American Philosophical Society
Member History

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1Name:  Justice Rosalie Silberman Abella
 Institution:  Supreme Court of Canada
 Year Elected:  2018
 Class:  5. The Arts, Professions, and Leaders in Public & Private Affairs
 Subdivision:  502. Physicians, Theologians, Lawyers, Jurists, Architects, and Members of Other Professions
 Residency:  International
 Living? :   Living
 Birth Date:  1946
   
 
Justice Rosalie Abella, born in a displaced persons’ camp to survivors of Theresienstadt and Buchenwald and brought to Canada as a young child, has been honored around the world as a leading voice for human rights among judges of the world’s high courts. Abella is an expert on human rights law and has taught at McGill Law School. She has authored several books and over 75 articles. She was called to the Ontario bar in 1972 and appointed to the Canadian Supreme Court in 2004. Her 14 years on the Canadian Supreme Court have been distinguished for the clarity and wisdom of her opinions. At an earlier phase of her career, her work on equal employment opportunity established an analytical framework that the Canadian Supreme Court and courts around the world have adopted. In the past she has been a member of the Human Rights Commission of Ontario, of the Ontario Public Service Labour Relations Tribunal, and was the first woman chair of the Ontario Labour Relations Board. Rosalie Silberman Abella was elected a member of the American Philosophical Society in 2018.
 
2Name:  Dr. Jean Dalibard
 Institution:  Collège de France
 Year Elected:  2018
 Class:  1. Mathematical and Physical Sciences
 Subdivision:  106. Physics
 Residency:  International
 Living? :   Living
 Birth Date:  1958
   
 
Jean Dalibard was educated at Ecole normale supérieure in Paris, where he completed a Ph.D. in 1986 with Claude Cohen-Tannoudji. He worked at the French Center for Scientific Research (CNRS) for the first part of his carrier, before joining Collège de France in 2012 where he holds the chair Matter and Radiation. He has also been a Professor at Ecole polytechnique for more than 20 years. Dalibard’s scientific work is concerned with atomic physics and optics, more specifically with the control of the motion of atoms with light. The starting point of this research field is quite paradoxical: by shining laser beams on a gas, it is possible to cool it to extremely low temperatures, less than a millionth of a degree above absolute zero. Such a low temperature can give rise to novel states of matter whose behavior, governed by Quantum Mechanics, is radically different from a normal fluid. Together with Cohen-Tannoudji, Dalibard contributed to the understanding of the mechanisms at the origin of this phenomenon, working notably on Sisyphus cooling and on the magneto-optical trap. Later, Dalibard and his team studied experimentally the properties of these gases when they are set in rotation, and they could observe the nucleation of a lattice of quantized vortices resulting from this circular motion. During the last decade, his research has been focused on the "physics of Flatland", i.e. the specific properties of a fluid when it is constrained to move only in a plane instead of the usual three-dimensional space. The long-term goal of his research is to develop cold atom setups that can emulate other physical systems that are yet poorly understood - in condensed matter physics for example - in order to bring experimental answers to important pending questions. Jean Dalibard has received several awards, notably the Davisson-Germer Prize from the American Physical Society, the Max Born award from the Americal Physical Society and the Prix Jean Ricard form the French Physical Society. He is a member of the French Academy of Sciences, of the European Academy of Science, the Academia Europaea, and an international member of the US National Academy of Sciences. He has been a visiting scientist in a number of places outside France, notably NIST Gaithersburg and Cambridge University in the UK.
 
3Name:  Dr. Christopher Martin Dobson
 Institution:  University of Cambridge
 Year Elected:  2018
 Class:  1. Mathematical and Physical Sciences
 Subdivision:  102. Chemistry and Chemical Biochemistry
 Residency:  International
 Living? :   Deceased
 Birth Date:  1949
 Death Date:  September 8, 2019
   
 
Christopher Dobson's research greatly clarified the process of protein misfolding and its link to degenerative diseases. As a result, he contributed to the scientific understanding of Alzheimer's and Parkinson's diseases. He published over 800 papers and review articles. Additionally, his publications are unusually impactful, being cited frequently in the research of others. In addition to leading his productive research group, Dobson effectively performed the role of Master of St. John's College, notably by leading the expansion of full bursaries for disadvantaged students. Among his numerous honors is the Royal Medal, awarded to him in 2009 by the Royal Society, of which he was a member. Christopher Dobson was elected a member of the American Philosophical Society in 2018. He died September 8, 2019 in London, England at the age of 69.
 
4Name:  Dr. Jakob Lothe
 Institution:  University of Oslo
 Year Elected:  2018
 Class:  4. Humanities
 Subdivision:  402a
 Residency:  International
 Living? :   Living
 Birth Date:  1950
   
 
Jakob Lothe is professor of English literature at the University of Oslo. Combined with this position, he has also been an adjunct professor at the University of Bergen. He has been an invited visiting scholar at St. John’s College, University of Oxford (1996-1997), Harvard University (2005), University of Cape Town (2010), and Regent’s Park College, University of Oxford (2017-2018). Lothe’s main research interest is narrative theory and analysis. He has developed an original method that combines constituent elements of classical narratology, rhetorical narrative theory, narrative hermeneutics, memory studies, and studies of the narrative ethics of fiction and film. In his current work, Lothe aims to improve our understanding of the ethics of storytelling, while at the same time highlighting the key role of the ethics which readers and viewers take with them to the act, and experience, of reading and viewing. His books include Conrad’s Narrative Method (Oxford UP, 1989), Narrative in Fiction and Film (Oxford UP, 2000), and, as editor or co-editor, Joseph Conrad (Ohio State UP, 2008), Franz Kafka (Ohio State UP, 2011), After Testimony: The Ethics and Aesthetics of Holocaust Narrative for the Future (Ohio State UP, 2012), Narrative Ethics (Rodopi, 2013), Time’s Witnesses: Women’s Voices from the Holocaust (Fledgling Press, 2017), and The Future of Literary Studies (Novus Press, 2017). Lothe is a member of the Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters and the leader of the Academy’s committee on human rights. The committee works for the release of researchers who have been imprisoned in violation of their human rights and to prevent torture and use of the death penalty.
 
5Name:  Dr. Avishai Margalit
 Institution:  Hebrew University of Jerusalem
 Year Elected:  2018
 Class:  4. Humanities
 Subdivision:  406. Linguistics
 Residency:  International
 Living? :   Living
 Birth Date:  1939
   
 
Avishai Margalit is Professor Emeritus of Philosophy at Hebrew University of Jerusalem. He has done important philosophical work on language, rationality, politics, and morality. Though he uses analytical methods, he is notable within analytic philosophy for drawing on the complexity of historical examples and cultural context. One of his most significant contributions is his argument that politics focuses on avoiding evil rather than pursuing the good, and thus that the goal of a decent society that is free of humiliation is prior to the goal of the just society. In addition to his academic work, Avishai Margalit is a public representative of philosophy. He has been a regular contributor to the New York Review of Books since 1984. He has at various times been involved in work towards and promotion of peace in Israel and Palestine. Avishai Margalit was elected a member of the American Philosophical Society in 2018.
 
6Name:  Mr. Orhan Pamuk
 Institution:  Columbia University
 Year Elected:  2018
 Class:  5. The Arts, Professions, and Leaders in Public & Private Affairs
 Subdivision:  501. Creative Artists
 Residency:  International
 Living? :   Living
 Birth Date:  1952
   
 
Orhan Pamuk is one of the greatest of living writers. At the age of 23 he decided to devote himself to writing fiction, though in fact he has done very much more. A series of novels has won him worldwide recognition and countless awards, notably the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2006. He has also written for the stage and screen and his novel Snow was adapted for a staged reading. His international profile and advocacy for human rights and freedom of expression have created challenges for him in his home country. About the time of his Nobel Prize he was tried and acquitted for making "un-Turkish" pronouncements about the Armenian genocide. In addition to his writing, Pamuk has curated a book of photographs of Istanbul, and founded a museum there, the Museum of Innocence. This museum, which displays objects related to his novel of the same name, won the European Museum of the Year Award for 2014. Orhan Pamuk was elected a member of the American Philosophical Society in 2018.
 
7Name:  Dr. Rudolf K. Thauer
 Institution:  Max Planck Institute for Terrestrial Microbiology; Philipps University Marburg
 Year Elected:  2018
 Class:  2. Biological Sciences
 Subdivision:  201. Molecular Biology and Biochemistry
 Residency:  International
 Living? :   Living
 Birth Date:  1939
   
 
Born 1939 in Frankfurt, Germany, I went to school in Wetter, Landshut, Philadelphia, USA (1947-1951) and Bad Nauheim and then studied Medicine and Biochemistry at the Universities of Frankfurt, Tubingen and Freiburg, where I ended my studies 1968 with a PhD in Biochemistry and a Thesis on the "Energy Metabolism of Clostridium kluyveri." Ever since then my scientific interest remained focused on how strictly anaerobic microorganisms conserve energy. Discoveries made were amongst others that carbon monoxide is an intermediate in autotrophic CO2 fixation via the Wood-Ljungdahl pathway and that the trace element nickel is required by many anaerobes as cofactor of carbon monoxide dehydrogenase, hydrogenases and methyl-coenzyme M reductase. The latter enzyme has a nickel tetrapyrrole as prosthetic group and catalyzes both methane formation and methane oxidation in Archaea. After a short postdoc in 1971 with Harland Wood at Case Western University Chicago, I was appointed in 1972 Associate Professor for Biochemistry at the Ruhr University in Bochum, in 1976 Full Professor for Microbiology at the Philipps University Marburg and in 1991 Founding Director of the Max Planck Institute for Terrestrial Microbiology in Marburg. After my retirement as Director at the end of 2007 I continued research at the Max Planck Institute that led together with Wolfgang Buckel to the discovery of flavin-based electron bifurcation that changed our understanding how most anaerobes conserve energy.
 
8Name:  Dr. Robin A. Weiss
 Institution:  University College London
 Year Elected:  2018
 Class:  2. Biological Sciences
 Subdivision:  205. Microbiology
 Residency:  International
 Living? :   Living
 Birth Date:  1940
   
 
Robin Weiss is Emeritus Professor of Viral Oncology at University College London. He has spent most of his career conducting research on oncogenic viruses and on HIV. He is noted for his contributions to the discovery of endogenous retroviral genomes and for identifying CD4 as the HIV receptor. His expanded his research on avian endogenous retroviruses inherited through the host genome to consider mammalian retroviruses including the potential infection hazard by these agents in xenotransplantation of pig tissues to humans. He studied viral oncogenes and viruses involved in AIDS-linked malignancies such as Kaposi’s sarcoma. He showed that in dogs, a sexually transmitted tumor cell clone emerged around 10,000 years ago which has colonized dogs worldwide and continues to spread as a ‘parasite’. He applied pseudotype techniques originally devised for retroviruses to the study of receptors and antibody neutralization for other viruses such as influenza, rabies and ebola. He recently exploited single-chain llama nanobodies for HIV vaccines and diagnostics and he currently investigates the history of infectious diseases. Weiss was Director of Research at the Institute of Cancer Research, London, 1980-1999, and was President of the Society for General Microbiology, 2006-2009. He has chaired the Scientific Advisory Board of the International AIDS Vaccine Initiative and served on the Board of Directors of the Africa Health Research Institute and on the Nuffield Council for Bioethics. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society and a Foreign Associate of the US National Academy of Sciences.
 
Election Year
2018[X]