, did not all embrace matters of such social and political gravity.

Soman S. Chainani '01, who is also a Crimson executive, opted for a flashier topic--evil women in postmodern fairy tales.

"I really wanted to write a thesis on sex and violence," Chainani said.

Chainani said over the last few years, some authors have reformatted fairy tales to re-cast women's roles. Chainani described it as a movement to "make wicked women not so wicked."

Many of the Hoopes winners agree that the secret to their success lies in the topics they chose.

"The more obsessed you are with your topic, the more fun your thesis will be to work on," Kenah said.

Chainini credits the English department with allowing him to choose a "radical" topic which fascinated him.

For many, the Hoopes prize was a fulfilling end to a long and difficult process.

"[The process] was frustrating at times," said Susannah L. Hollister '01, who won a Hoopes prize for her thesis on the relationship between cartography and poetry. "But it's the best academic experience I've had at Harvard."

The recipients of the Hoopes Prize, all seniors, are Judith Batalion, Lauren K. Brozovich, Aaron D. Goldberg, Susannah L. Hollister, Jie Li, Priya H. Patel, Michael H. Tang and Benjamin D. Tolchin of Adams House; Elizabeth D. Chao, Jeremy U. Gaw, Charles C. Lin, Benjamin J. Morgan, Wesley T.W. Shih and Blythe Yee of Cabot House; Andreea S. Balan, Long Cai, Isabel de Sola, Grace Kao, Ciprian Manolescu, Pawel M. Nowak and Shauna L. Shames of Currier House.

In Dudley House, Ulka S. Anjaria, Anne P. Bourneuf, Jonathan C. Hall, Vera Keller, John T. Maier, Jonathan E. Shapiro and Michael W. Weller; in Dunster House, Megan E. Frederickson, Jeremy M. Kurzyniec, Courtney H. Leimkuhler and Brian O'Meara; in Eliot House, Corinne S. Crawford, Sanmay Das, Joseph C. Gfaller, Rebecca P. Gogel, Christine M. Nichols, Robert A.D. Pike, David J. Ryu and David M. Shapiro.

Other winners were J. Ashley Burgoyne, Peter Ciganik, Andrea H. Kurtz, David A. Rice and Rebecca E. Shapiro of Kirkland House; Marlys S.S. Fassett, Eleanor K. Hubbard, Stanley M. Jurga and Luba T. Mandzy of Leverett House; Soman S. Chainani,

Samuel T. Moulton, Jacqueline A. Newmyer and Zuzanna M. Olszewska of Lowell House; Alison F. Egan, Maggie Y. Loo, Kris K. Manjapra, Steven E. Stryer and Paola Y. Tartakoff of Mather House.

In Pforzheimer House, William Edwards, April A. Larson and Ari Nishitani; in Quincy House, Emily C. Bianchi, Lucia R. Henderson, Darryl C. Li, Richard Parr, Christopher P. Thornton and Andrew M. Wolfe; in Winthrop House, Kelly E. Edwards,

Eben E. Kenah, Christopher M. Kirchhoff, Gabriel Mendlow, Noel M. Norcross and

Seamus Ryan.

Honorable mentions were awarded to Grace J. Chan of Cabot House and Jayne S. Joo of Kirkland House.

--Staff writer William M. Rasmussen can be reached at wrasmuss@fas.harvard.edu.