Luciano Berio, Distinguished Composer-in-Residence at the Department of Music, has received the Premium Imperial Prize. This honor, created by the Japan Art Association in 1989, is awarded for excellence in areas of culture not recognized by the Nobel Prize.

Steven Spongberg, horticultural taxonomist at the Arnold Arboretum, has received the Gold Veitch Memorial Medal, the highest honor that Great Britain's Royal Horticultural Society can bestow upon a foreign citizen. Spongberg is this year's only American winner and one of only five Americans to receive the prize during the past quarter century.

Since its establishment in 1870, the Veitch Medal has become one of the highest distinctions in international horticulture, signaling recognition for major contributions to excellence in the field.

Spongberg came to the Arboretum in 1970 as an assistant curator. He currently oversees the curation of the Arboretum's extensive living collections, and has spent the past 12 years as editor of the Journal of the Arnold Arboretum. He has published numerous scientific papers as well as A Reunion of Trees (Harvard University Press, 1990), which describes the introduction of plants into European and North American landscapes.

An internationally recognized expert on the horticulturally prominent genus Magnolia, Spongberg is also known for his work in classifying other genera such as Stewartia and Asian Sorbus. He is a veteran of many plant-collecting trips to East Asia, and serves on several international bodies concerned with woody-plant conservation and the scientific naming of cultivated plants.

John Spengler, professor of environmental health in the School of Public Health, is the recipient of the 1996 Jerome J. Wesolowski Award of the International Society of Exposure Analysis for his contributions to the field of exposure assessment and his role in educating some of the world's top practitioners in this field. The award was presented at the 1996 annual meeting of the ISEA in December in New Orleans, where Spengler presented a keynote lecture.