Bernard Lytton, M.B.B.S.

Bernard Lytton, M.B.B.S., the Donald Guthrie Professor Emeritus of Surgery, has been named the first director of the Henry Koerner Center, which opened in January to serve retired faculty members.

Lytton, who attained emeritus status in 1999, was the master of Jonathan Edwards College for many years. As college master Lytton organized teas with distinguished visitors and oversaw the Tetelman Fellows program, which brings noted scientists and others to the college for lectures and conversation with students. Among the visitors during Lytton’s tenure was the Dalai Lama, who came to Yale in 1991.

The center, which occupies the second and third floors of the Pierpont House at 149 Elm St., serves as a place for emeritus faculty to meet and work and remain integrated in the life of the university. The center’s 600-square-foot furnished common room will have an adjoining 300-square-foot seminar room for teaching, conferences and discussion. There will be 12 offices with computers and telephones assigned by the director to those involved in undergraduate teaching and to those participating in the programs of the center.

The center’s donors, Lisbet Rausing, senior research associate at the Imperial College of Science, Technology and Medicine, and Joseph Koerner, Yale College ’80, professor of history of art at University College London, named it after Joseph’s father, Henry, whose paintings appeared on more than 50 Time magazine covers.