Class
| • | 1. Mathematical and Physical Sciences | [X] |
| | 1 | Name: | Dr. Joseph S. Francisco | | | Institution: | University of Pennsylvania; Purdue University | | | Year Elected: | 2021 | | | Class: | 1. Mathematical and Physical Sciences | | | Subdivision: | 102. Chemistry and Chemical Biochemistry | | | Residency: | Resident | | | Living? : |
Living
| | | Birth Date: | 1955 | | | | | | |
Joseph S. Francisco is the President's Distinguished Professor of Earth and Environmental Science and Professor of Chemistry at the University of Pennsylvania. He received his B.S. at the University of Texas at Austin, and he received his Ph.D. from Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Francisco was a Research Fellow at University of Cambridge in England, and a Visiting Associate in Planetary Science at California Institute of Technology. His research has focused on bringing new tools from experimental physical and theoretical chemistry to atmospheric chemical problems to enhance our understanding of chemistry in the atmosphere at the molecular level. This work has led to important discoveries of new chemistries occurring on the interfaces of cloud surfaces as well as fundamental new chemical bonding controlling these processes. He has been an Alfred P. Sloan Fellow and a John Simon Guggenheim Fellow. He was awarded an Alexander von Humboldt U.S. Senior Scientist Award; appointed a Senior Visiting Fellow at the Institute of Advanced Studies at the University of Bologna, Italy; Professeur Invité at the Université de Paris-Est, France; a Visiting Professor at Uppsala Universitet, Sweden; an Honorary International Chair Professor at National Taipei University, Taiwan; and an Honorary Professor, Beijing University of Chemical Technology, China. He served as President of the American Chemical Society in 2010. Dr. Francisco currently serves as Executive and Associate Editor of the Journal of the American Chemical Society and on the Editorial Board of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. He is a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and a member of the National Academy of Sciences. Joseph S. Francisco was elected, to the German National Academy of Sciences Leopoldina, as well as, a member of the American Philosophical Society in 2021. | |
| 2 | Name: | Dr. Barbara V. Jacak | | | Institution: | Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, University of California, Berkeley | | | Year Elected: | 2021 | | | Class: | 1. Mathematical and Physical Sciences | | | Subdivision: | 106. Physics | | | Residency: | Resident | | | Living? : |
Living
| | | Birth Date: | 1957 | | | | | | |
Barbara V. Jacak is a Professor of Physics at University of California, Berkeley. She is an internationally recognized leader in the physics community whose research lies on the boundary between nuclear and particle physics. Jacak earned her Phd in chemical physics from Michigan State University in 1984.
Jacak's research career includes 12 years at Los Alamos National Laboratory's Physics Division, where she was a J. Robert Oppenheimer Fellow from 1984 to 1987 and a scientific staff member from 1987 to 1996. She then spent 18 years as a Professor of Physics at Stony Brook University in Long Island, New York, becoming Distinguished Professor of Physics in 2008. From 2007 to 2012, she served as spokesperson for the PHENIX Collaboration at the Brookhaven Relativistic Ion Collider, where she played a crucial role in discovering quark-gluon plasma, a new state of matter in which quarks are no longer confined and display a strongly interacting liquid-like behavior. In addition to being named a Professor of Physics at Berkeley in 2015, she was also appointed director of nuclear science at Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory. A leader of the CERN NA44 heavy-ion experiment, she discovered the momentum dependence of Bose-Einstein correlations of the collision products, allowing her to infer experimentally the collective expansion velocity of the collision volume.
Jacak is also a superb science administrator. She was a member of the American Physical Society's Division of Nuclear Physics Executive Committee from 1995 to 1997. From 2014 to 2018, she was a member of the National Academy of Science's Board on Physics and Astronomy, chairing it in 2016 and 2017. She received both the Tom W. Bonner Prize in Nuclear Physics and the Department of Energy Distinguished Scientist Fellow Award in 2019. She is a Fellow of the American Physical Society, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and the American Academy of Arts & Sciences. She was elected a member of the American Philosophical Society in 2021. | |
| 3 | Name: | Dr. Debra Niemeier | | | Institution: | University of Maryland, College Park; University of California, Davis | | | Year Elected: | 2021 | | | Class: | 1. Mathematical and Physical Sciences | | | Subdivision: | 103. Engineering | | | Residency: | Resident | | | Living? : |
Living
| | | Birth Date: | 1959 | | | | | | |
Debra Niemeier is Clark Distinguished Chair in Sustainability and Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering at University of Maryland, College Park as well as Professor Emerita of Civil and Environmental Engineering at University of California, Davis. She earned her Ph.D. from the University of Washington in 1994. Her work history also includes stints at the Texas Department of Highways, the City of San Marcos, T.Y. Lin International, and, at University of California, Davis, the Caltrans Air Quality Project, the John Muir Institute on the Environment, and Sustainable Design Academy.
Deb Niemeier has done ground-breaking research in vehicle emissions, air quality, affordable housing, and infrastructure funding, spurring policy and regulatory change. She developed new methods to resolve vehicle emissions for better identification of environmental health disparities. Her work transformed federal guidance for public agencies by requiring that vulnerable populations be identified using her methods. Her research on the return to background pollutant concentrations at roadside edge resulted in a complete revision of current thinking about minimum acceptable distances from roadway edges for sensitive populations, motivating new international studies on air pollutant much further from roadway edges than was previously thought necessary. Through her Guggenheim Fellowship, she is establishing the first civil and environmental engineering pro bono clinic in which engineering students will collaborate with law students through legal aid and university law clinics to provide technical expertise to support disadvantaged communities.
She is a member of the National Academy of Engineering (2017) and fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (2014). She was elected a member of the American Philosophical Society in 2021. | |
| 4 | Name: | Dr. Daniel G. Nocera | | | Institution: | Harvard University | | | Year Elected: | 2021 | | | Class: | 1. Mathematical and Physical Sciences | | | Subdivision: | 102. Chemistry and Chemical Biochemistry | | | Residency: | Resident | | | Living? : |
Living
| | | Birth Date: | 1957 | | | | | | |
Daniel G. Nocera is the Patterson Rockwood Professor of Energy at Harvard University. He moved to Harvard in 2013 from Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he was the Henry Dreyfus Professor of Energy and was Director of the Solar Revolutions Project and Director of the MIT Solar Frontiers Center. Nocera is recognized for his discoveries in renewable energy, originating new paradigms that have defined the field of solar energy conversion and storage. Nocera created the field of proton coupled electron transfer (PCET) at a mechanistic level by making the first measurements that temporally resolved the movement of an electron coupled to a proton. On this experimental foundation, he provided the first theory of PCET. With PCET as a guiding framework, he invented the Artificial Leaf and the Bionic Leaf. The Artificial Leaf comprises Si coated with catalysts to capture the direct solar process of photosynthesis – the use of sunlight to split water to hydrogen and oxygen from neutral water, at atmospheric pressure and room temperature. The Bionic Leaf comprises a bio-engineered organism interfaced with the catalysts of the Artificial Leaf to capture the dark process of photosynthesis – the combination of carbon dioxide and hydrogen to produce biomass and liquid fuels. The integration of the light and dark processes of the Artificial Leaf and the Bionic Leaf, respectively, allowed Nocera to develop a complete artificial photosynthesis — sunlight + air + water to biomass and liquid fuels — that is ten times more efficient than natural photosynthesis. Extending this approach, Nocera has achieved a renewable and distributed Haber-Bosch synthesis of ammonia from nitrogen in air by coupling solar-based water splitting to a nitrogen and carbon fixing bioorganism to produce a living biofertilizer, resulting in increased crop yields and early harvests. These science discoveries set the stage for the large scale and distributed deployment of solar energy fuels and food production using only sunlight, air and any water source. With such simple natural inputs, such discovery is particularly useful to the poor, where large infrastructures for fuel and food production are not tenable. Complementing his interest in solar energy conversion, Nocera has designed layered antiferromagnets to explore exotic states arising from highly correlated spins, creating the spin 1/2 quantum spin liquid on a kagomé lattice, a long-sought prize in condensed matter physics. His group has also created nanocrystal sensors for the metabolic profiling of tumors, a technique used by clinicians to develop new cancer drug therapies. Afield from chemistry, Nocera invented the Molecular Tagging Velocimetry to make simultaneous, multipoint velocity measurements of highly three-dimensional turbulent flows. This fluid physics technique has been employed by the engineering community to solve long-standing and important problems that had previously escaped characterization. Nocera founded Sun Catalytix, a company committed to developing energy storage technologies for the wide-spread implementation of renewable energy; the coordination chemistry flow battery technology invented by Sun Catalytix is now being commercialized by Lockheed Martin. A second company founded by Nocera, Kula Bio, is focused on the development of renewable and distributed crop production and land restoration; the technology also provides a low-cost curve for significant carbon sequestration. Nocera has been awarded the Leigh Ann Conn Prize for Renewable Energy, Eni Prize, Burghausen Prize, and the United Nation’s Science and Technology Award for his discoveries in renewable energy. On this topic, he has also received the Inorganic Chemistry, Harrison Howe, Mack, Remsen and Kosolapoff Awards from the American Chemical Society. He has received honorary degrees from Harvard University, Michigan State University and the University of Crete. In addition to membership in the American Philosophical Society, he is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the U.S. National Academy of Sciences and the Indian Academy of Sciences. | |
| 5 | Name: | Dr. Billie Lee Turner | | | Institution: | Arizona State University | | | Year Elected: | 2021 | | | Class: | 1. Mathematical and Physical Sciences | | | Subdivision: | 105. Physical Earth Sciences | | | Residency: | Resident | | | Living? : |
Living
| | | Birth Date: | 1945 | | | | | | |
Billie Lee Turner II is a geographer engaged in human-environmental science, addressing problems situated at the intersection of society and the biophysical world. These problems range from prehistory to contemporary sustainability, exemplified in three broad research topics. [1] Turner helped to establish how the ancient Maya peoples transformed their homelands, including a range of intensive agricultural practices, to sustain a large and affluent population for millennia. Ultimately, the scale of landscape changes amplified extensive drought and, combined with a diminution of economic conditions, likely contributed to the collapse of Maya city-states and the long-time depopulation of the Maya heartlands. [2] Through fieldwork with his students across the tropics, Turner helped to enlarge and apply the concept of induced intensification to understand changes among subsistence and semi-subsistence farmers, foremost in the tropical world. Building from theoretical constructs of E. Boserup, he added an environmental component that amplifies or attenuates the relationship between demands on households and the intensity of cultivation that follows. [3] Turner assisted in the development of land system science, addressing land-use and-cover change as a human-environmental system. His interdisciplinary research teams demonstrated how remote sensing, economics, ecology, climate, and spatial analysis can be fused to model the drivers of land change and to address the vulnerability of these changes on the two subsystems in question.
The outlets for this research range across multiple research communities, from archaeology, history, anthropology and geography to paleo-history, ecology, and sustainability. They include interdisciplinary journals as Science, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Ambio, and Nature Sustainability, as well as such book/edited book offerings as The Earth as Transformed by Human Action (Cambridge Press 1990) and Cultivated Landscapes of Middle American on the Eve of Conquest (Oxford Press, 2001).
Turner has participated in a large range of national and international research panels and committees charged with developing and leading research activities. Examples include: Chair, Core Project Planning Committee of Global Land-Use/Cover Change of the International Geosphere-Biosphere Programme and the International Human Dimensions Programme (IGBP & IHDP); Scientific Steering, Land-use/Cover Change, IGBP & IHDP; Synthesis Committee, IGBP; Scientific Steering Committee, Global Land Project, IGBP & IHDP; Committee for Research on Global Change, Social Science Research Council; Committee on the Human Dimensions of Global Change, National Research Council (NRC); Committee on Grand Challenges in Environmental Science, NRC; Board on Earth Sciences and Resources, NRC; Roundtable on Science and Technology for Sustainability, National Academy of Sciences (NAS); Steering Committee, Ecosystem Services, NAS; Science Committee, DIVERSITAS.
Turner received BA and MA degrees in geography in 1968 and 1969, respectively, from the University of Texas at Austin. After two years of military service, he completed his Ph.D. in geography in 1974 at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He was an Assistant Professor of Geography, University of Maryland Baltimore County, 1975-76, and Research Associate (1976) and Assistant Professor of Geography, University of Oklahoma (1977-1980). With a move to the Graduate School of Geography, Clark University, he served as: Assistant Professor 1980-81, Associate Professor 1981-85, and Full Professor 1985-2008; Milton P. & Alice C. Higgins Professor of Environment and Society, 1995-2008; Director, Graduate School of Geography, 1983-88, 1997-98, and 2004-08, Director of the George Perkins Marsh Institute, 1994-97; and Distinguished Research Professor, 2008-pr. In 2008 Turner moved to Arizona State University, School of Geographical Sciences and Urban Planning & School of Sustainability as the Gilbert F. White Professor of Environment and Society, with subsequent appointments as a Distinguished Sustainability Scientist, 2011, and Regents’ Professor, 2016. In addition, he is Adjunct Faculty of Graduate Studies, School of Resource and Environment, Dalhousie University.
Turner’s research contributions have received multiple awards and honors from different disciplines, foundations, and organizations, including: Guggenheim Memorial Fellowship (1981-82); Fellow, Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences (1994-95); Distinguished Research Honors, American Association of Geographers (1995); Centenary Medal, Royal Scottish Geographical Society (1996), Sustainability Science Award, Ecological Society of America (2002), and Outstanding Alumnus Award, University of Texas (2018). He is a member of National Academy of Sciences (1995) and American Academy of Arts and Sciences (1998), and a Fellow of the American Academy for the Advancement of Science (2002), Massachusetts Academy of Sciences (2008), and Fellow, American Association of Geographers (2020). | |
| 6 | Name: | Dr. Neil deGrasse Tyson | | | Institution: | American Museum of Natural History | | | Year Elected: | 2021 | | | Class: | 1. Mathematical and Physical Sciences | | | Subdivision: | 101. Astronomy | | | Residency: | Resident | | | Living? : |
Living
| | | Birth Date: | 1958 | | | | | | |
Neil deGrasse Tyson was born and raised in New York City where he was educated in the public schools clear through his graduation from the Bronx High School of Science. Tyson went on to earn his BA in Physics from Harvard and his PhD in Astrophysics from Columbia.
In 2001, Tyson was appointed by President Bush to serve on a twelve-member commission that studied the Future of the U.S. Aerospace Industry. The final report was published in 2002 and contained recommendations (for Congress and for the major agencies of the government) that would promote a thriving future of transportation, space exploration, and national security.
In 2004, Tyson was once again appointed by President Bush to serve on a nine-member commission on the Implementation of the United States Space Exploration Policy, dubbed the “Moon, Mars, and Beyond” commission. This group navigated a path by which the new space vision can become a successful part of the American agenda. And in 2006, the head of NASA appointed Tyson to serve on its prestigious Advisory Council, which guides NASA through its perennial need to fit ambitious visions into restricted budgets.
In addition to dozens of professional publications, Dr. Tyson has written, and continues to write for the public. From 1995 to 2005, Tyson was a monthly essayist for Natural History magazine under the title Universe. And among Tyson’s fifteen books is his memoir The Sky is Not the Limit: Adventures of an Urban Astrophysicist; and Origins: Fourteen Billion Years of Cosmic Evolution, co-written with Donald Goldsmith. Origins is the companion book to the PBS NOVA four-part mini-series Origins, in which Tyson served as on-camera host. The program premiered in September 2004.
Two of Tyson’s other books are the playful and informative Death By Black Hole and Other Cosmic Quandaries, which was a New York Times bestseller, and The Pluto Files: The Rise and Fall of America’s Favorite Planet, chronicling his experience at the center of the controversy over Pluto’s planetary status. The PBS NOVA documentary The Pluto Files, based on the book, premiered in March 2010.
In February 2012, Tyson released his tenth book, containing every thought he has ever had on the past, present, and future of space exploration: Space Chronicles: Facing the Ultimate Frontier.
For five seasons, beginning in the fall of 2006, Tyson appeared as the on-camera host of PBS NOVA’s spinoff program NOVA ScienceNOW, which is an accessible look at the frontier of all the science that shapes the understanding of our place in the universe.
During the summer of 2009 Tyson identified a cadre of professional standup comedians to assist his effort in bringing science to commercial radio with the NSF-funded pilot program StarTalk. Now also a popular Podcast, for three years it enjoyed a limited-run Television Series on the National Geographic Channel. StarTalk combines celebrity guests with informative yet playful banter. The target audience is all those people who never thought they would, or could, like science. In its first year on television and in three successive seasons, it was nominated for a Best Informational Programming Emmy.
Tyson is the recipient of twenty-one honorary doctorates and the NASA Distinguished Public Service Medal, the highest award given by NASA to a non-government citizen. His contributions to the public appreciation of the cosmos have been recognized by the International Astronomical Union in their official naming of asteroid “13123 Tyson.” And by zoologists, with the naming of Indirani Tysoni, a native species of leaping frog in India. On the lighter side, Tyson was voted “Sexiest Astrophysicist Alive” by People Magazine in 2000.
More recently, Tyson published Astrophysics for People In A Hurry in 2017, which was a domestic and international bestseller. This adorably readable book is an introduction to all that you’ve read and heard about that’s making news in the universe—consummated, in one place, succinctly presented, for people in a hurry.
That was followed in 2018 by Accessory to War: The Unspoken Alliance Between Astrophysics and the Military, coauthored with Avis Lang, in 2019 by Letters from an Astrophysicist, both New York Times Bestsellers, and in 2021 by Cosmic Queries: StarTalk’s Guide to Who We Are, How We Got Here, and Where We are Going, coauthored with James Trefil.
Tyson served as Executive Science Editor and on-camera Host & Narrator for Cosmos: A SpaceTime Odyssey, the 21st century continuation of Carl Sagan’s landmark television series. The show began in March 2014 and ran thirteen episodes in primetime on the FOX network, and appeared in 181 countries in 45 languages around the world on the National Geographic Channels. Cosmos won four Emmy Awards, a Peabody Award, two Critics Choice awards, as well as a dozen other industry recognitions. Tyson reprised his role as on-camera host for the next season of Cosmos—Cosmos: Possible Worlds, which premiered on the National Geographic Channel in March 2020 and on the FOX network in September 2020.
Tyson is the fifth head of the world-renowned Hayden Planetarium in New York City and the first occupant of its Frederick P. Rose Directorship. He is also a research associate of the Department of Astrophysics at the American Museum of Natural History.
Neil deGrasse Tyson lives in New York City with his wife, a former IT project manager with Bloomberg Financial Markets. | |
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