Class
| • | 1. Mathematical and Physical Sciences | [X] |
| | 121 | Name: | Dr. Andrew J. Wiles | | | Institution: | University of Oxford | | | Year Elected: | 1997 | | | Class: | 1. Mathematical and Physical Sciences | | | Subdivision: | 104. Mathematics | | | Residency: | Resident | | | Living? : |
Living
| | | Birth Date: | 1953 | | | | | | |
Andrew Wiles is currently Royal Society Research Professor at Oxford University. He was a professor at Princeton from 1994 to 2011. Dr. Wiles has made major breakthroughs in the study of rational elliptic curves associated with modular forms and is most famous for proving Fermat's Last Theorem, which for 350 years stood as a "Mount Everest" of mathematics. He was introduced to the theorem at age ten and tried to prove it during his youth before stopping to study elliptic curves during his graduate studies. He eventually dedicated eight years to the proof, announcing a solution on June 23, 1993 at the conclusion of a lecture at the Isaac Newton Institute in Cambridge, England. When mathematicians raised questions about his proof, Dr. Wiles himself noticed a flaw, which sent him back to work for nearly a year. In October 1994, he unveiled his revised proof, which has been confirmed by experts in the field. For his efforts, Dr. Wiles has received, among other awards, the Schock Prize (1995), the Cole Prize (1996), the Royal Medal (1996), the Wolf Prize (1996), the Clay Research Award (1999) and a silver plaque from the International Mathematics Union recognizing his achievements. He earned his BA degree from Merton College, Oxford University in 1974 and his Ph.D. from Clare College, Cambridge University in 1980. In 2000 he was named a Knight of the British Empire. | |
| 122 | Name: | Dr. Andrea Mia Ghez | | | Institution: | University of California, Los Angeles | | | Year Elected: | 2012 | | | Class: | 1. Mathematical and Physical Sciences | | | Subdivision: | 101. Astronomy | | | Residency: | Resident | | | Living? : |
Living
| | | Birth Date: | 1965 | | | | | | |
Andrea M. Ghez, distinguished professor of Physics & Astronomy and head of UCLA's Galactic Center Group, is a world-leading expert in observational astrophysics. She earned her B.S. in Physics from MIT in 1987 and her Ph.D. from Caltech in 1992, and has been on the faculty at UCLA since 1994. She has used the Keck telescopes to demonstrate the existence of a supermassive black hole at the center of our galaxy, with a mass 4 million times that of our sun. This is the best evidence yet that these exotic objects really do exist, and provides us with a wonderful opportunity to study the fundamental laws of physics in the extreme environment near a black hole, and learn what role this black hole has played in the formation and evolution of our galaxy.
Professor Ghez has actively disseminated her work to a wide variety of audiences through more than 100 refereed papers and 200 invited talks, as well features in textbooks, documentaries, and science exhibits. She has received numerous honors and awards including the Crafoord Prize, a MacArthur Fellowship, election to the National Academy of Sciences and the American Academy of Arts & Sciences, the Aaronson Award from the University of Arizona, the Sackler Prize from Tel Aviv University, the American Physical Society's Maria Goeppert-Mayer Award, the American Astronomical Society's Newton Lacy Pierce Prize, a Sloan Fellowship, a Packard Fellowship, the 2012 Crafoord Prize in Astronomy, and several teaching awards. Her most recent service work includes membership on the National Research Council's Board on Physics & Astronomy, the Thirty-Meter-Telescope's Science Advisory Committee, the Keck Observatory Science Steering Committee, and the Research Strategies Working Group of the UC Commission on the Future.
Andrea Ghez won the Nobel Prize in Physics in 2020. She was elected a member of the American Philosophical Society in 2012. | |
| 123 | Name: | Dr. Sidney Drell | | | Institution: | Stanford University | | | Year Elected: | 1987 | | | Class: | 1. Mathematical and Physical Sciences | | | Subdivision: | 106. Physics | | | Residency: | Resident | | | Living? : |
Deceased
| | | Birth Date: | 1926 | | | Death Date: | December 21, 2016 | | | | | | |
Sidney D. Drell was professor of theoretical physics (emeritus) at the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center (SLAC), Stanford University, as well as a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution at the time of his death on December 21, 2016, at the age of 90. He served as SLAC's deputy director until retiring in 1998. A theoretical physicist and arms control specialist, Dr. Drell had also been active as an adviser to the executive and legislative branches of government on national security and defense technical issues. He was a founding member of JASON, a group of academic scientists who consult for the government on issues of national importance, and he acted as a consultant to the Los Alamos National Laboratory. He was a member of the Advisory Committee to the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA/DOE) and chaired the Senior Review Board for the Intelligence Technology Innovation Center. Dr. Drell was widely recognized for his contributions in the study of theoretical physics, particularly elementary particle processes and quantum theory. His work contributed to the early understanding of meson physics and quantum electrodynamics and then went beyond those areas, ranging from basic studies on quantum chromodynamics on a lattice to such "down the laboratory" problems as the interaction of monopoles with helium. He isolated the processes of secondary particle production from photons from hadron-hadron collisions. Among numerous awards, Dr. Drell received the Heinz award in 2005 for his contributions in public policy, and in 2000 he was awarded the Enrico Fermi Award, the nation's oldest award in science and technology, for a lifetime of achievement in the field of nuclear energy. He also received the 2012 National Medal of Science. He was a member of the National Academy of Sciences and the American Academy of Arts & Sciences and was coauthor, with J.D. Bjorken, of two books on relativistic quantum mechanics and fields that have been widely translated and used for more than 30 years. | |
| 124 | Name: | Arnold Dresden | | | Year Elected: | 1932 | | | Class: | 1. Mathematical and Physical Sciences | | | Residency: | Resident | | | Living? : |
Deceased
| | | Birth Date: | 1882 | | | Death Date: | 4/12/1954 | | | | |
| 125 | Name: | Dr. Mildred S. Dresselhaus | | | Institution: | Massachusetts Institute of Technology | | | Year Elected: | 1995 | | | Class: | 1. Mathematical and Physical Sciences | | | Subdivision: | 103. Engineering | | | Residency: | Resident | | | Living? : |
Deceased
| | | Birth Date: | 1930 | | | Death Date: | February 20, 2017 | | | | | | |
Mildred Dresselhaus was born in Brooklyn, New York and grew up in a poor section of the Bronx. She attended the New York City public schools through junior high school. She then went to Hunter College High School in New York City and continued her education at Hunter College. She was a Fulbright Fellow at the Cavendish Laboratory, Cambridge University from 1951-52. Next, she earned her master's degree at Radcliffe in 1953 and continued on to get a Ph.D. at the University of Chicago in 1958. Her thesis was on "The Microwave Surface Impedance of a Superconductor in a Magnetic Field." At the University of Chicago she came into contact with Enrico Fermi, one of the great physicists of the 20th century. The "survival" tactics that helped propel her to success were honed in her earliest years; raised in poverty, she learned as a child to protect herself against daily intimidation in a tough New York neighborhood. Dr. Dresselhaus started college planning to go into elementary school teaching. When she was a sophomore at Hunter College, she met Rosalyn Yalow, who taught her physics and later became a Nobel Laureate in medicine (1977). It was in part due to her interactions with Rosalyn Yalow that Dr. Dresselhaus recognized her potential as a physicist and developed higher goals for herself. Also coming from a disadvantaged background, Yalow encouraged the young undergraduate to press ahead despite detractors, taught her to recognize and seize opportunity, and followed her career as it unfolded with "advice and love". Mildred Dresselhaus moved to Cornell University to complete her NSF sponsored Post-Doctoral fellowship where she continued her studies on superconductivity. After her post-doctorate days were over, she and her husband moved to the Boston area where they both got jobs at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Lincoln Laboratory in Lexington, Massachusetts. Both worked at Lincoln Labs for the next 7 years. At the Lincoln Laboratory, she switched from research on superconductivity to magneto-optics and carried out a series of experiments that led to a fundamental understanding of the electronic structure of semimetals, especially graphite. With four young children, she was invited in 1967 by Louis Smullin, head of the Electrical Engineering Department, to come to MIT and be a visiting professor for a year. She was so enthusiastic about teaching undergraduates and graduate students, and about working with graduate students on research projects, that she was in 1968 appointed as a tenured full professor. She remained on the MIT faculty throughout her career, pursuing an intense research and teaching career in the area of electronic materials. A leader in promoting opportunities for women in science and engineering, Dr. Dresselhaus received a Carnegie Foundation grant in 1973 to encourage women's study of traditionally male dominated fields, such as physics. In 1973, she was appointed to The Abby Rockefeller Mauze chair, an Institute-wide chair, endowed in support of the scholarship of women in science and engineering. She greatly enjoyed her career in science. As Dr. Dresselhaus says about working with MIT students, "I like to be challenged. I welcome the hard questions and having to come up with good explanations on the spot. That's an experience I really enjoy." She has over her career graduated over 60 Ph.D. students and has given many invited lectures worldwide on her research work. Her later research interests were on little tiny things, which go under the name of nanostructures, carbon nanotubes, bismuth nanowires and low dimensional thermoelectricity. Awards received include the Karl T. Compton Medal for Leadership in Physics from the American Institute of Physics (2001); the Medal of Achievement in Carbon Science and Technology from the American Carbon Society (2001); honorary membership in the Ioffe Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences (2000); the National Materials Advancement Award of the Federation of Materials Societies (2000); 19 honorary doctorate degrees; the Nicholson Medal of the American Physical Society (2000); the Weizmann Institute's Millennial Lifetime Achievement Award (2000); UNESCO's Award for Women in Science (2007); the University of Chicago's Alumni Medal (2008); the Presidential Enrico Fermi Award (2012); the Kavli Prize from the Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters (2012), the Presidential Medal of Freedom, and the IEEE Medal of Honor (2015). She is a member of the National Academy of Sciences and the National Academy of Engineering. She was elected a member of the American Philosophical Society in 1995. Mildred Dresselhaus died February 20, 2017, in Cambridge, Massachusetts at the age of 86. | |
| 126 | Name: | Dr. Harry G. Drickamer | | | Institution: | University of Illinois | | | Year Elected: | 1983 | | | Class: | 1. Mathematical and Physical Sciences | | | Subdivision: | 102. Chemistry and Chemical Biochemistry | | | Residency: | Resident | | | Living? : |
Deceased
| | | Birth Date: | 1918 | | | Death Date: | May 6, 2002 | | | | |
| 127 | Name: | Hugh L. Dryden | | | Year Elected: | 1950 | | | Class: | 1. Mathematical and Physical Sciences | | | Residency: | Resident | | | Living? : |
Deceased
| | | Birth Date: | 1898 | | | Death Date: | 12/2/1965 | | | | |
| 128 | Name: | Dr. Lee A. DuBridge | | | Institution: | California Institute of Technology | | | Year Elected: | 1942 | | | Class: | 1. Mathematical and Physical Sciences | | | Subdivision: | 106. Physics | | | Residency: | Resident | | | Living? : |
Deceased
| | | Birth Date: | 1901 | | | Death Date: | 1/23/94 | | | | |
| 129 | Name: | Raymond S. Dugan | | | Year Elected: | 1931 | | | Class: | 1. Mathematical and Physical Sciences | | | Residency: | Resident | | | Living? : |
Deceased
| | | Birth Date: | 1878 | | | Death Date: | 8/31/1940 | | | | |
| 130 | Name: | Gano Dunn | | | Year Elected: | 1924 | | | Class: | 1. Mathematical and Physical Sciences | | | Residency: | Resident | | | Living? : |
Deceased
| | | Birth Date: | 1871 | | | Death Date: | 4/10/53 | | | | |
| 131 | Name: | William Frederick Durand | | | Year Elected: | 1917 | | | Class: | 1. Mathematical and Physical Sciences | | | Residency: | Resident | | | Living? : |
Deceased
| | | Birth Date: | 1859 | | | Death Date: | 8/9/1958 | | | | |
| 132 | Name: | Dr. Cynthia Dwork | | | Institution: | Harvard University | | | Year Elected: | 2016 | | | Class: | 1. Mathematical and Physical Sciences | | | Subdivision: | 107 | | | Residency: | Resident | | | Living? : |
Living
| | | Birth Date: | 1958 | | | | | | |
Cynthia Dwork, an intellectual leader in the privacy-research community in computer science, has made fundamental contributions that speak to the role of information technology in society. She is leader and a co-founder of work on "differential privacy", which provides the first satisfactory theory for how to ensure privacy protection while enabling statistical analysis of large datasets with sensitive personal information. Her foundational work in this area has had revolutionary impact in such other disciplines as statistics and technology policy. Dwork has also made fundamental contributions to cryptography and distributed algorithms, including introducing the challenge of concurrent security in cryptographic protocols, the fundamental concept of "nonmalleability" in cryptography (where an adversary should not be able to modify cryptographic communications), and the idea of using hash chains as proofs of work (an idea underlying cryptocurrencies like BitCoin). Her distributed computing paper, "Achieving consensus in the presence of partial synchrony" received the Djikstra prize. She received the Goedel Prize in 2017 and the IEEE Hamming Medal in 2019. | |
| 133 | Name: | Professor Freeman J. Dyson | | | Institution: | Institute for Advanced Study | | | Year Elected: | 1976 | | | Class: | 1. Mathematical and Physical Sciences | | | Subdivision: | 106. Physics | | | Residency: | Resident | | | Living? : |
Deceased
| | | Birth Date: | 1923 | | | Death Date: | February 28, 2020 | | | | | | |
Freeman J. Dyson was born in 1923 in Crowthorne, England. He received a B.A. in mathematics from the University of Cambridge in 1945 and came to the United States in 1947 as a Commonwealth Fellow at Cornell University. He settled in the USA permanently in 1951, became a professor of physics at the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton in 1953, and retired as Professor Emeritus in 1994. Professor Dyson began his career as a mathematician but then turned to the exciting new developments in physics in the 1940s, particularly the theory of quantized fields. He wrote two papers on the foundations of quantum electrodynamics which have had a lasting influence on many branches of modern physics. He went on to work in condensed-matter physics, statistical mechanics, nuclear engineering, climate studies, astrophysics and biology. Beyond his professional work in physics, Freeman Dyson had a keen awareness of the human side of science and of the human consequences of technology. His books for the general public include "Disturbing the Universe," "Weapons and Hope," "Infinite in All Directions," "Origins of Life," "The Sun, the Genome and the Internet", the essay collection "The Scientist as Rebel", and "Maker of Patterns: An Autobiiography Through Letters" (2018). In 2000 he was awarded the Templeton Prize for Progress in Religion and in 2012 he was awarded the Henri Poncare Prize. Freeman J. Dyson died February 28, 2020 in Princeton, New Jersey at the age of 96. | |
| 134 | Name: | Mr. Roger L. Easton | | | Institution: | Naval Research Laboratory & KERNCO & New Hampshire Electric Cooperative | | | Year Elected: | 1998 | | | Class: | 1. Mathematical and Physical Sciences | | | Subdivision: | 103. Engineering | | | Residency: | Resident | | | Living? : |
Deceased
| | | Birth Date: | 1921 | | | Death Date: | May 8, 2014 | | | | | | |
Roger Easton was born in a small village in northern Vermont to a town doctor and his school teacher wife. He and his older brothers and one younger sister went to local schools where they had very good teachers. He followed his older brother to Middlebury College where he was graduated during World War II. He went to work at the Naval Research Laboratory in 1943 with his initial work being on blind landing system for aircraft. In 1945 he was married to the former Barbara Coulter of Flint, Michigan. They had five children, three girls and two boys and five grandchildren. Two of the girls died in adulthood of two different cancers. When the development of rockets became important, he joined the Rocket Sonde branch and participated in the proposal that put NRL in the satellite launching business. He designed the Vanguard I satellite, now the oldest in space. Following the launch of the Russian Sputnik, he conceived the U.S. Navy Space Surveillance System, an electronic fence extending across the southern U.S. and detecting all satellites that crossed it. Later he added another fence parallel to the first one. With the two fences we were able to obtain near instantaneous orbital elements on all space objects crossing both fences. The second fence was a continuous wave radar type with timing signals sent by the transmitter and detected over the horizon and by reflection. With this fence it was possible to locate the satellites very accurately. However, the fence had one problem: that cesium-beam clocks had to be carried between the transmitter and the receiver in order to synchronize them. From this operation came the idea of having a satellite carry the clock and, since both the transmitter and the receiver would be visible simultaneously, the clock would not need to be a very stable device - a crystal oscillator would do. A few weeks later the idea appeared that this might be the basis of a navigation device with a great virtue of being capable of measuring range and of being passive so the user need not interrogate the satellite and hence the system would not be overloaded. Following these thoughts a simplified version was demonstrated to personnel from the Naval Air Systems Command. A work order followed and two satellites were used for the time transfer between England, Australia, New Zealand and the U.S. These satellites used crystal oscillators as their timing sources. The next satellite used a rubidium clock designed by E. Jechart of Germany. Two of them were modified at NRL for use in space, the first ones so used. The next satellite, called either TIMATIONS 4 or NDS 2 (for Navigations Development Satellite) was launched on June 23, 1977 into a 12 hour orbit with cesium beam clocks and almost all of the characteristics of the GPS satellites. With this satellite we were able to measure the change in frequency due to gravitation very well and very close to that predicted by Einstein's general theory of gravitation. In 1980 Roger and Mrs. Easton retired to Canaan, New Hampshire where he started a career in public service. In 1982, he was elected in the first of two terms to the New Hampshire General Court and he later ran, unsuccessfully, for Governor. He served three terms as director of the New Hampshire Electric Cooperative, and he has served on the Planning Board for the Town of Canaan. Awards he has received include the following: The Navy Distinguished Civilian Service Award; The Institute of Navigation Thurlow Award; and the Sigma Xi Applied Science Award. Two awards are named for him - one for Space Surveillance and one for Space Navigation. In 1996 Roger Easton was inducted into the GPS Hall of Fame and in 2010 he was inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame. In 1997 he was awarded the Magellanic Premium Award of the American Philosophical Society and, in 1998, he was elected to the Society. | |
| 135 | Name: | Jacob B. Eckfeldt | | | Year Elected: | 1880 | | | Class: | 1. Mathematical and Physical Sciences | | | Residency: | Resident | | | Living? : |
Deceased
| | | Birth Date: | 1846 | | | Death Date: | 9/7/1938 | | | | |
| 136 | Name: | Dr. Harold E. Edgerton | | | Institution: | Massachusetts Institute of Technology | | | Year Elected: | 1972 | | | Class: | 1. Mathematical and Physical Sciences | | | Subdivision: | 103. Engineering | | | Residency: | Resident | | | Living? : |
Deceased
| | | Birth Date: | 1903 | | | Death Date: | 1/4/90 | | | | |
| 137 | Name: | Albert Einstein | | | Year Elected: | 1930 | | | Class: | 1. Mathematical and Physical Sciences | | | Residency: | Resident | | | Living? : |
Deceased
| | | Birth Date: | 1879 | | | Death Date: | 4/18/55 | | | | |
| 138 | Name: | Luther P. Eisenhart | | | Year Elected: | 1913 | | | Class: | 1. Mathematical and Physical Sciences | | | Residency: | Resident | | | Living? : |
Deceased
| | | Birth Date: | 1876 | | | Death Date: | 10/28/1965 | | | | |
| 139 | Name: | Dr. Kerry Emanuel | | | Institution: | Massachusetts Institute of Technology | | | Year Elected: | 2019 | | | Class: | 1. Mathematical and Physical Sciences | | | Subdivision: | 105. Physical Earth Sciences | | | Residency: | Resident | | | Living? : |
Living
| | | Birth Date: | 1955 | | | | | | |
Dr. Kerry Emanuel is Professor Emeritus of Atmospheric Science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he was on the faculty, most recently as Cecil and Ida Green Professor of Atmospheric Science, from 1981-2022, after spending three years on the faculty of UCLA.
Emanuel’s initial focus was on the dynamics of rain and snow banding in winter storms, but his interests gradually migrated to the meteorology of the tropics and to climate change. His specialty is hurricane physics and he was the first to investigate how long-term climate change might affect hurricane activity, an issue that continues to occupy him today. His interests also include cumulus convection, and advanced methods of sampling the atmosphere in aid of numerical weather prediction.
Emanuel is the author or co-author of over 200 peer-reviewed scientific papers, and three books, including Divine Wind: The History and Science of Hurricanes, published by Oxford University Press and aimed at a general audience, and What We Know about Climate Change, published by the MIT Press and now entering its third edition. He is a co-director of MIT’s Lorenz Center, a climate think tank devoted to basic, curiosity-driven climate research. | |
| 140 | Name: | William LeRoy Emmet | | | Year Elected: | 1898 | | | Class: | 1. Mathematical and Physical Sciences | | | Residency: | Resident | | | Living? : |
Deceased
| | | Birth Date: | 1859 | | | Death Date: | 9/26/1941 | | | | |
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