Charles Gwathmey (1938–2009) received his Master of Architecture degree in 1962 from Yale University, where he won both The William Wirt Winchester Fellowship as the outstanding graduate and a Fulbright Grant.
In the decades since, Mr. Gwathmey has been honored with the Brunner Prize from the American Academy of Arts and Letters in 1970 and elected to the Academy in 1976. In 1983, he won the Medal of Honor from the New York Chapter of the American Institute of Architects and in 1985, he received the first Yale Alumni Arts Award from the Yale School of Architecture. Three years later, the Guild Hall Academy of Arts awarded Mr. Gwathmey its Lifetime Achievement Medal in Visual Arts, followed in 1990 by a Lifetime Achievement Award from the New York State Society of Architects.
Mr. Gwathmey has served as President of the Board of Trustees for The Institute of Architecture and Urban Studies and was elected a Fellow of the American Institute of Architects in 1981.
From 1965 through 1991, Mr. Gwathmey taught at Pratt Institute, Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art, Princeton University, Columbia University, the University of Texas, and the University of California at Los Angeles. He was Davenport Professor (1983 and 1999) and Bishop Professor (1991) at Yale, and the Eliot Noyes Visiting Professor at Harvard University (1985).
Mr. Gwathmey was the spring 2005 William A. Bernoudy Resident in Architecture at the American Academy in Rome.