Class
| • | 1. Mathematical and Physical Sciences | [X] |
| | 1 | Name: | Dr. W. G. Ernst | | | Institution: | Stanford University | | | Year Elected: | 1994 | | | Class: | 1. Mathematical and Physical Sciences | | | Subdivision: | 105. Physical Earth Sciences | | | Residency: | Resident | | | Living? : |
Living
| | | Birth Date: | 1931 | | | | | | |
W.G. Ernst joined the faculty of the University of California, Los Angeles, on January 1, 1960. He rose through the ranks to professor of geology and geophysics, chairman of the department of geology, (1970-74), chairman of the department of earth and space sciences, (1978-82), and UCLA director of the Institute of Geophysics and Planetary Physics (1987-89). On September 1, 1989, he moved to Stanford University for a five-year term as dean of the School of Earth Sciences. Since 1999, he has held the Benjamin M. Page Chair, School of Earth Sciences, Stanford University. Dr. Ernst was chairman of the Board of Earth Sciences of the National Research Council (1984-87), served on the NRC Board of Earth Sciences and Resources (1988-93), and is a trustee for the Carnegie Institution of Washington, DC (1990-present). He is a member of the National Academy of Sciences (chairman, section of Geology, 1979-82; secretary, then chair of Class I from 1997-2003) and a fellow of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences, the American Geophysical Union, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the Geological Society of America (president, 1985-86), and the Mineralogical Society of America (president, 1980-81). Dr. Ernst is also the author of six books and research memoirs, editor of 15 other research volumes, and author of more than 220 scientific papers, (not including numerous abstracts, book reviews, etc.) dealing with the physical chemistry of rocks and minerals; the Phanerozoic interactions of lithospheric plates and mobile mountain belts, especially in central Asia, the Circumpacific and the Western Alps; early Precambrian petrotectonic evolution; ultrahigh-pressure subduction-zone metamorphism and tectonics; geobotanical studies; Earth System science/remote sensing; and mineralogy and human health. He received the Mineralogical Society of America MSA Award in 1969 and its Roebling Medal for 2005, UCLA Faculty Research Lecturer in 1988, the Geological Society of Japan Medal for 1998, the Stanford School of Earth Sciences Outstanding Teaching Award for 2003, the Penrose Medal of Geological Society of America for 2004, and the American Geological Institute's Legendary Geoscientist Award in 2008. | |
| 2 | Name: | Dr. Richard M. Karp | | | Institution: | University of California, Berkeley | | | Year Elected: | 1994 | | | Class: | 1. Mathematical and Physical Sciences | | | Subdivision: | 104. Mathematics | | | Residency: | Resident | | | Living? : |
Living
| | | Birth Date: | 1935 | | | | | | |
Richard M. Karp was born in Boston, Massachusetts on January 3, 1935. He attended Boston Latin School and Harvard University, receiving his Ph.D. in 1959. From 1959-68 he was a member of the Mathematical Sciences Department at IBM Research. From 1968-94 and from 1999 to the present he has been a Professor at the University of California, Berkeley, where he held the Class of 1939 Chair and is currently a University Professor. From 1988-95 and 1999 to the present he has been a Research Scientist at the International Computer Science Institute in Berkeley. From 1995-99 he was a Professor at the University of Washington. During the 1985-86 academic year he was the co-organizer of a Computational Complexity Year at the Mathematical Sciences Research Institute in Berkeley. During the 1999-2000 academic year he was the Hewlett-Packard Visiting Professor at the Mathematical Sciences Research Institute. The unifying theme in Karp's work has been the study of combinatorial algorithms. His 1972 paper, "Reducibility Among Combinatorial Problems," showed that many of the most commonly studied combinatorial problems are NP-complete, and hence likely to be intractable. Much of his work has concerned parallel algorithms, the probabilistic analysis of combinatorial optimization algorithms and the construction of randomized algorithms for combinatorial problems. His current activities center around algorithmic methods in genomics and computer networking. He has supervised thirty-six Ph.D. dissertations. His honors and awards include the U.S. National Medal of Science, the Turing Award, the Kyoto Prize, the Fulkerson Prize, the Harvey Prize (Technion), Harvard University's Centennial Medal, the Lanchester Prize, the Von Neumann Theory Prize and Lectureship, the University of California, Berkeley's Distinguished Teaching Award and Miller Research Professorship, the Babbage Prize, and ten honorary degrees. He is a member of the U.S. National Academies of Sciences and Engineering, the American Philosophical Society and the French Academy of Sciences, and a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the Association for Computing Machinery and the Institute for Operations Research and Management Science. | |
| 3 | Name: | Dr. Walter Kohn | | | Institution: | University of California, Santa Barbara | | | Year Elected: | 1994 | | | Class: | 1. Mathematical and Physical Sciences | | | Subdivision: | 106. Physics | | | Residency: | Resident | | | Living? : |
Deceased
| | | Birth Date: | 1923 | | | Death Date: | April 20, 2016 | | | | | | |
Walter Kohn was Professor of Physics Emeritus and Research Professor at the University of California, Santa Barbara at the time of his death on April 20, 2016 at the age of 93. A condensed matter theorist, Dr. Kohn was awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1998 for his development of the density-functional theory. He made seminal contributions to the understanding of the electronic structure of materials and played a leading role in the development of the density functional theory, which has revolutionized scientists' approach to the electronic structure of atoms, molecules and solid materials in physics, chemistry and materials science. With the advent of supercomputers, density functional theory has become an essential tool for electronic materials science. Dr. Kohn also made major contributions to the physics of semiconductors, superconductivity, surface physics and catalysis. As the founding director of the National Science Foundation's Institute for Theoretical Physics at the University of California, Santa Barbara, he helped transform the Institute into one of the leading research centers in physics. Prior to joining UCSB in 1979, Dr. Kohn taught at Harvard University (1948-50), the Carnegie Institute of Technology (1950-53), and the University of California, San Diego (1953-79). He received his Ph.D. from Harvard in 1948. Dr. Kohn was the recipient of numerous honors, including a Guggenheim fellowship (1963), the Oliver Buckley Prize (1960), the National Medal of Science (1988) and membership in the American Academy of Arts & Sciences. | |
| 4 | Name: | Dr. Jeremiah P. Ostriker | | | Institution: | Princeton University | | | Year Elected: | 1994 | | | Class: | 1. Mathematical and Physical Sciences | | | Subdivision: | 101. Astronomy | | | Residency: | Resident | | | Living? : |
Living
| | | Birth Date: | 1937 | | | | | | |
Jeremiah Ostriker was born April 13, 1937 in New York. He received his A.B. in physics and chemistry from Harvard University in 1959 and his Ph.D. in astrophysics from the University of Chicago in 1964 under the direction of S. Chandrasekhar. Upon completion of his Ph.D., he went to the University of Cambridge (England) as an NSF Postdoctoral Fellow. In 1965 he came to Princeton University as an Assistant Professor, rising through the ranks to Professor, where he continues to teach and conduct research. At Princeton University, in addition to his professorship, he was the Chair of the Department of Astrophysical Sciences and Director of the Princeton University Observatory from 1979 to 1995 when he became the Provost of the University, leaving that position in 2001. He spent the years 2001-2004 as the Plumian Professor of Astronomy and Experimental Philosophy at the University of Cambridge (England). He was the Director of the Princeton Institute for Computational Science and Engineering (PICSciE) at Princeton University, from 2005-15. Within the National Academy of Sciences, Ostriker was elected Treasurer for the term 2008-2012 and, associated with that position, is a member of the NAS Council and the Governing Board of the National Research Committee (1994-95 and 2007-08), the Assembly of Mathematical and Physical Sciences (1977-80), the Commission on Physical Sciences, Mathematics and Resources (1987-91), and the Committee on Astronomy and Astrophysics (1992-95). He was a member of the Class I (Physical Sciences) Membership Committee in 1977, 1978, 1987, 1988, 1993, 2007 and 2008. He served on the Executive Committee of the Astronomy and Astrophysics Decennial Surveys (1969-73, 1978-83 and 1988-91), recently chaired the Committee to Examine the Methodology for the Assessment of Research Doctorate Programs (2002-03), and the Committee to Assess Research Doctorate Programs (2005-08). Ostriker is a member of the American Astronomical Society, the International Astronomical Union, the U.S. National Academy of Sciences, the American Academy of Arts & Sciences, the Royal Astronomical Society, the American Philosophical Society, and the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences, and he was recently elected as a Foreign Member of the Royal Society. He is a trustee of the American Museum of Natural History and was on the Editorial Board and Trustee of the Princeton University Press. Over the years, Ostriker has received numerous awards for his achievements, including a National Science Foundation Fellowship, an Alfred P. Sloan Fellowship, the Helen B. Warner Prize of the American Astronomical Society, the Sherman Fairchild Fellowship of the California Institute of Technology, the Henry Norris Russell Prize of the American Astronomical Society, the Smithsonian Institution's Regents Fellowship, Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the Vainu Bappu Memorial Award of the Indian National Science Academy, the Karl Schwarzschild Medal of the Astronomische Gesellschaft of Germany, the U.S. National Medal of Science, the British Royal Astronomical Society Gold Medal, the James Craig Watson Medal of the National Academy of Science, and the Bruce Medal from the Astronomical Society of the Pacific. The U.S. National Medal of Science recognized him "for his bold astrophysical insights, which have revolutionized concepts of the nature of pulsars, the 'ecosystem' of stars and gas in our Galaxy, the sizes and masses of galaxies, the nature and distribution of dark matter and ordinary matter in the Universe, and the formation of galaxies and other cosmological structures." Ostriker has been an influential researcher in one of the most exciting areas of modern science, theoretical astrophysics, with current primary work in the area of cosmology, particularly in the efforts to measure and determine the nature of the prevalent dark matter and dark energy components. He has investigated many areas of astrophysical research, including the structure and oscillations of rotating stars, the stability of galaxies, the evolution of globular clusters and other star systems, pulsars, X-ray binary stars, the dynamics of clusters of galaxies, gravitational lensing, astrophysical blast waves, quasars, active galactic nuclei and the formation of galaxies. Ostriker has pioneered in the development of very large-scale numerical simulations of astrophysical phenomena such as galaxy formation and quasar feedback. He continues to teach, supervise and collaborate with many graduate students, postdoctoral fellows and senior researchers. | |
| 5 | Name: | Dr. Howard E. Simmons | | | Institution: | DuPont | | | Year Elected: | 1994 | | | Class: | 1. Mathematical and Physical Sciences | | | Subdivision: | 102. Chemistry and Chemical Biochemistry | | | Residency: | Resident | | | Living? : |
Deceased
| | | Birth Date: | 1929 | | | Death Date: | 4/26/97 | | | | |
| 6 | Name: | Dr. John H. Sinfelt | | | Institution: | Exxon Mobil Research and Engineering Co. | | | Year Elected: | 1994 | | | Class: | 1. Mathematical and Physical Sciences | | | Subdivision: | 103. Engineering | | | Residency: | Resident | | | Living? : |
Deceased
| | | Birth Date: | 1931 | | | Death Date: | May 28, 2011 | | | | | | |
A leading scientist in catalysis by metals, John H. Sinfelt was Senior Scientific Advisor Emeritus at Exxon Mobil Research and Engineering Company at his death on May 28, 2011. He was affiliated with the company since 1954, the year he was awarded his Ph.D. by the University of Illinois. Credited with discovering that a combination of metals insoluble in the bulk is the ideal catalyst for making unleaded gasoline with minimal waste of off-gas, Dr. Sinfelt also found that these metals could form bimetallic clusters in sizes of 10-30 A on Al2O3 or SiO2 and established the first practical catalys from Pt-Ir. Dr. Sinfelt's contributions have been recognized with the National Medal of Science and awards from engineering, chemical and physical societies. He is a member of the National Academy of Sciences, the American Academy of Arts & Sciences and the National Academy of Engineering. | |
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