| | 1 | Name: | Dr. A. Paul Alivisatos | | | Institution: | University of Chicago | | | Year Elected: | 2015 | | | Class: | 1. Mathematical and Physical Sciences | | | Subdivision: | 102. Chemistry and Chemical Biochemistry | | | Residency: | Resident | | | Living? : |
Living
| | | Birth Date: | 1959 | | | | | | |
Dr. A. Paul Alivisatos is President of the University of Chicago where he also serves as Chair of the Board of Governors of Argonne National Laboratory and Chair of the Board of Directors of Fermi Research Alliance LLC, the operator of Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory. He is also the John D. MacArthur Distinguished Service Professor in the Department of Chemistry, the Pritzker School of Molecular Engineering, and the College.
Previously he was Executive Vice Chancellor and Provost and Samsung Distinguished Professor of Nanoscience and Nanotechnology at the University of California, Berkeley. He also direced the Kavli Energy Nanosciences Institute (ENSI), and held professorships in UC Berkeley’s departments of materials science and chemistry. In addition, he is a founder of two prominent nanotechnology companies, Nanosys and Quantum Dot Corp, now a part of Life Tech. He also served as Director of the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) until accepting the Vice Chancellor position in 2016. Dr. Alivisatos received a Bachelor's degree in Chemistry in 1981 from the University of Chicago and Ph.D. in Chemistry from UC Berkeley in 1986. He began his career with UC Berkeley in 1988 and with Berkeley Lab in 1991.
Groundbreaking contributions to the fundamental physical chemistry of nanocrystals are the hallmarks of Dr. Alivisatos’s distinguished career. His research breakthroughs include the synthesis of size- and shape-controlled nanoscrystals, and forefront studies of nanocrystal properties, including optical, electrical, structural and thermodynamic. In his research, he has demonstrated key applications of nanocrystals in biological imaging and renewable energy. He played a critical role in the establishment of the Molecular Foundry, a U.S. Department of Energy’s Nanoscale Science Research Center; and was the facility’s founding director. He is the founding editor of Nano Letters, a leading scientific publication in nanoscience.
Dr. Alivisatos has been recognized for his accomplishments, with awards such as the Wolf Prize in Chemistry, the Linus Pauling Medal, the Ernest Orlando Lawrence Award, the Eni Italgas Prize for Energy and Environment, the Rank Prize for Optoelectronics, the Wilson Prize, the Coblentz Award for Advances in Molecular Spectroscopy, the American Chemical Society Award for Colloid and Surface Science, the Von Hippel Award of the Materials Research Society, the 2014 ACS Materials Chemistry Award, and most recently, the National Medal of Science. In January 2017 he was awarded the National Academy of Sciences' Award in Chemical Sciences. He is a member of the National Academy of Sciences and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He was elected a member of the American Philosophical Society in 2015. | |
| 2 | Name: | Dr. Danielle S. Allen | | | Institution: | Edmond J. Safra Foundation Center for Ethics, Professor, Harvard University | | | Year Elected: | 2015 | | | Class: | 3. Social Sciences | | | Subdivision: | 304. Jurisprudence and Political Science | | | Residency: | Resident | | | Living? : |
Living
| | | Birth Date: | 1971 | | | | | | |
Danielle S. Allen received her Ph.D. in Classics from the University of Cambridge and her Ph.D. in Government from Harvard University. She served as the UPS Foundation Professor of Social Science at the Institute for Advanced Study 2007 to 2015. In 2015 she moved to Harvard University to take up the Directorship of the Edmond J. Safra Center for Ethics and a professorship in the Department of Government and Graduate School of Education. She was named James Bryant Conant University Professor in 2017.
Dr. Allen is a political theorist who has published broadly in democratic theory, political sociology and the history of political thought. Widely known for her work on justice and citizenship in both ancient Athens and modern America, she is the author of The World of Prometheus: The Politics of Punishing in Democratic Athens (2000), Talking to Strangers: Anxieties of Citizenship since Brown vs. the Board of Education (2004), Why Plato Wrote (2010), Our Declaration: A Reading of the Declaration of Independence in the Defense of Equality (2014) Education and Equality (2016). And Cuz: The Life and Times of Michael A. (2017). Additionally, Dr. Allen is the co-editor of the award-winning Education, Justice and Democracy (2013, with Robert Reich) and From Voice to Influence: Understanding Citizenship in the Digital Age (forthcoming, with Jennifer Light).
Dr. Allen is a member American Academy of Arts & Sciences. She was elected a member of the American Philosophical Society in 2015. | |
| 3 | Name: | Dr. Babak Ashrafi | | | Institution: | Consortium for History of Science, Technology, and Medicine | | | Year Elected: | 2015 | | | Class: | 5. The Arts, Professions, and Leaders in Public & Private Affairs | | | Subdivision: | 503. Administrators, Bankers and Opinion Leaders from the Public or Private Sectors | | | Residency: | Resident | | | Living? : |
Living
| | | Birth Date: | 1960 | | | | | | |
Under Babak Ashrafi’s leadership, PACHS (Philadelphia Area Consortium for the History of Science) established a collaboration among repositories and universities for the purposes of promoting scholarly and public understanding of the history of science, technology and medicine. Beginning with a 12-member consortium of Philadelphia-region institutions, he has been highly productive and innovative, successfully establishing, for example, an on-line union catalogue of the history of science holdings of PACHS members, and deploying a unique and universally admired search facility. PACHS has been so successful it was one of the models used to establish the Chicago Collections Consortium (to which Ashrafi served as a key consultant). PACHS evolved from a regional to a national/international collaborative, and in January 2015 became the Consortium for History of Science, Technology and Medicine. In its expansion beyond its regional focus, the current 12 members are joined by the University of Toronto, Yale University, Columbia University, The New York Academy of Medicine, the American Institute of Physics, the Smithsonian Institution, and the Linda Hall Library. Ashrafi uniquely combines the talents of scholar, non-profit entrepreneur, development officer, and executive administrator, and has improved productivity prospects for an entire discipline by changing the way historians of science interact, exchange ideas and collaborate, and by providing new Fellowship and grant opportunities for both young scholars and for those engaged in more advanced research. | |
| 4 | Name: | Mr. Michael R. Bloomberg | | | Institution: | Bloomberg LP and Bloomberg Philanthropies | | | Year Elected: | 2015 | | | Class: | 5. The Arts, Professions, and Leaders in Public & Private Affairs | | | Subdivision: | 503. Administrators, Bankers and Opinion Leaders from the Public or Private Sectors | | | Residency: | Resident | | | Living? : |
Living
| | | Birth Date: | 1942 | | | | | | |
Michael R. Bloomberg is an entrepreneur and philanthropist who served three terms as Mayor of the City of New York.
Born in Boston on February 14, 1942 and raised in a middle class home in Medford, Massachusetts, Michael Bloomberg attended Johns Hopkins University, where he paid his tuition by taking out loans and working as a parking lot attendant. After college, he attended Harvard Business School and in 1966 was hired by a Wall Street firm, Salomon Brothers, for an entry-level job.
Bloomberg quickly rose through the ranks at Salomon, overseeing equity trading and sales before heading up the firm's information systems. When Salomon was acquired in 1981, he was let go from the firm. With a vision of an information technology company that would bring transparency and efficiency to the buying and selling of financial securities, he launched a small startup in a one room office. Today, Bloomberg LP is a global company that has more than 15,500 employees and offices in 73 countries around the world.
During his tenure as mayor, from 2002 through 2013, Bloomberg brought his innovation-driven approach to city government. He turned around a broken public school system by raising standards and holding schools accountable for success. He spurred economic growth and record levels of job creation by revitalizing old industrial areas, spurring entrepreneurship, supporting small businesses, and strengthening key industries, including new media, film and television, bio-science, technology, and tourism. Mayor Bloomberg’s economic policies helped New York City experience record-levels of private-sector job growth often in formerly depressed neighborhoods, even in the wake of the deep national recession.
His passion for public health led to ambitious new strategies that became national models, including a ban on smoking in all indoor workplaces, as well as at parks and beaches. Life expectancy grew by 36 months during Mayor Bloomberg’s twelve years in office. He launched cutting-edge anti-poverty efforts, including the Young Men’s Initiative and the Center for Economic Opportunity, whose ground-breaking programs have been replicated across the country. As a result, New York City’s welfare rolls fell 25 percent, and New York was the only big city in the country not to experience an increase in poverty between the 2000 Census and 2012. He also created innovative plans to fight climate change and promote sustainable development, which helped cut the city’s carbon footprint by 19 percent. His belief that America's mayors and business leaders can help effect change in Washington led him to launch national bi-partisan coalitions to combat illegal guns, reform immigration, and invest in infrastructure. He was a strong champion of the city's cultural community, expanding support for artists and arts organizations and helping to bring more than 100 permanent public art commissions to all five boroughs.
Upon leaving City Hall, Michael Bloomberg returned to the company he founded while also devoting more time to philanthropy, which has been a top priority for him throughout his career. Today, Bloomberg Philanthropies employs a unique data-driven approach to global change that grows out of his experiences as an entrepreneur and mayor. In addition to Bloomberg Philanthropies' five areas of focus - public health, arts and culture, the environment, education, and government innovation - Bloomberg has continued to support projects of great importance to him, including his alma mater, Johns Hopkins University, where he served as the chairman of the board of trustees from 1996-2001. The university's School of Hygiene and Public Health - the largest public health facility in the U.S. - is named the Bloomberg School of Public Health in recognition of his commitment and support. Bloomberg has donated more than $3.3 billion to a wide variety of causes and organizations. As chair of the C40 Climate Leadership Group from 2010 to 2013, he drew international attention to cities’ leading role in the fight against climate change. In 2014, U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon appointed Bloomberg to be U.N. Special Envoy for Cities and Climate Change where he is focusing on helping cities and countries set and achieve more ambitious climate change goals.
Michael Bloomberg is the father of two daughters, Emma and Georgina. | |
| 5 | Name: | Dr. Wallace S. Broecker | | | Institution: | Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, Columbia University | | | Year Elected: | 2015 | | | Class: | 1. Mathematical and Physical Sciences | | | Subdivision: | 105. Physical Earth Sciences | | | Residency: | Resident | | | Living? : |
Deceased
| | | Birth Date: | 1931 | | | Death Date: | February 18, 2019 | | | | | | |
For more than half a century Wally Broecker devoted his life to study of the role of the oceans in climate change. By using isotopic analysis to study physical mixing and chemical cycling in the ocean, he developed a picture of the ocean’s thermohaline circulations as comprising a conveyor belt. He showed this global conveyor belt to be susceptible to sudden shifts from one mode to another, and in the process able to trigger changes in climate that are not slow to develop but instead abrupt. This conceptual framework, which he outlined in more than 450 papers and ten books, provides an essential starting point for our present-day understanding of climate, dating back to the Pleistocene and extending forward to its long-term future outlook. Broecker was a recipient of the National Medal of Science (1996) and numerous other honors. Wallace Broecker died February 18, 2019 in Manhattan at the age of 87. | |
| 6 | Name: | Dr. Vicki L. Chandler | | | Institution: | Minerva University | | | Year Elected: | 2015 | | | Class: | 2. Biological Sciences | | | Subdivision: | 207. Genetics | | | Residency: | Resident | | | Living? : |
Living
| | | Birth Date: | 1950 | | | | | | |
Dr. Chandler’s career spans the fields of education, science and non-profit leadership. She joined Minerva Schools at KGI as Dean of Natural Sciences in 2015. Prior to joining Minerva, Dr. Chandler was a Chief Program Officer for 6 years, leading the Science Program for the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation, which invests approximately $100 million per year to advance scientific innovation and discovery across a breadth of scientific areas. She is an emeritus Regents’ Professor in the Departments of Plant Sciences and the BIO5 Institute, at the University of Arizona. She was also previously on the faculty at the University of Oregon’s Institute for Molecular Biology and Biology Department. Throughout her academic career she taught undergraduate and graduate courses in Biology, Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology. Dr. Chandler has conducted research on the epigenetic control of gene expression in plants and animals for three decades, with funding from the National Science Foundation, National Institutes of Health and the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Her honors and awards include a Presidential Young Investigator Award, Searle Scholar Award, the NSF Faculty Award for Women Scientists and Engineers, and the NIH Director’s Pioneer Award. She was appointed to the National Science Board in 2014 by President Obama and was elected to the National Academy of Sciences in 2002, later serving on its governing council from 2007-2010. She has served extensively on national advisory boards and panels for NSF, DOE, USDA, NIH, Howard Hughes Medical Institute and the National Academies of Science. She received her BA from the University of California, Berkeley and her PhD from the University of California San Francisco and was a postdoctoral fellow at Stanford University. | |
| 7 | Name: | Dr. Joanne Chory | | | Institution: | The Salk Institute; Howard Hughes Medical Institute | | | Year Elected: | 2015 | | | Class: | 2. Biological Sciences | | | Subdivision: | 207. Genetics | | | Residency: | Resident | | | Living? : |
Living
| | | Birth Date: | 1955 | | | | | | |
Joanne Chory is an Investigator with the Howard Hughes Medical Institute and is Professor at The Salk Institute for Biological Studies in La Jolla, where she directs the Plant Biology Laboratory. She is also Adjunct Professor of Biology at the University of California, San Diego.
Dr. Chory is distinguished for her many contributions to modern plant biology. She and her lab members use the model plant, Arabidopsis, to identify pathways involved in plant growth, including components of the photoreceptor pathways that link changes in the light environment with plasticity of plant form.
A native of Massachusetts, Joanne Chory received an A.B. degree in biology with honors from Oberlin College, OH, a Ph.D. in microbiology from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and conducted postdoctoral research at Harvard Medical School. In 1988, she joined the faculty of the Salk Institute, where she has remained. Dr. Chory has served on numerous advisory committees and editorial boards, and is the recipient of several awards. In addition to the APS, she is a member of the U.S. National Academy of Science, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and is also a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. Chory is a foreign member of the Royal Society of London and the French Academie des Sciences and a member of the German National Academy of Sciences. Her awards include the Breakthrough Prize (2018), the Gruber Genetics Prize (2018), and the the 2020 Pearl Meister Greengard Prize. | |
| 8 | Name: | Dr. Jonathan F. Fanton | | | Institution: | American Academy of Arts & Sciences | | | Year Elected: | 2015 | | | Class: | 5. The Arts, Professions, and Leaders in Public & Private Affairs | | | Subdivision: | 503. Administrators, Bankers and Opinion Leaders from the Public or Private Sectors | | | Residency: | Resident | | | Living? : |
Living
| | | Birth Date: | 1943 | | | | | | |
Jonathan Fanton has made important contributions to higher education. He served as Associate Provost at Yale, Vice President for Planning at the University of Chicago, and ultimately for a decade as the very effective President of the New School in New York. In philanthropy, he had an extraordinarily successful, decade-long term as President of the MacArthur Foundation and has served as a Board member of the Rockefeller Brothers Fund. Jonathan Fanton was President of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences from 2014 to 2019. | |
| 9 | Name: | Dr. John V. Fleming | | | Institution: | Princeton University | | | Year Elected: | 2015 | | | Class: | 4. Humanities | | | Subdivision: | 402a | | | Residency: | Resident | | | Living? : |
Living
| | | Birth Date: | 1936 | | | | | | |
John Fleming’s main contributions to scholarship have been in three areas—Romance (Old French) literature, the interaction of literary tropes and iconography in medieval painting and sculpture, especially associated with Franciscan spirituality, and Chaucer. His study of the thirteenth-century Roman de la Rose is regarded as a classic exegesis of this multi-layered text and also as a piece of exemplary scholarly prose. The same may be said of his study of Franciscan hermeneutics, From Bonaventure to Bellini, which was a pathbreaking interdisciplinary study. Fleming has also been an indefatigable editor, translator and commentator on medieval Franciscan texts (see his Introduction to the Franciscan Literature of the Middle Ages) and texts, like the Two Poems Attributed to Joachim of Fiore, which were regarded in the thirteenth and fourteenth century as bearing upon the Franciscan experience. Along the way he has made fundamental contributions to literary scholars’ and historians’ understanding and appreciation of matters as diverse as Chaucer’s classical sources and the mental universe of Christopher Columbus. Fleming has regularly, productively and with great wit challenged many of the stultifying orthodoxies regnant for so long in medieval scholarship, not least the concept of ‘courtly love’. Added to his scholarly impact through his published works one must include Fleming’s influence on the field through his teaching. Indeed his reputation as a teacher both of graduate students and undergraduates is legendary. | |
| 10 | Name: | Dr. Claudia Goldin | | | Institution: | Harvard University | | | Year Elected: | 2015 | | | Class: | 3. Social Sciences | | | Subdivision: | 302. Economics | | | Residency: | Resident | | | Living? : |
Living
| | | Birth Date: | 1946 | | | | | | |
Claudia Goldin has made fundamental contributions to our understanding of labor market discrimination, gender roles in employment, the roles of education and health as major components of human capital and the role of human capital in economic growth. She has argued that it is difficult to rationalize occupational sex segregation and wage discrimination in terms of men’s taste for distance from women; instead she constructs a “pollution” model of discrimination in which a new female hire may reduce the prestige of a previously all male occupation. According to the model, occupations requiring productivity above the female median will tend to be segregated, while those below the median will tend to be integrated. In her analysis of the economic slowdown in the U.S. in the 1970s she finds that rising levels of inequality at the end of the 20th century was the root of the problem, not slow productivity growth or economic convergence between nations. In the U.S. educational system, she finds that the virtues characterizing it in the early 20th century may now be considered vices, in that the system that created social mobility now is beset by a lack of standards. In all her work she has illuminated fundamental questions of economic and social development. She won the Erwin Plein Nemmers Prize in Economics "for her groundbreaking insights into the history of the American economy, the evolution of gender roles and the interplay of technology, human capital and labor markets" in 2020. | |
| 11 | Name: | Dr. Linda Gordon | | | Institution: | New York University | | | Year Elected: | 2015 | | | Class: | 3. Social Sciences | | | Subdivision: | 303. History Since 1715 | | | Residency: | Resident | | | Living? : |
Living
| | | Birth Date: | 1940 | | | | | | |
Linda Gordon was Vilas Distinguished Research Professor at the University of Wisconsin until 1999 and is now University Professor of the Humanities and professor of history at NYU. Her PhD was in Russian history and her dissertation was published as Cossack Rebellions: Social Turmoil in the Ukraine (1983). Turning then to US history, her early books focused on the historical roots of social policy issues, particularly as they concern gender and family issues, including Woman's Body, Woman's Right: The History of Birth Control in America (1976), revised edition titled The Moral Property of Women (2002); Heroes of Their Own Lives: The History and Politics of Family Violence; and Pitied But Not Entitled (1988): Single Mothers and the History of Welfare (1994). She then turned to narrative or "microhistory" as a way of illuminating historical developments. Her 1999 book, The Great Arizona Orphan Abduction, the story of a vigilante action against Mexican-Americans, won the Bancroft prize for best book in American history and the Beveridge prize for best book on the history of the Western Hemisphere. Her Dorothea Lange: A Life Beyond Limits won a second Bancroft prize, the Los Angeles Times Book Prize for Biography, and the National Arts Club prize for best arts writing. She discovered (in archives) unnoticed and never published Lange photographs of the internment of Japanese Americans during World War II, commissioned and then impounded by the US Army because of their critical perspective; she published these in 2006 as Impounded: Dorothea Lange and Japanese Americans in World War II. Most recently she co-authored Feminism Unfinished: A Short, Surprising History of American Women’s Movements (2014) and edited for Aperture Dorothea Lange: Masters of Photography (2014). | |
| 12 | Name: | Mr. David Haas | | | Institution: | Wyncote Foundation; William Penn Foundation | | | Year Elected: | 2015 | | | Class: | 5. The Arts, Professions, and Leaders in Public & Private Affairs | | | Subdivision: | 503. Administrators, Bankers and Opinion Leaders from the Public or Private Sectors | | | Residency: | Resident | | | Living? : |
Living
| | | Birth Date: | 1955 | | | | | | |
David Haas is a philanthropist working with a number of foundations that were created by his grandparents, Otto and Phoebe Haas, and parents, John and Chara Haas. From 1999-2009, he served on the board of directors of the Rohm & Haas Company, founded by Otto Haas and chemist Otto Rohm in 1909, which grew to become a global Fortune 500 company. Haas has a history of supporting public media and journalism locally and nationally, and arts, culture and green space efforts in Philadelphia. He has served on the board of the William Penn Foundation since 1982, and as board chair since 1993 for all but four of those years. WPF, founded in 1945 by his grandparents, makes grants in the Greater Philadelphia region, in the program areas: Great Learning, Watershed Protection, and Creative Communities. Now one of the 40 largest foundations in the country, its current annual grant budget is $105 million and has an endowment of about $2 billion. Haas also serves on the board of the Wyncote Foundation, which was created in 2009 by John C. Haas. Wyncote supports efforts in culture, community and the natural environment. Since 2002, He has served as board chair of Media Impact Funders, a network of funders supporting and a wide public service media and digital technology efforts that strengthen communities. From 1989-1997, he ran the Philadelphia Independent Film/Video Association, a service organization for independent film, video and audio makers based in the Philadelphia area. Born in 1955, Haas grew up in the area suburbs, is the father of three sons and has been a resident of the City of Philadelphia since 1981. In 2015 he was awarded the Carnegie Medal of Philanthropy. | |
| 13 | Name: | Dr. John P. Holdren | | | Institution: | Office of Science and Technology Policy, Executive Office of the President of the United States | | | Year Elected: | 2015 | | | Class: | 5. The Arts, Professions, and Leaders in Public & Private Affairs | | | Subdivision: | 503. Administrators, Bankers and Opinion Leaders from the Public or Private Sectors | | | Residency: | Resident | | | Living? : |
Living
| | | Birth Date: | 1944 | | | | | | |
Dr. John P. Holdren was President Obama’s Science and Technology Advisor and the Senate-confirmed Director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, 2009-2017. He was also the Chair (on behalf of the President) of the interagency National Science and Technology Council, Chair of the Arctic Executive Steering Committee, Co-Chair of the National Oceans Council, Co-Chair of the Council on Climate Preparedness and Resilience, and Co-Chair of the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology (PCAST). He has returned to Harvard University as the Teresa and John Heinz Professor of Environmental Policy at the John F. Kennedy School of Government and Professor of Environmental Science and Policy in the Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences.
Trained in aerospace engineering and theoretical plasma physics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Stanford University, he is a member of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences, the U.S. National Academy of Engineering, and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, as well as a foreign member of the Royal Society of London and a former President of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.
His awards include one of the first MacArthur Foundation Prize Fellowships (1981), the Volvo International Environment Prize (1993), the Tyler Prize for Environment (2000), the Heinz Prize for Public Policy (2001), and the Moynihan Prize (2018). In 1995 he gave the acceptance speech for the Nobel Peace Prize on behalf of the Pugwash Conferences on Science and World Affairs, an international organization of scientists and public figures in which he served in leadership positions from 1982 to 1997.
Prior to joining the Obama administration, Dr. Holdren was a professor in both the Kennedy School of Government and the Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences at Harvard University, as well as Director of the independent, non-profit Woods Hole Research Center. From 1973 to 1996 he was on the faculty of the University of California, Berkeley, where he co-founded and co-led the interdisciplinary graduate-degree program in energy and resources.
He served from 1991 to 2005 as a member of the Board of Trustees of the MacArthur Foundation and from 1994 to 2005 as Chairman of the Committee on International Security and Arms Control at the National Academy of Sciences. During the Clinton Administration he served for both terms on PCAST, leading studies on nuclear-materials protection, fusion-energy research, strengthening Federal investments in energy R&D, and international cooperation on energy-technology innovation.
Dr. Holdren has been married since 1966 to Dr. Cheryl E. Holdren, a biologist. They have a son, a daughter, and five grandchildren. John and Cheryl have a home in Falmouth, Massachusetts. | |
| 14 | Name: | Dr. A. J. Hudspeth | | | Institution: | Rockefeller University; Howard Hughes Medical Institute | | | Year Elected: | 2015 | | | Class: | 2. Biological Sciences | | | Subdivision: | 208. Plant Sciences | | | Residency: | Resident | | | Living? : |
Living
| | | Birth Date: | 1945 | | | | | | |
Born and raised in Houston, Jim Hudspeth conducted undergraduate studies at Harvard College and received PhD and MD degrees from Harvard Medical School. Following postdoctoral work at the Karolinska Hospital in Stockholm, he served on the faculties of the California Institute of Technology, the University of California, San Francisco, and the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center. After joining Howard Hughes Medical Institute, Jim moved to The Rockefeller University, where he is F. M. Kirby Professor and Head of the Laboratory of Sensory Neuroscience. Dr. Hudspeth conducts research on hair cells, the sensory receptors of the inner ear. He and his colleagues are especially interested in the active process that sensitizes the ear, sharpens its frequency selectivity, and broadens its dynamic range. They also investigate the replacement of hair cells as a potential therapy for hearing loss. Jim is a member of the National Academy of Sciences and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. | |
| 15 | Name: | Dr. Martin Kern | | | Institution: | Princeton University | | | Year Elected: | 2015 | | | Class: | 4. Humanities | | | Subdivision: | 402b | | | Residency: | Resident | | | Living? : |
Living
| | | Birth Date: | 1962 | | | | | | |
Martin Kern is the inaugural Greg (’84) and Joanna (P13) Zeluck Professor in Asian Studies at Princeton University. Born and educated in Germany, he received his Dr. Phil. In Sinology, German Literature, and Art History from Cologne University in 1996. He taught at the University of Washington and Columbia University before moving to Princeton in 2000. He held fellowships from the Institute for Advanced Studies (2002-03), the American Council of Learned Societies (2006-07), the Chiang Ching-kuo Foundation (2006-07), and the University of Erlangen-Nuremberg (2010-11) and was appointed Astor Visiting Lecturer and Fellow Commoner of The Queen’s College, Oxford University (2013), the inaugural Annual M.I. Rostovtzeff Lecturer, Institute for the Study of the Ancient World, New York University (2010), and Distinguished Professor at the Research Center for Comparative Literature and World Literature, Shanghai Normal University (2014-16). He was awarded a 2018 Guggenheim Fellowship.
Among other functions in Europe, China, and the United States, Kern is co-editor of the pre-eminent sinological journal T’oung Pao (since 2010); founding managing editor of Studies in the History of Chinese Texts (2006); co-editor of Handbook of Oriental Studies, academic board member of the International Center for Studies of Chinese Civilization, Fudan University (Shanghai; 2012); and Executive Council member at the Annual World Conference on Sinology, Renmin University (Beijing; 2014).
Kern’s research cuts broadly across the fields of literature, philology, history, religion, and art in ancient and medieval China, with a dual focus on poetry and the formation of ancient Chinese textuality and cultural memory. The author and editor of nine books and some eighty book chapters and articles (as of 2015), he studies the composition, reception, and canonization of early Chinese texts, including through the analysis of recently excavated manuscripts and from comparative perspectives. He publishes on a wide range of topics, including the history of Chinese literature; the performance of texts in political and religious ritual; authorship as a historical and theoretical problem; issues of writing and orality; the early development of Chinese literary thought; style and rhetoric in philosophy and historiography; the rise of Chinese political philosophy; calligraphy; and the history and current issues of Sinology as a global field. | |
| 16 | Name: | Dr. Thomas W. Laqueur | | | Institution: | University of California, Berkeley | | | Year Elected: | 2015 | | | Class: | 3. Social Sciences | | | Subdivision: | 303. History Since 1715 | | | Residency: | Resident | | | Living? : |
Living
| | | Birth Date: | 1945 | | | | | | |
Thomas Laqueur is arguably one of the most important cultural historians of his generation, worldwide. A trustee of the National Humanities Center and a regular contributor to the London Review of Books, the Times Literary Supplement and the Guardian, his works have been translated into at least fifteen languages. Spanning two millennia of human experience his research and writing treats a remarkable range of topics and sub-fields in the history of western civilization - from literacy, education and popular politics to the scientific understanding of sex-differentiation, the origins of human rights and the cultural meanings of death. As a founding member of the editorial board of the journal Representations, he was a co-creator of what came to be called "the new cultural history" - whose hallmark is the deployment of literary and anthropological approaches to the study of major transformations in our understanding of fundamental elements of human experience, elements that had previously been viewed as beyond the scope and reach of historical investigation. | |
| 17 | Name: | Dr. Jianguo Liu | | | Institution: | Michigan State University | | | Year Elected: | 2015 | | | Class: | 2. Biological Sciences | | | Subdivision: | 205. Microbiology | | | Residency: | Resident | | | Living? : |
Living
| | | Birth Date: | 1963 | | | | | | |
A human-environment scientist and sustainability scholar, Jianguo (Jack) Liu holds the Rachel Carson Chair in Sustainability, is University Distinguished Professor, and serves as director of the Center for Systems Integration and Sustainability at Michigan State University (MSU). Liu came to MSU after completing his postdoctoral work at Harvard University. He also has been a guest professor at the Chinese Academy of Sciences and a visiting scholar at Stanford (2001-2002), Harvard (2008) and Princeton (2009).
Liu takes a holistic approach to addressing complex human-environmental challenges through systems integration (e.g., integration of ecology with social sciences). His broad research interests include coupled human and natural systems; global sustainability; telecouplings (socioeconomic and environmental interactions over distances); conservation; China's environment; and complex interactions among pandas, people, and policies. His work has been published in journals such as Nature and Science, and has been widely covered by the international news media (e.g., The New York Times, BBC, Xinhua News Agency). Liu has served on various international and national committees. He is a past president of the U.S. Regional Association of the International Association for Landscape Ecology (US-IALE). He also is a member of the Board of Reviewing Editors for Science magazine and leads the International Network of Research on Coupled Human and Natural Systems (CHANS-Net.org).
In recognition of his efforts and achievements in research and service, Liu has been given many awards and honors. They include the Guggenheim Fellowship Award, Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), Fellow of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences, the CAREER Award from the National Science Foundation, the Distinguished Service Award from US-IALE, the Aldo Leopold Leadership Fellowship from the Ecological Society of America, and the 2021 Gunnerus Sustainability Prize. | |
| 18 | Name: | Dr. N. David Mermin | | | Institution: | Cornell University | | | Year Elected: | 2015 | | | Class: | 1. Mathematical and Physical Sciences | | | Subdivision: | 106. Physics | | | Residency: | Resident | | | Living? : |
Living
| | | Birth Date: | 1935 | | | | | | |
N. David Mermin received an A.B. degree in mathematics from Harvard in 1956. He stayed at Harvard, changing to physics, where he received a Ph.D. in 1961. He spent two postdoctoral years in Rudolf Peierls’ Department of Mathematical Physics in Birmingham England, followed by a year with Walter Kohn at the University of California, San Diego, before he joined Physics Department at Cornell University in 1964. Mermin was Director of Cornell’s Laboratory of Atomic and Solid State Physics from 1984 to 1990, and retired from Cornell as the Horace White Professor of Physics Emeritus, in 2006.
He is known for the Mermin-Wagner theorem in statistical mechanics, the Mermin-Ho relation in low-temperature physics, and the Lindhard-Mermin dielectric function in metals physics. He extended the fundamental theorem of density-functional theory to thermal equilibrium (chemistry), reformulated space-groups to include aperiodic crystals (crystallography), and applied topology to the theory of defects (condensed matter physics). He has written extensively about foundational issues in quantum mechanics.
His 1976 book Solid State Physics (with Neil W. Ashcroft) has been translated into six languages and remains the major text in the field, though still in its original edition. His Quantum Computer Science (2007) offers a unique perspective on this new, growing field. In addition to these two technical books he has written four books for a general audience. Space and Time in Special Relativity (1968) and It’s About Time (2005) give unusual and quite different expositions of special relativity, using no mathematical tools beyond plane geometry and some very elementary algebra. Boojums All the Way Through (1990) and Why Quark Rhymes with Pork (2016) are collections of his popular essays and lectures.
Mermin is well-known for his thirty "Reference Frame" columns commenting on physics and the practice of physics, that appeared in Physics Today between 1988 and 2009. All can be found in his quark-pork volume. His efforts to reconcile the two sides in the "science wars" of the 1990s met with more indignation than approval, from both factions. He has held dozens of named visiting lectureships throughout the United States and Europe.
He was a member of the Advisory Board of the Institute for Theoretical Physics, University of California, Santa Barbara, from 1985 to 1989; a member of the Executive Committee of the Cornell Materials Science Center, in the 1980s; a member of the advisory board of arXiv.org in the late 90s and early 00s, and at various times a member of the editorial boards of the American Journal of Physics, Physics in Perspective, and Studies in History and Philosophy of Modern Physics.
Mermin was a 1970 Guggenheim Foundation Fellow, a 1988 member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and a 1991 member of the National Academy of Sciences. In 1989 he received the first Julius Edgar Lilienfeld Prize of the American Physical Society, in 1994, the Klopsteg Memorial Award of the American Association of Physics Teachers, in 1997 Cornell’s Russell Distinguished Teaching Award, and in 2010 the Majorana "Best Person in Physics" Prize.
In retirement he continues to write and lecture on quantum foundations, works very hard at the piano (struggling to master, for example, the Chopin G Minor Ballade),
and collaborates with his wife Dorothy, the Goldwin Smith Professor of English Emerita, on maintaining their house and the surrounding eight acres of gardens, meadows, and woodlands in the town of Dryden, New York, just outside of Ithaca.
"N." stands for "Nathaniel", which the USA Patriot Act is slowly requiring the world to call him. | |
| 19 | Name: | Dr. Maryam Mirzakhani | | | Year Elected: | 2015 | | | Class: | 1. Mathematical and Physical Sciences | | | Subdivision: | 104. Mathematics | | | Residency: | Resident | | | Living? : |
Deceased
| | | Birth Date: | 1977 | | | Death Date: | July 15, 2017 | | | | | | |
Maryam Mirzakhani was the first female recipient of the Fields Medal, the leading international prize for mathematical research that must be awarded by the age of 40. To earn this distinction she had made outstanding contributions to understanding the dynamics and geometry of two-dimensional surfaces (known as Riemann surfaces) and their deformation (or moduli) spaces. She extended and integrated insights developed by other mathematical pioneers such as Thurston, Ratner, Margulis, and Bers in a wide variety of fields including algebraic geometry, topology and probability theory. Her work probed the structure of these moduli spaces by studying the behavior of simple geodesics, which are curves on the surface with no self-intersections that minimize the distance between any two points lying sufficiently close to each other on the curve. Mirzakhani and her coworkers produced the long sought-after proof of the conjecture that while the closure of a real geodesic in moduli space can be fractal the closure of a complex geodesic is always well-behaved, indeed an algebraic subvariety.
Born in Iran, Mirzakhani completed a bachelor's degree at Sharif University of Technology in Tehran and completed her doctorate at Harvard University. She was a professor at Princeton University before moving to Stanford University in 2008. Dr. Mirzakhani died July 15, 2017, at the age of 40. | |
| 20 | Name: | Dr. May-Britt Moser | | | Institution: | Centre for Algorithms in the Cortex, Norwegian University of Science and Technology | | | Year Elected: | 2015 | | | Class: | 2. Biological Sciences | | | Subdivision: | 208. Plant Sciences | | | Residency: | International | | | Living? : |
Living
| | | Birth Date: | 1963 | | | | | | |
May-Britt Moser is a Professor of Neuroscience and Director of the Centre for Neural Computation at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology in Trondheim. She is interested in the neural basis of spatial location and spatial specifically and cognition more generally. Her work, conducted with Edvard Moser as a long-term collaborator, includes the discovery of grid cells in the entorhinal cortex. The discovery of grid cells was succeeded by identification of other functional cell types, including head direction cells, conjunctive cells and border cells and collectively the findings point to the entorhinal cortex as a hub for the brain network that makes us find our way. May-Britt Moser received her initial training at the University of Oslo under the supervision of Dr. Per Andersen. She worked as a post-doc with Richard Morris and John O’Keefe in 1996, before she accepted a faculty position at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology. She became a Co-Director of the Centre for the Biology of Memory in 2002 and the Kavli Institute for Systems Neuroscience in 2007. In 2012, she was appointed Director of the newly established Centre for Neural Computation. Together with Edvard Moser, she has received a number of awards, including the 2014 Nobel Prize in Medicine or Physiology. | |
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