| | 21 | Name: | Dr. George D. Snell | | | Institution: | Jackson Lab | | | Year Elected: | 1982 | | | Class: | 2. Biological Sciences | | | Subdivision: | 207. Genetics | | | Residency: | Resident | | | Living? : |
Deceased
| | | Birth Date: | 1903 | | | Death Date: | 6/6/96 | | | | |
| 22 | Name: | Dr. Joan Thirsk | | | Institution: | University of Oxford | | | Year Elected: | 1982 | | | Class: | 4. Humanities | | | Subdivision: | 405. History and Philology, East and West, through the 17th Century | | | Residency: | International | | | Living? : |
Deceased
| | | Birth Date: | 1922 | | | Death Date: | October 3, 2013 | | | | | | |
A scholar of agrarian history, Joan Thirsk was Reader in Economic History at the University of Oxford from 1965 to 1983. No one did more to emphasise the significance of the land in early modern England than Dr. Thirsk, whose writings represent an important contribution to the national history while also pointing the way for future research. Dr. Thirsk's many authoritative works include English Peasant Farming (1957); Tudor Enclosures (1959); The Agrarian History of England Wales, IV, 1500-1640 (1967), V, 1640-1760 (1984); The Restoration (1976); Economic Policy and Projects (1978); Alternative Agriculture: A History from the Black Death to the Present Day (1997); Food in Early Modern England: Phases, Fads, Fashions, 1500-1760 (2007); and Hadlow: Life, Land and People in a Wealden Paris, 1460-1600 (2007). She also served as the editor of Agricultural History Review (1964-72). She was an honorary fellow of St. Hilda's College and Kellogg College and had also taught at the London School of Economics. Joan Thirsk was elected an International member of the American Philosophical Society in 1982. She died October 3, 2013, at the age of 91 in Kent, England. | |
| 23 | Name: | Dr. James Thorpe | | | Institution: | Huntington Library, Art Gallery, & Botanical Gardens | | | Year Elected: | 1982 | | | Class: | 4. Humanities | | | Subdivision: | 402. Criticism: Arts and Letters | | | Residency: | Resident | | | Living? : |
Deceased
| | | Birth Date: | 1915 | | | Death Date: | January 4, 2009 | | | | | | |
James Thorpe is a distinguished scholar and former director of the Huntington Library, Art Gallery, and Botanical Gardens, which he led from 1966-83. Throughout his tenure he balanced leadership responsibilities with distinguished contributions to literary-historical methodology and to textual criticism. A professor of English at Princeton University for many years, Dr. Thorpe has written numerous lively works on authors from Chaucer to Milton to Wallace Stevens and has edited publications such as Relations of Literary Study and Principles of Textual Criticism. He served as Senior Research Associate at the Huntington from 1983-99 and is now Director Emeritus. | |
| 24 | Name: | Dr. Gerald J. Wasserburg | | | Institution: | California Institute of Technology | | | Year Elected: | 1982 | | | Class: | 1. Mathematical and Physical Sciences | | | Subdivision: | 105. Physical Earth Sciences | | | Residency: | Resident | | | Living? : |
Deceased
| | | Birth Date: | 1927 | | | Death Date: | June 13, 2016 | | | | | | |
Gerald Joseph Wasserburg was born on March 25, 1927 in New Brunswick, New Jersey, the son of Charles Wasserburg and Sarah (Levine) Wasserburg. He attended New Brunswick public schools and served in the U.S. Army as a rifleman with the 23rd Reg., 2nd Division. He was discharged in 1946 and attended Rutgers University for two years and then the University of Chicago, where he obtained a B.Sc. in physics in 1951 and an M.Sc. in geology in 1952. He served on the Juneau Ice Field Research Project under Henri Bader in 1950 and served as a consultant at the Argonne National Laboratory from 1952-55. He conducted graduate research at the University of Chicago under H. C. Urey and M. G. Inghram III and received his Ph.D. in 1954. He also served as a research associate at the university's Institute for Nuclear Studies from 1954-55. Dr. Wasserburg then moved to the California Institute of Technology, where, in the course of five decades of service, he was assistant professor (1955-59), associate professor (1959-62), professor of geology and geophysics (1962-82), John D. MacArthur Professor of Geology and Geophysics (1982-2001), Chairman of the Division of Geological and Planetary Sciences (1987-89) and Professor Emeritus, (2002-). Dr. Wasserburg also undertook extensive work for NASA as an advisor (1968-88) and as a member of the Lunar Sample Analysis Planning Team (LSAPT), Manned Spacecraft Center (1968-71), the Lunar Sample Review Board (1987-88), the Facilities Working Group of LSAPT, Johnson Space Center (1972-present); the Science Working Panel for Apollo Missions (1971-73); the Physical Sciences Committee (1971-75); and the Lunar Base Steering Committee (1984). He also chaired the Lunar Sample Analysis Planning Team (1970) and the Committee for Planetary and Lunar Exploration (1975-78). Dr. Wasserburg was a fellow of the American Geophysical Union (president, planetology section, 1976) and the Geological Society of America, a member of the Meteoritical Society (vice president, 1985, president, 1987-88) and the American Chemical Society and a former member of the American Physical Society, the U.S. National Committee for Geochemistry, the Committee for Planetary Exploration Study, the National Research Council, and the Advisory Council of the Petroleum Research Fund. He was also the associate editor of the Journal of Geophysical Research (1967-74) and the editor of Earth and Planetary Science Letters (1968-71) and served on the Space Science Board of the National Academy of Sciences. Dr. Wasserburg's research interests included geochemistry, geophysics and astrophysics; the use of the methods of chemical physics to problems in the evolution of the earth and the solar system; and the development of ultra-high precision and high sensitivity mass spectrometric and chemical techniques, and the application of these techniques to determine the time scales of formation of the solar system from the interstellar medium, and the evolution of planets including the earth, moon and meteorites. His major research includes short-lived radioactive nuclei in the early solar system (in particular 26Al and 107Pd); the time scales of nucleosynthesis, chemical evolution of the interstellar medium and the IGM, connections between the interstellar medium and the solar system, and the isotopic records of planetary evolution and chemical differentiation. He had also conducted general study of processes using long- and short-lived natural radioactivities, including the interaction of water and rock and the origin of natural gases, and the application of thermodynamic methods to geologic systems. Dr. Wasserburg's professional honors include membership in the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (1967) and the National Academy of Sciences (1971); NASA's Exceptional Scientific Achievement Award (1970); the Arthur L. Day Medal from the Geological Society of America (1970); NASA's Medal for Distinguished Public Service (1972 & 1978); the J. F. Kemp Medal for Distinguished Public Service from Columbia University (1973); Meteoritical Society's Leonard Medal (1975); the V. M. Goldschmidt Medal of the Geochemical Society (1978); the Arthur L. Day Prize and Lectureship, National Academy of Sciences (1981); a John D. MacArthur Professorship (1982); a Regents Fellowship, Smithsonian Instit.; the J. Lawrence Smith Medal of the National Academy of Sciences (1985); the Geological Society of London's Wollaston Medal (1985); the Senior U.S. Scientist Award, Alexander von Humboldt-Stiftung (1985); the Harry H. Hess Medal of the American Geophysical Union (1985); the Crafoord Prize, Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences (1986); the Holmes Medal, European Union of Geosciences (1987); and the Royal Astronomical Society Gold Medal (1991). He received the Bowie Medal of the American Geophysical Union in 2008. He was also a fellow of the Geological Society of London (honorary, 1995) and the Geochemical Society and the European Association for Geochemistry (1996). Dr. Wasserburg married Naomi Z. Orlick in 1951. The couple have two children: Charles David and Daniel Morris. Gerald Wasserburg died June 13, 2016, at the age of 89. | |
| 25 | Name: | Dr. Steven Weinberg | | | Institution: | University of Texas at Austin | | | Year Elected: | 1982 | | | Class: | 1. Mathematical and Physical Sciences | | | Subdivision: | 106. Physics | | | Residency: | Resident | | | Living? : |
Deceased
| | | Birth Date: | 1933 | | | Death Date: | July 23, 2021 | | | | | | |
Steven Weinberg was the 2004 recipient of the Society's Benjamin Franklin Medal for Distinguished Achievement in Science. He was educated at Cornell University (A.B., 1954) and the Copenhagen Institute for Theoretical Physics (now the Niels Bohr Institute) and received his Ph.D. from Princeton University in 1957. He taught at Columbia University for two years before moving to the University of California, Berkeley. From 1966 to 1969, on leave from Berkeley, Dr. Weinberg held positions at Harvard University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He was a professor at MIT from 1969 to 1973 before officially joining Harvard's faculty in 1973 as the Higgins Professor of Physics. Ten years later Dr. Weinberg moved to the University of Texas as the Josey Regental Professor of Science while continuing at Harvard as the Morris Loeb Visiting Professor of Physics. He has also held positions at the Imperial College, London, and Stanford University, and was a senior scientist at the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory for ten years. Among his many distinctions are the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1979, the National Medal of Science in 1991, the Humanist of the Year award from the American Humanist Association in 2002, and the 2020 Special Breakthrough Prize in Fundamental Physics. The prize certificate citation for Steven Weinberg's Benjamin Franklin Medal for Distinguished Achievement in the Sciences reads, "In recognition of his role as a leading architect of the electroweak theory of interactions, a theory that unites the weak and the electromagnetic forces of nature. This was the first such unification since Maxwell had shown in the nineteenth century that electricity and magnetism are manifestations of the same phenomenon. In recognition of his highly regarded textbooks, including Gravitation and Cosmology and The Quantum Theory of Fields (in 3 volumes); his books for the general audience, most notably The First Three Minutes; and his extensive writing on subjects of public interest, such as ballistic missile defense. The American Philosophical Society salutes Steven Weinberg, considered by many to be the preeminent theoretical physicist alive in the world today." Dr. Weinberg has been a member of the American Philosophical Society since 1982. | |
| 26 | Name: | Dr. Torsten Nils Wiesel | | | Institution: | Rockefeller University | | | Year Elected: | 1982 | | | Class: | 2. Biological Sciences | | | Subdivision: | 208. Plant Sciences | | | Residency: | Resident | | | Living? : |
Living
| | | Birth Date: | 1924 | | | | | | |
Torsten Wiesel is a native of Sweden where he received an M.D. degree from the Karolinska Institute in 1954. In 1955, he joined the Johns Hopkins Medical School and in 1958 was named assistant professor in opthalmic physiology. In 1959, he joined Harvard Medical School and became Chairman of the Department of Neurobiology. He became the Robert Winthrop Professor in 1973. Dr. Wiesel's pioneering studies of the mammalian visual cortex have shaped current understanding of brain structure, function and development. Dr. Wiesel, with his long-time collaborator, Dr. David Hubel, received the 1981 Nobel Prize in Medicine and Physiology. In 1983, he joined Rockefeller University as Head of the Laboratory of Neurobiology and was named the Vincent and Brooke Astor Professor. He became the seventh President of Rockefeller University in 1992 and President Emeritus and Director of the Shelby White and Leon Levy Center for Mind, Brain and Behavior in 1998. Dr. Wiesel is a member of The National Academy of Sciences and The Royal Society. He has received numerous awards and prizes, including the 2012 Distinguished Service Award from the Hospital for Special Surgery, as well as honorary degrees from universities in the United States and Europe. Recently he received the nation's highest honor in science: the 2005 National Medal of Science. He was elected to the American Philosophical Society in 1982. | |
| 27 | Name: | Dr. Vincent B. Wigglesworth | | | Year Elected: | 1982 | | | Class: | 2. Biological Sciences | | | Subdivision: | 202. Cellular and Developmental Biology | | | Residency: | International | | | Living? : |
Deceased
| | | Birth Date: | 1899 | | | Death Date: | 2/12/94 | | | | |
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