APS Member History

Results: 11 Items	Modify Search \| New Search
Page: 1	Reset Page

1	Name:	Dr. John C. Avise
	Institution:	University of California, Irvine; University of Georgia
	Year Elected:	2011
	Class:	2. Biological Sciences
	Subdivision:	207. Genetics
	Residency:	Resident
	Living? :	Living
	Birth Date:	1948

	John C. Avise I am a naturalist at heart, a geneticist by training, and my career has been devoted to wedding these two arenas. After obtaining a B.S. degree in Fish Biology at the University of Michigan, I went on to earn a M.A. in Zoology from the University of Texas and a Ph.D. in Genetics from the University of California at Davis. My graduate training came at a time when molecular approaches were being introduced to population genetics, and I began to see that molecular markers could open the entire biological world for genetic scrutiny. Ever since then my students and I have used molecular markers to analyze the natural histories and evolution of wild animals. Topics that we have studied range from micro-evolutionary to macro-evolutionary: genetic parentage and mating systems, geographic population structure, gene flow, hybridization, biogeography, speciation, systematics, and phylogenetics. We have conducted research on diverse vertebrate and invertebrate animals from marine, freshwater, and terrestrial environments. Our typical goal is to unveil behavioral or evolutionary features of organisms, but we also aim to elucidate genetic and evolutionary properties of protein and DNA molecules. The theory and practice of evolutionary genetics are relevant to ecological issues and conservation biology, two areas that provide themes for much of our research. Although I am the acknowledged 'father of phylogeography', I like to think of myself as a broader pioneer in molecular ecology, molecular evolution, and conservation genetics. In addition to hundreds of scientific articles, I have published 20 books on subjects ranging from the science-religion interface to genetic engineering, natural history, molecular ecology, evolution, biogeography, phylogenetics, reproductive modes, educational outreach, and roles for humor in science.

2	Name:	Dr. Francisco José Ayala
	Institution:	University of California, Irvine
	Year Elected:	1984
	Class:	2. Biological Sciences
	Subdivision:	203. Evolution & Ecology, Systematics, Population Genetics, Paleontology, and Physical Anthropology
	Residency:	Resident
	Living? :	Deceased
	Birth Date:	1934
	Death Date:	March 3, 2023

	Francisco J. Ayala is a retired Professor of Biological Sciences at the University of California, Irvine. On June 12, 2002, President George W. Bush awarded him the National Medal of Science at the White House, and in 2010, Dr. Ayala won the Templeton prize. From 1994-2001, Dr. Ayala was a member of the U.S. President's Committee of Advisors on Science and Technology. He has been president and chairman of the board of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (1993-96) and of Sigma Xi, The Scientific Research Society of the U.S (2004-05). Dr. Ayala is a member of the National Academy of Sciences, the American Academy of Arts & Sciences and numerous foreign academies and has received many prizes and honorary degrees. Born in Madrid, Spain, he has lived in the United States since 1961 and became a U.S. citizen in 1971. He has published more than 1,000 articles and is author or editor of 37 books. His scientific research focuses on population and evolutionary genetics, including the origin of species, genetic diversity of populations, the origin of malaria, the population structure of parasitic protozoa, and the molecular clock of evolution. He also writes about the interface between religion and science and on philosophical issues concerning epistemology, ethics, and the philosophy of biology. Francisco José Ayala died on March 3, 2023, in Irvine, CA, at the age of 88.

3	Name:	Dr. Ralph J. Cicerone
	Institution:	National Academy of Sciences; University of California, Irvine
	Year Elected:	2000
	Class:	1. Mathematical and Physical Sciences
	Subdivision:	105. Physical Earth Sciences
	Residency:	Resident
	Living? :	Deceased
	Birth Date:	1943
	Death Date:	November 5, 2016

	Ralph Cicerone received his Ph.D. in electrical engineering, with a minor in physics, from the University of Illinois in 1970. He joined the faculty of the University of Michigan in 1972 as a research scientist and assistant professor in the department of electrical and computer engineering. In 1978 he moved to the Scripps Institution of Oceanography at the University of California, San Diego, where he was a research chemist. He served as a senior scientist and Director of the Atmospheric Chemistry Division at the National Center for Atmospheric Research from 1980-89. He then became the Daniel G. Aldrich Professor of Earth System Science at the University of California, Irvine, where he chaired the department of Earth System Science from 1989-94. Dr. Cicerone was appointed Chancellor of the University of California, Irvine in 1998. In 2005 he became President of the National Academy of Sciences and was reelected in 2011. He served until 2016. Ralph Cicerone's research has greatly increased our understanding of the biogeochemical cycling of trace gases through the atmosphere, especially concerning ozone depletion and increased greenhouse gases such as methane. He was one of the first to point out the potential for global ozone depletion by stratospheric chlorine. With Ramanathan and with Dickinson, he wrote early papers on the radiative forcing of global climate change due to trace gases and he lectured widely on human causes of climate change and energy usage. In addition to the cumulative body of research, he was a leader in science policy issues. Dr. Cicerone received the United Nations Environment Program Ozone Award in 1997, the Bower Award and Prize for Achievement in Science from the Franklin Institute in 1998, and the American Geophysical Union's 2002 Roger Revelle Medal in recognition of outstanding research contributions to the understanding of the Earth's atmospheric processes, and the 2004 Einstein Prize for Science from the World Cultural Council. A member of the National Academy of Sciences, the American Academy of Arts & Sciences, the Accademia dei Lincei and the Russian Academy of Sciences, he also served as president of the American Geophysical Union. He was elected a member of the American Philosophical Society in 2000. Ralph Cicerone died November 5, 2016, at the age of 73.

4	Name:	Dr. Michael T. Clegg
	Institution:	University of California, Irvine
	Year Elected:	2012
	Class:	2. Biological Sciences
	Subdivision:	207. Genetics
	Residency:	Resident
	Living? :	Living
	Birth Date:	1941

	Michael T. Clegg received his B.S. and Ph.D. degrees in agricultural genetics and genetics respectively at the University of California, Davis. In 1972 he joined the faculty of Brown University moving from there to the University of Georgia in 1976. In 1984, he assumed the position of Professor of Genetics at the University of California, Riverside, where he also served as Dean of the College of Natural and Agricultural Sciences from 1994 to 2000 and founding director of the Genomics Institute from 2000 to 2004. He assumed his present position as Donald Bren Professor of Biological Sciences at the University of California, Irvine, in 2004. Clegg's research specialty is population genetics and molecular evolution. His early work in population genetics focused on the dynamical behavior of linked systems of genes in plant and Drosophila populations. During this period, he also contributed to the theoretical study of multilocus systems employing computer simulations together with the analysis of mathematical models. Later he helped pioneer the comparative analysis of cholorplast DNA variation as a tool for the reconstruction of plant phylogenies. His current work is concerned with the use of genomic data and coalescent models to study crop plant domestication in barley and avocado. Clegg is also heavily engaged in international science policy and science diplomacy through his role as Foreign Secretary of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences. During an academic career of over 40 years, Clegg has published more than 160 research articles and book chapters and he has coauthored or edited nine books. Clegg was elected to membership in the National Academy of Sciences in 1990 and he was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1992. He was elected Foreign Secretary of the National Academy of Sciences in 2002 and reelected in 2006 and 2010. He has also served as President of the American Genetic Association and President of the International Society for Molecular Biology & Evolution. He is an Associate Fellow of the Academy of Sciences of the Developing World (TWAS) and a corresponding member of several foreign academies. He was elected a member of the American Philosophical Society in 2012.

5	Name:	Dr. Zachary Fisk
	Institution:	University of California, Irvine
	Year Elected:	2010
	Class:	1. Mathematical and Physical Sciences
	Subdivision:	106. Physics
	Residency:	Resident
	Living? :	Living
	Birth Date:	1941

	Following an undergraduate physics major at Harvard, I trained with Bernd Matthias at the then new University of California, San Diego, graduating in 1969. After a post doctoral year at Imperial College with Bryan Coles and a year as assistant professor at the University of Chicago, I returned as a research physicist to San Diego and spent the next decade in research on new superconducting and magnetic materials. In 1981, I went to Los Alamos National Laboratory as a staff member with the idea to study the f-electron physics of actinides from a materials driven standpoint. There followed the discovery of so-called heavy Fermion superconductivity in UBe13 and UPt3, the first examples known in this class of superconducting materials after their original discovery of in CeCu2Si2 by Steglich. These materials provided the first convincing evidence of a non-BCS and hence non-trivial superconducting order which has since been found in materials such as the high Tc cuprates. This research on superconductivity at the remarkably fertile boundary with magnetism has been my main research focus and has continued at the National High Magnetic Field Laboratory in Tallahassee (1994 - 2004) and then at the Universities of California at Davis and now Irvine. A long standing amateur interest has been investigating the Gallina Culture of northern New Mexico. These people occupied hundreds of square miles in canyons and on high mesas along the continental divide in small, often highly defensive, villages over several centuries before vanishing in the late 13th century. My interest has been in trying to understand the physical layout of sites, many of which are well removed from food and water sources.

6	Name:	Dr. Walter M. Fitch
	Institution:	University of California, Irvine
	Year Elected:	2000
	Class:	2. Biological Sciences
	Subdivision:	203. Evolution & Ecology, Systematics, Population Genetics, Paleontology, and Physical Anthropology
	Residency:	Resident
	Living? :	Deceased
	Birth Date:	1929
	Death Date:	March 10, 2011

	Walter Fitch received a Ph.D. in comparative biochemistry at the University of California, Berkeley in 1958. He was a professor at the University of Wisconsin Medical School, Madison for twenty-four years before moving to the University of California, Irvine in 1986, where he was Professor of Ecology & Evolutionary Biology. Walter Fitch may be considered the founder of the now widespread discipline of molecular phylogenetics. He developed a method for reconstructing phylogeny based on amino acid sequences and applied it first to the cytochrome c's of 20 species in one of the most cited papers in the field of molecular evolution (Science, 1967). He developed additional methods for phylogeny reconstruction, including parsimony, the most widely used (Systematic Zoology, 1971). Fitch's contributions in molecular evolution have contributed to settle issues such as the phylogeny of South American Indian tribes, the rate of evolution of mice strains, and albumin evolution in reptiles. He pioneered the theory of the molecular evolutionary clock. Most recently, he moved evolutionary theory from reconstructing the past to predicting the future. In a series of papers analyzing the pattern of evolution of the influenza virus, his method has correctly predicted in nine out of eleven years the strain that would predominantly infect the human population in the following season, a significant finding in developing vaccines. Dr. Fitch was the founder of the journal Molecular Biology and Evolution, and served as editor-in-chief from 1983-93. He had also served on the editorial board of Systematic Zoology, Journal of Molecular Evolution, and Genomics, and was on the advisory board of Biochemical Genetics since 1966. He was a member of the National Academy of Sciences, the American Academy of Arts & Sciences and the Human Genome Organization, and a foreign member of the Linnean Society. He was elected a member of the American Philosophical Society in 2000. Walter Fitch died on March 10, 2011, at the age of 81 in Irvine, California.

7	Name:	Dr. Elizabeth F. Loftus
	Institution:	University of California, Irvine
	Year Elected:	2006
	Class:	3. Social Sciences
	Subdivision:	305
	Residency:	Resident
	Living? :	Living
	Birth Date:	1944

	For more than three decades, Elizabeth Loftus has been delving into the mysteries of human memory. Her fascination with memory began shortly after completing her undergraduate education at UCLA (where she majored in mathematics and psychology) when she was half way through her graduate education at Stanford, where she received a Ph.D. in psychology. That education helped to transform her from a puzzled, uncertain adolescent into a psychological scientist. Today, Elizabeth Loftus is Distinguished Professor at the University of California, Irvine. She holds positions in the Departments of Psychology & Social Behavior, and Criminology, Law & Society. She also holds appointments in the Department of Cognitive Sciences and the Center for the Neurobiology of Learning and Memory. Formerly, she was Professor of Psychology and Adjunct Professor of Law at the University of Washington, Seattle, where she taught for 29 years. Dr. Loftus's early studies were about semantic memory -- memory for language, concepts and general knowledge of the world. Soon she wanted to study some aspect of memory that had more obvious real-world applications. With a background in memory and a keen interest in legal issues, it was natural to turn to the study of witnesses to legally relevant events, like crimes and accidents. Her earliest studies of eyewitness testimony addressed several issues: When someone sees a crime or accident, how accurate is their memory? What happens when witnesses are questioned by police officers, and what if those questions are biased? Her early findings revealed that leading questions could contaminate or distort a witness's memory. Dr. Loftus began to apply these findings to issues in the justice system, where eyewitness testimony is often crucial evidence. Over the last several decades, she has published extensively on eyewitness memory, covering both its psychological and legal aspects. She has also investigated the issue of the accuracy of memories formed in childhood, and the possibility of recovery later in life of memories of traumatic events that had apparently been repressed. She has devoted much research effort to the possibility that recovered memories may be false, false memories that in some cases are due to therapeutic treatments designed to help patients dredge up memory. She has done scores of studies that show that memories can be distorted by suggestive influences, but also that entirely false memories can be planted in people's minds. She has succeeded in planting false memories of getting lost for an extended time as a child, facing a threat to one's life as a child, witnessing demonic possession as a child, seeing wounded animals as part of a traumatic bombing, and more. Because of the research, Dr. Loftus has been invited to consult or to testify in hundreds of cases, including the McMartin PreSchool Molestation case, the Hillside Strangler, the Abscam cases, the trial of Oliver North, the trial of the officers accused in the Rodney King beating, the Menendez brothers, the Michael Jackson case, the Bosnian War trials in the Hague, the Oklahoma bombing case, and the Martha Stewart case. Dr. Loftus also worked on numerous cases involving allegations of "repressed memories", such as the case involving Cardinal Bernardin of Chicago. The research also has given her opportunities to consult with many government agencies on problems of human memory, including the FBI, the U.S. Secret Service, the Internal Revenue Service, the Department of Justice, and the Central Intelligence Agency. Dr. Loftus has received eight honorary doctorates for her research, the first in 1982 from Miami University (Ohio), and the most recent from Australian National University in 2020. She was the 1998-99 President of the Association of Psychological Science and also served twice as President of the Western Psychological Association. For her research, Dr. Loftus has received numerous awards. She received the two top scientific awards from the Association of Psychological Science: The James McKeen Cattell Fellow Award in 1997 ("for a career of significant intellectual contributions to the science of psychology in the area of applied psychological research") and, in 2001, the William James Fellow Award (for "ingeniously and rigorously designed research studies that yielded clear objective evidence on difficult and controversial questions"). In 2003, the same year that she received the APA Distinguished Scientific Award for Applications of Psychology, she was also elected to membership of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences, and the American Academy of Political and Social Sciences. In 2004 she was elected to the National Academy of Sciences. In 2005, she won the Grawemeyer Prize in Psychology (for Outstanding Ideas in the Science of Psychology), which came with a $200,000 monetary prize. That same year she was elected Corresponding Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh (which is Scotland's National Academy of Science & Letters, Est 1783 - some 40 years after the establishment of the American Philosophical Society). Also that year, she was honored by her own university (UC- Irvine) with the Lauds & Laurels, Faculty Achievement Award, (for "great professional prominence in their field" in research, teaching and public service; 9th recipient in UCI history). Loftus received the Warren Medal from the Society of Experimental Psychologists in 2010, the UC Irvine Medal in 2012, the American Psychological Foundation Gold Medal Award for Lifetime Achievement in 2013, and the Cornell University Lifetime Achievement in Human Development, Law & Psychology Award in 2015. Perhaps one of the most unusual signs of recognition of the impact of Dr. Loftus's research came in a study published by the Review of General Psychology which identified the top 100 most eminent psychologists of the 20th century. Well known names top the list: Freud, Skinner, and Piaget. Elizabeth Loftus was number 58, and the top ranked woman on the list.

8	Name:	Dr. R. Duncan Luce
	Institution:	University of California, Irvine
	Year Elected:	1994
	Class:	3. Social Sciences
	Subdivision:	301. Anthropology, Demography, Psychology, and Sociology
	Residency:	Resident
	Living? :	Deceased
	Birth Date:	1925
	Death Date:	August 11, 2012

	Trained as a mathematician (Ph.D. MIT, 1950) but transformed under the tutelage of many distinguished social and psychological scientists into a mathematical behavioral scientist, R. Duncan Luce worked on a variety of measurement issues. These include probabilistic models of choice and responses times, algebraic formulations that lead to measurement representations such as additive and non-additive conjoint measurement, the interlocks between measurement systems with applications to utility and subjective weights and to aspects of psychophysics. His publications include 8 authored or co-authored volumes, 14 edited or co-edited volumes, and over 220 journal articles. His honors include membership in the American Academy of Arts & Sciences and the National Academy of Sciences; the National Medal of Science; the American Psychological Foundation Gold Medal; the UCI Medal; the Ramsey Medal; the Norman Anderson Award; an honorary doctorate from the University of Waterloo. At the time of his death he was serving as Distinguished Research Professor of Cognitive Sciences and Research Professor of Economics at the University of California, Irvine, where he had been since 1988. Previously he served on the faculties of Harvard University, the Institute for Advanced Study, and the University of Pennsylvania, all at the rank of professor or a name chair. At it's Spring Meeting in 2012, Dr. Luce was awarded the American Philosophical Society's Patrick Suppes Prize in Psychology "in recognition of his distinguished and prolific research and publications in decision-making and utility theory that have continued unabated from the 1950s to the present." R. Duncan Luce died on August 11, 2012, at age 87, in Irvine, California.

9	Name:	Dr. J. Hillis Miller
	Institution:	University of California, Irvine
	Year Elected:	2004
	Class:	4. Humanities
	Subdivision:	402. Criticism: Arts and Letters
	Residency:	Resident
	Living? :	Deceased
	Birth Date:	1928
	Death Date:	February 9, 2021

	J. Hillis Miller taught for many years at the Johns Hopkins University and then at Yale University before moving in 1986 to the University of California, Irvine, where he was UCI Distinguished Research Professor of English and Comparative Literature Emeritus. He was the author of many books and essays on nineteenth and twentieth-century English, European, and American literature, and on literary theory. His most recent books are Others (2001), Speech Acts in Literature (2002), On Literature (2002), and Zero Plus One (2003). His recent work includes a book on speech acts in the novels and stories of Henry James. A J. Hillis Miller Reader has also recently appeared from Edinburgh University Press and Stanford University Press. He died on February 9, 2021.

10	Name:	Dr. Frank Sherwood Rowland
	Institution:	University of California, Irvine
	Year Elected:	1995
	Class:	1. Mathematical and Physical Sciences
	Subdivision:	102. Chemistry and Chemical Biochemistry
	Residency:	Resident
	Living? :	Deceased
	Birth Date:	1927
	Death Date:	March 10, 2012

	Frank Sherwood Rowland was a Nobel laureate and Donald Bren Research Professor of Chemistry and Earth System Science at the University of California, Irvine. His research in atmospheric chemistry and chemical kinetics has had an enormous impact on scientific, industrial and general activity on a global scale. Born in Ohio, Dr. Rowland received his B.A. from Ohio Wesleyan University (1948), then earned his M.S. in 1951 and his Ph.D. in 1952, both from the University of Chicago. He held academic posts at Princeton University (1952-56) and at the University of Kansas (1956-64) before becoming a professor of chemistry at the University of California, Irvine, in 1964. At Irvine in the early 1970s he began working with Mario Molina, with whom he would discover the effects of chlorofluorocarbon gases on the ozone layer of the stratosphere. The pair were awarded the 1995 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for this discovery. Dr. Rowland has won numerous other awards for his work, including the Tyler Prize for Environmental Achievement (1983), the Japan Prize (1989), the Peter Debye Award (1993) and the Roger Revelle Medal (1994). He was elected to the membership of the National Academy of Sciences in 1978, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1977, and the Royal Society (as a foreign member) in 2004. He was elected a member of the American Philosophical Society in 1995. Dr. Rowland died on March 10, 2012, at home in Corona del Mar, California, at the age of 84.

11	Name:	Dr. Robin M. Williams
	Institution:	University of California, Irvine & Cornell University
	Year Elected:	1967
	Class:	3. Social Sciences
	Subdivision:	301. Anthropology, Demography, Psychology, and Sociology
	Residency:	Resident
	Living? :	Deceased
	Birth Date:	1914
	Death Date:	June 3, 2006

	Robin M. Williams, Jr., is Henry Scarborough Professor of Social Science Emeritus, Cornell University, and Visiting Professor, University of California, Irvine (1990-2005). He is a member of the American Philosophical Society, the National Academy of Sciences, and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He received his B.S. (1933) and M.S. (1935) degrees from North Carolina State College and the University of North Carolina. His M.A. (1939) and Ph.D. (1943) are from Harvard University. In 1989 he received a D.Sc. from University of North Carolina, Greensboro. During the Second World War, Williams was Senior Statistical Analyst, European Theater of Operations, U.S. War Department, 1943-46. He has been a visiting professor at many universities, including the University of Oslo, the University of Hawaii, and the University of California, Irvine. He is past president of the American Sociological Association, the Eastern Sociological Society, and the Sociological Research Association. His professional activities include service on the Executive Committee, Assembly of Behavioral and Social Sciences, National Research Council. He served as Editor of the Arnold and Caroline Rose Monograph Series for the American Sociological Association 1977-79, and as Editor of Sociological Forum (from 1984 to 1992). Williams is co-author of The American Soldier (Vols. I-II), 1949; Schools in Transition (1954), and What College Students Think (1960). His other major writings include The Reduction of Intergroup Tensions (1947), Strangers Next Door: Ethnic Relations in American Communities (1964), American Society: A Sociological Interpretation (1st edition, 1951, 2nd edition, 1960, 3rd edition, 1970), and The Wars Within (2003). He was co-editor, with Gerald Jaynes, of A Common Destiny: Blacks and American Society (1989). In 2005, he continued to teach at the University of California, Irvine, as a visiting professor.