| | 1 | Name: | Lord Richard Adrian | | | Institution: | Cambridge & House of Lords | | | Year Elected: | 1987 | | | Class: | 2. Biological Sciences | | | Subdivision: | 201. Molecular Biology and Biochemistry | | | Residency: | International | | | Living? : |
Deceased
| | | Birth Date: | 1927 | | | Death Date: | 4/4/95 | | | | |
| 2 | Name: | Dr. Walter Burkert | | | Institution: | University of Zurich | | | Year Elected: | 1987 | | | Class: | 4. Humanities | | | Subdivision: | 405. History and Philology, East and West, through the 17th Century | | | Residency: | International | | | Living? : |
Deceased
| | | Birth Date: | 1931 | | | Death Date: | March 11, 2015 | | | | | | |
An Emeritus Professor of Classics at the University of Zurich, Walter Burkert was a well-known historian of Greek religion. He brought methodological innovation and keen insight to the ancient texts and materials of his field, and his work has implications for all aspects of ancient Mediterranean studies, from literature to science to philosophy to religion. Dr. Burkert received training in classical philology, history and philosophy at the Universities of Erlangen and Munich, obtained his doctorate in philosophy from the University of Erlangen in 1955 and taught there over much of the next ten years. In 1965 he served as a junior fellow at the Center for Hellenic Studies in Washington, D.C. for one year before becoming a professor of classical philology at the Technical University of Berlin. He joined the faculty of the University of Zurich in 1969 and taught there for 27 years before retiring. He had published books on the balance between lore and science in the followers of Pythagoras; on ritual and archaic cult survival; on the ritual killing at the heart of religion; and on the reception in the Hellenic world of Near Eastern and Persian culture, which sets Greek religion in its wider Aegean and Near Eastern context. Among his works are Homo Necans: The Anthropology of Ancient Greek Sacrificial Ritual and Myth (English translation, 1982), which is considered an outstanding account of concepts in Greek religion; Ancient Mystery Cults (1987); and Creation of the Sacred (1996). Walter Burkert died March 11, 2015, at the age of 84 in Zurich, Switzerland. | |
| 3 | Name: | Dr. Jean-Marie Pierre Lehn | | | Institution: | Collège de France | | | Year Elected: | 1987 | | | Class: | 1. Mathematical and Physical Sciences | | | Subdivision: | 102. Chemistry and Chemical Biochemistry | | | Residency: | International | | | Living? : |
Living
| | | Birth Date: | 1939 | | | | | | |
Jean-Marie Pierre Lehn is professor of chemistry at the Université de Strasbourg, France, where he is director of the Laboratory of Supramolecular Chemistry, ISIS (Institut de Science et d'Ingénierie Supramoléculaires), and professor emeritus at the Collège de France in Paris, where he directed the Laboratory of the Chemistry of Molecular Interactions. His undergraduate studies were conducted at the University of Strasbourg, and he received his doctorate there in 1963. After a year of postdoctoral research at Harvard University, he returned to the University of Strasbourg, becoming professor of chemistry at the Louis Pasteur University in 1970. In 1979, he also became a faculty member at the Collège de France. His work, for which he received the Nobel Prize in chemistry in 1987, has defined the field of supramolecular chemistry. Ostensibly trained as an organic chemist, he has done highly innovative work in theoretical chemistry with ab initio calculations; in physical chemistry with the use of nuclear magnetic resonance to study dynamic processes in solution; in inorganic chemistry through studies of inorganic complexes, electrochemical reduction of carbon dioxide and inorganic photochemistry directed toward energy storage by the photochemical generation of hydrogen from the dissociation of water; in organic chemistry through the synthesis of terpenoids and a variety of new agents for complexing of ions of many kinds in water; and in biochemical research on the design of receptor molecules, transport across membranes and enzymatic reaction mechanisms. | |
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