Class
| • | 1. Mathematical and Physical Sciences | [X] |
| | 1 | Name: | Sir Tim Berners-Lee | | | Institution: | World Wide Web Consortium; Massachusetts Institute of Technology | | | Year Elected: | 2004 | | | Class: | 1. Mathematical and Physical Sciences | | | Subdivision: | 107 | | | Residency: | Resident | | | Living? : |
Living
| | | Birth Date: | 1955 | | | | | | |
The inventor of the World Wide Web, Tim Berners-Lee received his B.A. from the Queen's College, Oxford University, in 1976 and was named "Young Inventor of the Year" by the Kilby Foundation in 1995. In 2007 he was awarded the Charles Stark Draper Prize ("engineering's Nobel Prize") and the Order of Merit, one of the United Kingdom's most prestigious honors. He won both the Turing Award and the Commonwealth Award in 2017. He was elected to membership in the National Academy of Sciences in 2009. Tim Berners-Lee designed the World Wide Web to fill a particular need at the CERN laboratory, where he worked from 1984-94. Some of the high energy experiments at CERN are very large, often with more than 1,000 physicists from many countries participating. In March 1989, he completed a project proposal for a system to communicate information among researchers in the CERN High Energy Physics department, which was intended to help those having problems sharing information across a wide range of different networks, computers, and countries. The project had two main goals. The first was Open Design: that the hypertext system have an open architecture and be able to run on any computer being used at CERN, including Unix, VMS, Macintosh, and Windows. The second goal was that the system be distributed over a communications network. In the fall of 1990, Berners-Lee took about a month to develop the first web browser on a NeXT computer, including an integrated editor that could create hypertext documents. He deployed the program on his and a colleague's computers, and they were both communicating with the world's first web server at info.cern.ch on December 25, 1990. Luckily, CERN had been connected to the ARPANET through the EUnet in 1990. In August 1991, he posted a notice on the alt.hypertext newsgroup about where to download their web server and line mode browser, making it available around the world. Very shortly, it was everywhere. In a fateful decision that significantly helped the web to grow, Berners-Lee managed to get CERN to provide a certification on April 30, 1993 that the web technology and program code were in the public domain so that anyone could use and improve them. Because of this, the World Wide Web is available to everyone at no cost. | |
| 2 | Name: | Dr. John I. Brauman | | | Institution: | Stanford University | | | Year Elected: | 2004 | | | Class: | 1. Mathematical and Physical Sciences | | | Subdivision: | 102. Chemistry and Chemical Biochemistry | | | Residency: | Resident | | | Living? : |
Living
| | | Birth Date: | 1937 | | | | | | |
John I. Brauman earned a Ph.D. from the University of California, Berkeley in 1963 and joined the faculty at Stanford University later that year. He was named J. G. Jackson-C. J. Wood Professor of Chemistry in 1972, and since 1999 he has also served as Cognizant Dean for Natural Sciences at Stanford. Dr. Brauman was the first to show that the relative order of acidities and basicities of many simple organic compounds are reversed between gas phase and solution. He was then able to rationalize both the gas-phase and solution behavior and put them on a much more substantial footing. Dr. Brauman discovered a wealth of information about the dynamics of gas-phase ionic reactions, which again has revolutionized scientific thought. Dr. Brauman was the first to measure accurate electron affinities of molecules larger than diatomics, eventually determining these important quantities for a substantial number of chemically interesting important organic radicals. He has received the American Chemical Society's Award in Pure Chemistry in 1973, the Arthur C. Cope Scholar Award (1986) and the James Flack Norris Award in Physical-Organic Chemistry (1986). Recent honors include the National Academy of Sciences Award in the Chemical Sciences (2001), the Linus Pauling Medal (2002) and the J. Willard Gibbs Medal (2003). Dr. Brauman was elected to the National Academy of Sciences and the American Academy of Arts & Sciences in 1976. | |
| 3 | Name: | Dr. Robert P. Langlands | | | Institution: | Institute for Advanced Study | | | Year Elected: | 2004 | | | Class: | 1. Mathematical and Physical Sciences | | | Subdivision: | 104. Mathematics | | | Residency: | Resident | | | Living? : |
Living
| | | Birth Date: | 1936 | | | | | | |
The "Langlands Philosophy" is widely recognized as the most far-reaching dream that mathematicians currently have for the future development of mathematics. For the past three centuries, the subject of modular forms has been a major strand of mathematics, treated by such great mathematicians as Euler and Gauss. But it had the character of a bag of tricks and special results. Then, in 1967, Dr. Langlands announced the "Langlands conjectures," which displayed for the first time the underlying patterns at work. In the 35 years since then, these conjectures have become increasingly important. Guided by them, an underlying unity has been found, with deep consequences for many branches of mathematics. These include number theory (where Langlands' work played a role in Wiles' proof of Fermat's conjecture), algebraic geometry (where 30 of the best young geometers work in what they call "geometric Langlands theory"), and representation theory (where the Langlands conjectures lead to a classification of the representations that come up in the study of quantum mechanics). Today, the Langlands conjectures provide the basic motivation and guidance for the work of many mathematicians working in diverse fields. Dr. Langlands has also written extensively on mathematical physics, and he has a strong interest in history. A graduate of Yale University (Ph.D., 1960), he has been a professor at the Institute for Advanced Study since 1972. He is currently Professor of Mathematics Emeritus. He is a member of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences, a foreign member of the Russian Academy of Sciences, and has been awarded the Lester R. Ford Prize from the Mathematical Association of America. In 2018 he was awarded the Abel Prize. | |
| 4 | Name: | Dr. Benoit B. Mandelbrot | | | Institution: | Yale University | | | Year Elected: | 2004 | | | Class: | 1. Mathematical and Physical Sciences | | | Subdivision: | 104. Mathematics | | | Residency: | Resident | | | Living? : |
Deceased
| | | Birth Date: | 1924 | | | Death Date: | October 14, 2010 | | | | | | |
His Wolf Prize citation hails Benoit Mandelbrot for having "changed our view of nature", and IBM had cited him earlier in words that have been repeatedly confirmed: "Few contemporary scholars have made such penetrating contributions to as many fields of physical and social science. . . His success, where others have faltered, has been due to a combination of command of mathematical tools, extraordinary breadth, and even rarer intellectual courage." Fractal geometry, which he pioneered and named, also changed the way students and the world at large view mathematics and science. In pure mathematics, examination of masterful computer graphics led him to conjectures of great taste and difficulty that brought several slowly moving fields to intense activity. His observations revived iteration theory after a half century of forced inactivity; but his MLC conjecture (that the "Mandelbrot set is locally connected") is still unsolved after more than a quarter century. In probability theory, his conjecture that the boundary of a segment of Brownian notion is of dimension 4/3 was only proved after 18 years. He broadened the scope of physics by quantifying for the first time a holdover basic sensation, showing that the roughness of typical surfaces can actually be measured by a fractal dimension or Hölder exponent that turned out to be a new "universal." He showed how the support of intermittent turbulence can be measured and how the physics of diverse clusters is determined by their fractal geometry. In economics he enunciated the scaling principle in the 1960s, and his models for price variation, including his later notion of variable (fractal) trading time, are central to current developments in finance. A native of Poland, Benoit Mandelbrot became Docteur d'Etat ès Sciences Mathématiques in Paris in 1952. He was IBM Fellow Emeritus in Physics and Sterling Professor Emeritus of Mathematical Sciences at Yale University at the time of his death on October 14,2010, at the age of 85. | |
| 5 | Name: | Ms. Julie Packard | | | Institution: | Monterey Bay Aquarium | | | Year Elected: | 2004 | | | Class: | 1. Mathematical and Physical Sciences | | | Subdivision: | 105. Physical Earth Sciences | | | Residency: | Resident | | | Living? : |
Living
| | | Birth Date: | 1953 | | | | | | |
Through her leadership of the Monterey Bay Aquarium, support of projects via the David and Lucile Packard Foundation, and service of the Pew Oceans Commission, Julie Packard has become an icon for understanding and protecting the Earth\'s environment. She helped found the Monterey Bay Aquarium twenty years ago, providing strong leadership ans the first and only executive director of an institution whose mission is to promote and inspire ocean conservation. With teh Monterey Bay Aquarium success, in 1987 the Packard family founded the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute, dedicated to the advancement of ocean sciences. Julie Packard has served as a member of its board since its inception and as chair since 1996. A trustee of the David and Lucile Packard Foundation for 25 years, she has helped share the foundation\'s philanthropic programs to support conservation and science. Born in California, Ms. Packard hold an M.A. from University of California, Santa Cruz (1978). She was awarded the Audubon Medal for Conservation in 1998. | |
| 6 | Name: | Dr. P. James E. Peebles | | | Institution: | Princeton University | | | Year Elected: | 2004 | | | Class: | 1. Mathematical and Physical Sciences | | | Subdivision: | 101. Astronomy | | | Residency: | Resident | | | Living? : |
Living
| | | Birth Date: | 1935 | | | | | | |
An outstanding theoretical cosmologist, Jim Peebles has pioneered two important themes of modern cosmology: using physics and observations to reach a better understanding of cosmic evolution from the big bang, and seeking a quantitative understanding of the large-scale structure of the universe. After receiving his Ph.D. from Princeton University in 1962, Dr. Peebles started to look into testable effects of a hot dense epoch after the big bang. In particular, he found that if thermal radiation exists, the universe must have gone through a stage about 100 seconds after the big bang when about 25 percent of the matter combined to form helium nuclei (the sun is about 25 percent helium). The agreement between observations and the theory of the abundance of light nuclei is a major factor in support of the modern cosmological model. Dr. Peebles has been associated with Princeton University, where he is presently Albert Einstein Professor of Science Emeritus, for over 40 years. A member of the American Physical Society, the National Academy of Sciences and the American Academy of Arts & Sciences, Dr. Peebles has received many honors for his accomplishments, including the A.C. Morrison Award in National Science (1977), the Royal Astronomical Society's Eddington Medal (1981) and Gold Medal (1998) and the Gruber Cosmology Prize (2000). In 2019 he received the Nobel Prize in Physics. | |
| 7 | Name: | Dr. A. M. Celâl Sengör | | | Institution: | Istanbul Technical University | | | Year Elected: | 2004 | | | Class: | 1. Mathematical and Physical Sciences | | | Subdivision: | 105. Physical Earth Sciences | | | Residency: | International | | | Living? : |
Living
| | | Birth Date: | 1955 | | | | | | |
An expert on the structure and evolution of the Earth's crust, Ali Mehmet Celal Sengor is one of the foremost authorities on the plate-tectonic evolution of Eurasia and has made important, innovative contributions to the accretionary mechanisms by which continents grow. Born in Turkey in 1955, he earned his Ph.D. from the State University of New York in 1982. He then returned to Turkey as a lecturer and reader at Istanbul Technical University, where in 1992 he was named Professor of Geology and head of the Department of Solid Earth Sciences. Dr. Sengor is the author of (with A. Miyashiro and K. Aki) Orogeny (1982) and (with others) The Paleogeographic Atlas of Turkey (1998). He has been widely honored for his prodigious series of articles, books, and monographs, and he has had enormous influence on scientific and educational developments in Turkey. His many awards include the Prix Lutaud-Grand Prix de l' Academie des Sciences dans le Domaine des Sciences de la Terre (1997) and the Bigsby Medal of the Geological Society of London (1999). In 1992 he became the youngest of the ten founding members of the Turkish Academy of Sciences (appointed by the Prime Minister of the Republic of Turkey), and he is also a member of the Geological Society of London; Societé Geologique de France; Academia Europaea; Geological Society of America; and National Academy of Sciences. He is fluent in Turkish, English, German and French and gives elegant, exciting and lucid lectures in all of these languages. | |
| 8 | Name: | Dr. JoAnne Stubbe | | | Institution: | Massachusetts Institute of Technology | | | Year Elected: | 2004 | | | Class: | 1. Mathematical and Physical Sciences | | | Subdivision: | 102. Chemistry and Chemical Biochemistry | | | Residency: | Resident | | | Living? : |
Living
| | | Birth Date: | 1946 | | | | | | |
JoAnne Stubbe is one of the world's leading enzymologists. Her specific interest is in how reactive chemical intermediates such as free radicals are exploited and controlled in biochemical processes to effect difficult chemical transformations. With experiments of sparkling originality, she showed that a key enzyme, ribonucleotide reductase, that is involved in the synthesis of deoxynucleotides, initiates its chemistry through an unusual diferrictyrosyl radical that abstracts a key hydrogen from the sugar nucleus. Surprisingly, an important chemotherapeutic agent, bleomycin, was shown by Dr. Stubbe to owe its antitumor activity to a free radical mechanism that neatly explains its chemical and sequence specificity. Currently Novartis Professor of Chemistry and Biology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dr. Stubbe has previously held faculty positions at Williams College (1972-77), Yale University Medical School (1977-80) and the University of Wisconsin (1980-87). She holds a Ph.D. from the University of California, Berkeley (1971). The recipient of honors including the Pfizer Award in Enzyme Chemistry (1986), the Alfred Bader Award in Bioorganic & Bioinorganic Chemistry (1997), the National Medal of Science (2009), and the Franklin Institute's Benjamin Franklin Medal in Life Science (2009). Dr. Stubbe was elected a member of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences in 1991 and the National Academy of Sciences in 1992. | |
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