| | 1 | Name: | Dr. Jack David Dunitz | | | Institution: | Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH), Zurich | | | Year Elected: | 1997 | | | Class: | 1. Mathematical and Physical Sciences | | | Subdivision: | 102. Chemistry and Chemical Biochemistry | | | Residency: | International | | | Living? : |
Deceased
| | | Birth Date: | 1923 | | | Death Date: | September 12, 2021 | | | | | | |
Jack Dunitz's research interests concentrated on the use of crystal structure analysis as a tool for studying a diversity of chemical problems, such as the structure and reactivity of medium-ring compounds, ion-specificity of natural and synthetic ionophores, and molecular structure-energy relationships. From his laboratory came the method of deriving model pathways for prototypic chemical reactions from the structural information in crystal structures, thus making a connection between the "statics" of crystals and the "dynamics" of reacting chemical systems. Other work in related directions included new interpretations of atomic displacement tensors in crystals in terms of internal molecular motions, and studies of experimental electron density distributions from accurate low-temperature X-ray data. Later in his career, he turned to problems of polymorphism, phase transformations in solids and solid-state chemical reactions. Dr. Dunitz studied chemistry at Glasgow University (Ph.D. 1947) and held research fellowship at Oxford University (1946-1948, 1951-1953), the California Institute of Technology (1948-1951, 1953-1954), the U.S. National Institute of Health (1954-1955) and the Royal Institution, London (1956-1957) before accepting a professorship at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in 1957. He held that post until his retirement in 1990, when he became Emeritus Professor of Chemical Crystallography. Dr. Dunitz been elected to membership of several learned societies, including the Royal Society (1974) and has received several awards for his work. In 2001 he was made an Honorary Fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry. He has more than 300 scientific papers to his credit and is the author of "X-Ray Analysis and the Structure of Organic Molecules" (1979) and "Reflections on Symmetry in Chemistry... and Elsewhere" (1993). Jack Dunitz died on September 12, 2021 at age 98. | |
| 2 | Name: | Dr. Marc Fumaroli | | | Institution: | Collège de France | | | Year Elected: | 1997 | | | Class: | 4. Humanities | | | Subdivision: | 404. History of the Arts, Literature, Religion and Sciences | | | Residency: | International | | | Living? : |
Deceased
| | | Birth Date: | 1932 | | | Death Date: | June 24, 2020 | | | | | | |
Historian and essayist Marc Fumaroli was a professor at the Collège de France and a member of the Academie Française (1995). In recognition of his signal contribution to the history of French and European literature, the Collège de France created a chair in rhetoric for him. The subjects in literature and the arts he addressed, together with his consumate literary style and his acute analysis of both the higher educational system and government cultural policy, secured his election to the French Academy. A native of Marseille, Dr. Fumaroli is the author of over 150 articles and more than 20 books, including Heros et orateurs, Rhetorique e dramaturgie corneliennes (1990); L'Etat culturel. Essai sur une religion moderne, (1992); Trois institutions litteraires (1994); and more recent studies of Poussin (2001), Richelieu (2002) and Chateaubriand (2004). Marc Fumaroli was elected to the American Philosophical Society in 1997. He died June 24, 2020 in Paris, France at the age of 88. | |
| 3 | Name: | Dr. Bert Hölldobler | | | Institution: | Biozentrum of the University of Würzburg; Arizona State University | | | Year Elected: | 1997 | | | Class: | 2. Biological Sciences | | | Subdivision: | 205. Microbiology | | | Residency: | International | | | Living? : |
Living
| | | Birth Date: | 1936 | | | | | | |
Bert Hölldobler is one of the foremost authorities in the world on insect behavior and the behavioral ecology of invertebrate animals. In a series of brilliant experiments and field studies over the past forty years, he has demonstrated the extreme adaptations to the environment of which the insect brain is capable: for example, the demonstration of military-like strategies and "diplomacy" in conflict between ant colonies and the basis of ant trap jaw predation -- the reflex arc and most rapid mechanical movements known in animals. His Pulitzer Prize-winning book (with E.O. Wilson) The Ants is a widely-hailed classic, and The Superorganism, Wilson's and Hölldobler's most recent collaboration, provides another in-depth look at the intricate ways of social insects. As Professor of Zoology Emeritus at the Biozentrum of the University of Würzburg and Foundation Professor of Life Sciences at the Arizona State University School of Life Sciences, Dr. Hölldobler continues his interest in the evolution of social organizations in insects and in the underlying mechanisms that make insect societies work. In 2016 he was awarded the Lorenz Oken Medal. | |
| 4 | Name: | Dr. Pierre Rosenberg | | | Institution: | Musée du Louvre | | | Year Elected: | 1997 | | | Class: | 4. Humanities | | | Subdivision: | 401. Archaeology | | | Residency: | International | | | Living? : |
Living
| | | Birth Date: | 1936 | | | | | | |
After a distinguished career in a series of posts as conservateur at the Louvre Museum as well as Inspector General of France's museums, Pierre Rosenberg became President and Director of the Louvre in 1994. By then he had acquired international prestige as a specialist in French painting and drawing of the 17th and 18th centuries. Among his many books, works on Poussin, Chardin, and Fragonard have become classics in the field. He is the author of catalogues of the drawings of important painters such as Poussin, Watteau and David, as well as of public and private collections of art. He has participated in colloquia, congresses, and round tables throughout the world. He was a member of the Institute for Advanced Study (Princeton) in 1977 and has been chairman of the French Committee on the History of Art. Dr. Rosenberg has been widely recognized for his achievements in art history, conservation, curatorship, and administration. He was elected to the American Academy of Arts & Sciences in 1990, to the Italian Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei in 1995, and to the American Philosophical Society in 1997. In 1995 he joined the ranks of the "immortals" of France when he was elected to the Académie française. He is an Officier of the French Légion d'honneur. In 2001 he retired as President and Director of the Louvre. | |
| 5 | Name: | Dr. Peter Schäfer | | | Institution: | Princeton University & Freie Universität, Berlin | | | Year Elected: | 1997 | | | Class: | 4. Humanities | | | Subdivision: | 405. History and Philology, East and West, through the 17th Century | | | Residency: | International | | | Living? : |
Living
| | | Birth Date: | 1943 | | | | | | |
Peter Schäfer is the Ronald O. Perelman Professor of Jewish Studies and Professor of Religion at Princeton University and concurrently holds the chair of Jewish Studies at the Free University of Berlin. He was a Visiting Professor at the Universities of Oxford, Jerusalem and Yale, at the Jewish Theological Seminary of America in New York and at the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton. In addition to the American Philosophical Society, he is a Fellow of the British Academy and of the Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences and holds an honorary degree (Dr. theol.) from the University of Utrecht, Netherlands. In 1994 he was awarded the Leibniz Prize of 1.5 Million German Mark, the highest award for German scholars. In 2013 he received Princeton University's Howard T. Behrman Award for Distinguished Achievement in the Humanities.
Peter Schäfer has published extensively about rabbinic literature and history, early Jewish mysticism, and Wissenschaft des Judentums. He edited the corpus of Hekhalot literature, the Talmud Yerushalmi and (with Sh. Shaked) magical texts from the Cairo Geniza. His most recent books are Judeophobia: Attitudes toward the Jews in the Ancient World, Cambridge, Mass. & London: Harvard University Press, 1997 (paperback edition 1998), Mirror of His Beauty: Feminine Images of God from the Bible to the Early Kabbalah, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2002 (paperback 2004) and (as editor) The Bar Kokhba War Reconsidered: New Perspectives on the Second Jewish Revolt against Rome, Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck 2003. | |
| 6 | Name: | Professor Quentin Skinner | | | Institution: | University of London | | | Year Elected: | 1997 | | | Class: | 3. Social Sciences | | | Subdivision: | 303. History Since 1715 | | | Residency: | International | | | Living? : |
Living
| | | Birth Date: | 1940 | | | | | | |
Quentin Skinner was Regius Professor of Modern History at Cambridge University from 1996 to 2008. He is now Barber Beaumont Professor of the Humanities at Queen Mary, University of London. One of the most innovative as well as influential students of political thought in the history of the West now writing, he spent the years 1974-79 at the Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton, and is a valuable representative of the English and European scholarly communities. Dr. Skinner's historical writings have long been characterised by an interest in recovering the ideas of Renaissance republican authors. With John Pocock he is regarded as one of the two principal members of the influential "Cambridge School" of the study of the history of political thought. Dr. Skinner's particular contribution was to articulate a theory of interpretation which concentrated on recovering the author's intentions in writing classic works of political theory. Of continuing interest have been the works of Machiavelli, Thomas More and Thomas Hobbes. Dr. Skinner received his M.A. from Cambridge in 1962 and has served the university ever since as a lecturer and professor. He is a member of the British Academy and the American Academy of Arts & and Sciences and the recipient of the Wolfson Literary Award (1979). His publications include Foundations of Modern Political Thought (2 vol., 1978); Reason and Rhetoric in the Philosophy of Hobbes (1996); Liberty Before Liberalism (1998); and Hobbes and Republican Liberty (2008). | |
| 7 | Name: | Dr. Alexander S. Spirin | | | Institution: | Moscow State University & Russian Academy of Sciences | | | Year Elected: | 1997 | | | Class: | 2. Biological Sciences | | | Subdivision: | 201. Molecular Biology and Biochemistry | | | Residency: | International | | | Living? : |
Deceased
| | | Birth Date: | 1931 | | | Death Date: | December 30, 2020 | | | | | | |
Alexander S. Spirin was a world-class Russian scientist who has contributed much that is ingenious and original to our understanding of the structure and function of ribosomes - the intricate molecular machines that synthesize the proteins of cells. He has provided fascinating insight into the interplay between various types of ribonucleic acids and proteins that make up these machines. He has done this by taking ribosomes apart and then sucessfully reassembling them: a major achievement. Currently Professor of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology at Moscow State University and the Director of the Institute of Protein Research at the Russian Academy of Sciences, Dr. Spirin has created a body of work that is important, elegant and internationally recognized. He died on December 30, 2021. | |
| 8 | Name: | Dr. Claudio Vita-Finzi | | | Institution: | Natural History Museum, London | | | Year Elected: | 1997 | | | Class: | 1. Mathematical and Physical Sciences | | | Subdivision: | 105. Physical Earth Sciences | | | Residency: | International | | | Living? : |
Living
| | | Birth Date: | 1936 | | | | | | |
Claudio Vita-Finzi is a Scientific Associate at London’s Natural History Museum. Educated in Argentina and the UK, he received his PhD and ScD from Cambridge University. He held a personal chair in Neotectonics at University College London between 1988 and 2001 before moving to the Department of Mineralogy at the Museum.
Dr Vita-Finzi has worked on geological chronologies in a wide variety of settings as a means of elucidating the underlying processes. His studies of river deposits in the Mediterranean and the Near East revealed the great changes in the natural landscape of Eurasia that have occurred in the last two millennia. He went on to analyse fault history and the buckling of lithospheric plates in Greece, the Near East, SE Asia and South America, and the role of impacts in the evolution of Venus. His current studies focus on the hydrologic effects of changes in the UV component of solar luminosity.
Dr Vita-Finzi is the author of numerous papers on geochronology, tectonics, fluvial geology and geoarchaeology. His books include The Mediterranean Valleys (1969), Recent Earth History (1973), Archaeological Sites in their Setting (1978), Recent Earth Movements (1986), Monitoring the Earth (2002), Planetary Geology (2005), The Sun - a User’s Guide (2008), and A History of the Solar System (2016). He received the G K Warren Prize of the National Academy of Sciences in 1994 and was elected to the American Philosophical Society in 1997. In 2012 he was elected to the British Academy. | |
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