American Philosophical Society
Member History

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Resident[X]
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1. Mathematical and Physical Sciences[X]
1Name:  Dr. R. Stephen Berry
 Institution:  University of Chicago
 Year Elected:  2011
 Class:  1. Mathematical and Physical Sciences
 Subdivision:  102. Chemistry and Chemical Biochemistry
 Residency:  Resident
 Living? :   Deceased
 Birth Date:  1931
 Death Date:  July 26, 2020
   
 
R. Stephen Berry was the James Franck Distinguished Service Professor Emeritus of Chemistry at the University of Chicago. He had been at The University of Chicago since 1964; previously he was an Assistant Professor at Yale, and earlier, an Instructor at the University of Michigan. He is a Denver native, and in East High School, a Finalist in what was then the Westinghouse Science Talent Search. In September, 2011, he was inducted into the East High Alumni Heritage Hall. He went to Harvard, where he earned his A.B. and Ph.D., and met Carla Friedman, whom he married in 1955. In his career, he has worked on a variety of subjects ranging from strictly scientific matters to a variety of topics in policy. He has held visiting professorships at other universities, including the University of Copenhagen (1967 and 1979), the Université de Paris-Sud (1979-80), the University of Electro-Communications, Tokyo (1984), and Oxford University (1973-74, 1980 and in 1986-87, as the Newton-Abraham Professor). He spent 1994 at the Freie Universität Berlin as an awardee of the Humboldt Prize. He has close associations with the Aspen Center for Physics (Board of Directors, 1978-84) and was a co-founder of the Telluride Summer Research Center (now Telluride Science Research Center) (Board of Directors, 1984-present; President, 1989-93). In 1983 he was awarded a MacArthur Fellowship. He was a member of the National Academy of Sciences and was its Home Secretary from 1999 until 2003. He was also a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (Vice-President, 1987-90) and is a Foreign Member of the Royal Danish Academy. In 1997, he received the Heyrovsky Medal of the Czech Academy of Sciences. In 2010, he received a Diploma Science Honoris Causa from the Romanian Medical Society. His scientific research has been both theoretical and experimental, in areas of atomic and molecular clusters and chaos, topographies and dynamics of complex potential surfaces, atomic collisions and photoionization, protein dynamics and interactions, and, for many years, finite-time thermodynamics, a new approach to extend thermodynamics toward energy efficiency. His experimental work included studies of negative ions, detection and reactions of transient molecular species, photoionization and other laser-matter interactions. Some of his work outside traditional science has involved interweaving thermodynamics with economics and resource policy, including efficient use of energy. He has sometimes worked since the mid-1970s with issues of science and the law, and with management of scientific data. He has also worked in matters of scientific ethics and of some aspects of national security. His current scientific interests include the dynamics of atomic and molecular clusters, the basis of "guided" protein folding and other "structure-seeking" processes, and the thermodynamics of time-constrained processes and the efficient use of energy. He has been author or coauthor of five books, including one on thermodynamic optimization and one on the total social costs of coal and nuclear power. He was author or coauthor of over 530 published papers.
 
2Name:  Dr. Graham R. Fleming
 Institution:  University of California, Berkeley
 Year Elected:  2011
 Class:  1. Mathematical and Physical Sciences
 Subdivision:  102. Chemistry and Chemical Biochemistry
 Residency:  Resident
 Living? :   Living
 Birth Date:  1949
   
 
Graham Fleming was appointed UC Berkeley’s Vice Chancellor for Research in April 2009, having previously served as the Deputy Director of Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. Through joint appointments as Melvin Calvin Distinguished Professor of Chemistry at UC Berkeley, and Founding Director of both the Berkeley Lab's Physical Biosciences Division and UC Berkeley’s California Institute for Quantitative Biosciences (QB3), he has re-shaped the intersection of physical and biological sciences, while maintaining his own investigations into ultrafast chemical and biological processes, in particular, the primary steps of photosynthesis. Throughout his administrative career, Fleming has remained a highly active scientific researcher. He has authored or co-authored more than 440 publications and 1 book; and is widely considered to be one of the world's foremost authorities on ultrafast processes. Born in Barrow, England, in 1949, Fleming earned his Bachelor's of Science degree from the University of Bristol in 1971, and his Ph.D. in chemistry from the University of London Royal Institute in 1974. Following a post-doctoral fellowship at the University of Melbourne, Australia, he joined the faculty of the University of Chicago in 1979. There, he rose through the academic ranks to become the Arthur Holly Compton Distinguished Service Professor, a post he held for ten years, starting in 1987. At University of Chicago, he also served for three years as the Chair of the Chemistry Department. In that role, he led the creation of University of Chicago’s first new research institute in more than 50 years, the Institute for Biophysical Dynamics. In addition to his many other activities, Fleming has given numerous talks around the world on the inter-relation and inter-complexity of energy, climate and photosynthesis. In 2007, Fleming led the effort (with co-chair Mark Ratner) to define Grand Challenges in Basic Energy Science for DOE/BES, resulting in Directing Matter and Energy: Five Challenges for Science and the Imagination. At present, Graham Fleming is engaged in coordinating energy and climate research at Berkeley, as well as continuing his research in photosynthesis and condensed phase dynamics.
 
3Name:  Dr. Alexandra Navrotsky
 Institution:  Arizona State University
 Year Elected:  2011
 Class:  1. Mathematical and Physical Sciences
 Subdivision:  105. Physical Earth Sciences
 Residency:  Resident
 Living? :   Living
 Birth Date:  1943
   
 
Alexandra Navrotsky was educated at the Bronx High School of Science and the University of Chicago (B.S., M.S., and Ph.D. in physical chemistry). After postdoctoral work in Germany and at Penn State University, she joined the faculty in Chemistry at Arizona State University, where she remained till her move to the Department of Geological and Geophysical Sciences at Princeton University in 1985. She chaired that department from 1988 to 1991 and has been active in the Princeton Materials Institute. In 1997, she became an Interdisciplinary Professor of Ceramic, Earth, and Environmental Materials Chemistry at the University of California at Davis and was appointed Edward Roessler Chair in Mathematical and Physical Sciences in 2001. She was appointed interim dean of the Division of Mathematical and Physical Sciences in 2013 while UC Davis searched for a successor to the former dean. In 2019 she returned to Arizona State to head the newly created Navrotsky Eyring Center for Materials of the Universe. Her research interests have centered about relating microscopic features of structure and bonding to macroscopic thermodynamic behavior in minerals, ceramics, and other complex materials. She has made contributions to mineral thermodynamics; mantle mineralogy and high pressure phase transitions; silicate melt and glass thermodynamics; order-disorder in spinels; framework silicates; and other oxides; ceramic processing; oxide superconductors; nanophase oxides, zeolites, nitrides, perovskites; and the general problem of structure-energy-property systematics. The main technical area of her laboratory is high temperature reaction calorimetry. She is director of the UC Davis Organized Research Unit on Nanomaterials in the Environment, Agriculture and Technology (NEAT-ORU). She has published over 1,300 scientific papers. Honors include an Alfred P. Sloan Fellowship (1973); Mineralogical Society of America Award (1981); American Geophysical Union Fellow (1988); Vice-President, Mineralogical Society of America (1991-1992), President (1992-1993); Geochemical Society Fellow (1997). She spent five years (1986-1991) as Editor, Physics and Chemistry of Minerals, and serves on numerous advisory committees and panels in both government and academe. She was elected to the National Academy of Sciences in 1993. In 1995 she received the Ross Coffin Purdy Award from the American Ceramic Society and was awarded the degree of Doctor Honoris Causa from Uppsala University, Sweden. In 2002 she was awarded the Benjamin Franklin Medal in Earth Science. In 2004, she was elected a Fellow of The Mineralogical Society (Great Britain) and awarded the Urey Medal (the highest career honor of the European Association of Geochemistry). In 2005, she was bestowed with the Spriggs Phase Equilibria Award of the American Ceramic Society. In 2006, she received the Harry H. Hess Medal of the American Geophysical Union. In October 2009, she received the Roebling Medal, the highest honor of the Mineralogical Society of America. In 2016 she was awarded the Goldschmidt Award.
 
4Name:  Dr. Kyriacos C. Nicolaou
 Institution:  Rice University
 Year Elected:  2011
 Class:  1. Mathematical and Physical Sciences
 Subdivision:  102. Chemistry and Chemical Biochemistry
 Residency:  Resident
 Living? :   Living
 Birth Date:  1946
   
 
K.C. Nicolaou was born in 1946 in Cyprus, where he grew up and went to school until the age of 18. In 1964, he emigrated to England where he spent two years learning English and preparing to enter the university. His advanced studies in chemistry were carried out at the University of London (B.Sc., 1969, Bedford College, First Class Honors; Ph.D. 1972, University College). In 1972, he crossed the Atlantic to the United States and completed postdoctoral appointments at Columbia University (1972-1973) and Harvard University (1973-1976) after which he joined the faculty at the University of Pennsylvania, where he rose through the ranks to become the Rhodes-Thompson Professor of Chemistry. In 1989, he accepted joint appointments at the University of California, San Diego, where he was Distinguished Professor of Chemistry, and The Scripps Research Institute, where he was the Chairman of the Department of Chemistry and the Darlene Shiley Chair in Chemistry and the Aline. W. and L. Skaggs Professorship in Chemical Biology. In July 2013 he moved to Rice University where he is Harry C. and Olga K. Wiess Professor of Chemistry in the Department of Chemistry and the BioScience Research Collaborative. One of the world’s leading synthetic organic chemists, Dr. Nicolaou is considered a master of the art of total synthesis. His accomplishments include the synthesis of some of the most complex molecules of nature such as amphotericin B, calicheamicin, Taxol®, brevetoxins A and B, vancomycin, and thiostrepton. In addition to his scientific accomplishments, Dr. Nicolaou is well known for his educational reviews and books. Among his books, the most well-known are the Classics in Total Synthesis series (I, II, III, co-authored with his students Erik Sorensen, Scott Snyder and Jason Chen, respectively) and Molecules That Changed the World (co-authored with his research associate Tamsyn Montagnon). The latter is a delightful and informative coffee table book illustrating the impact of chemistry on society with colorful images and easy to understand language that serves to inspire the youth into the sciences and inform the public about the importance and virtues of science. For his scientific work, Professor Nicolaou has received numerous awards and honors, including the Humboldt Foundation US Senior Scientist Prize (Germany, 1987), the William H. Nichols Medal, New York Section-American Chemical Society (1996), the Linus Pauling Medal, Oregon, Portland, Puget Sound Sections-American Chemical Society (1996), the Decoration of the Order of the Commander of Honor Medal (bestowed by the President of Greece, 1998), the Gustavus John Esselen Award for Chemistry in the Public Interest, Northeaster Section-American Chemical Society (1998), the Aristeio Bodossaki Prize (Greece, 2004), the A. C. Cope Award, American Chemical Society (2005), the August-Wilhelm-von-Hofmann-Denkmünze Award (Germany, 2008), the Chandler Medal, Columbia University (2008), the Science Award, Ministry of Education and Culture, Cyprus (2010), the Benjamin Franklin Medal in Chemistry (2011), and the Wolf Prize in Chemistry (2016). Nicolaou is a Member of the New York Academy of Sciences, Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, Member of the National Academy of Sciences (USA), Foreign Member of the Academy of Athens (Greece), Honorary Fellow of the Indian Academy of Sciences, Member of the German Academy of Sciences Leopoldina, Member of the Royal Society, and holds 12 honorary degrees from universities around the world. He was elected to the American Philosophical Society in 2011.
 
5Name:  Dr. Patrick Thaddeus
 Institution:  Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, Harvard University
 Year Elected:  2011
 Class:  1. Mathematical and Physical Sciences
 Subdivision:  101. Astronomy
 Residency:  Resident
 Living? :   Deceased
 Birth Date:  1932
 Death Date:  April 28, 2017
   
 
Pat Thaddeus’ astronomy research career centered on molecules. His pioneering and sophisticated laboratory methods of generating exotic molecules that might be observable in space, and measuring their spectra so as to be able to find these molecules in space through these microwave spectral signatures, enabled him to be without peer in this field. He and his group have thus discovered approximately 20 percent of the approximate 160 molecules now known to exist in interstellar space. His most important discoveries ranged from (unexpected) long carbon-chain molecules to (even more unexpected) negative ions, all of which have had a major impact on our understanding of the chemistry of interstellar space. He and his group have also conducted truly unique large-scale surveys of interstellar carbon monoxide which is a proxy for the difficult to observe hydrogen molecule; the high point of these surveys was the production of an exquisite, detailed map of our galaxy in three dimensions (radial velocity as well as sky coordinates), which now adorns walls in observatories world wide and has led to many further advances in our understanding of the structure of the Milky Way Galaxy. He earned his Ph.D. in 1960 from Columbia University. He was elected a member of the National Academy of Sciences in 1987 and of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences in 1989, and received the Herschel Medal of the Royal Astronomical Society in 2001 and the Sir Harold Thompson Memorial Award in 2002. He was elected a member of the American Philosophical Society in 2011. Patrick Thaddeus died April 28, 2017, at the age of 84.
 
Election Year
2011[X]