| | 21 | Name: | Dr. Anne M. Treisman | | | Institution: | Princeton University | | | Year Elected: | 2005 | | | Class: | 3. Social Sciences | | | Subdivision: | 305 | | | Residency: | Resident | | | Living? : |
Deceased
| | | Birth Date: | 1935 | | | Death Date: | February 9, 2018 | | | | | | |
Is attention involved in forming ordinary percepts of objects from the mosaic of color patches at the retina? Anne Treisman's thesis has been that attention is needed to bind together the component features of an object during early stages of visual processing. Without attention she showed they may be miscombined and mislocalized. Behavioral experiments and her fMRI studies provide strong supporting evidence. Another aspect concerns apparent motion: the illusory perception of continuous motion arising from temporally related but somewhat discontinuous visual events. Again, she showed that attention proves essential to that binding that is necessary to predict time paths of moving objects. Dr. Treisman was the James S. McDonnell Distinguished University Professor of Psychology at Princeton University since 1995. She became emeritus in 2010. She also taught at Oxford University (1967-78), the University of British Columbia (1978-1986) and the University of California, Berkeley (1986-94). She received a D.Phil. From Oxford (1962) and was a member of the Psychonomic Society (governing board, 1985-89, chair 1988-89); the Royal Society (1989); the National Academy of Sciences (1994); and the American Academy of Arts & Sciences (1995). She was awarded the National Medal of Science in 2012. Anne Treisman died February 9, 2018, at the age of 82. | |
| 22 | Name: | Dr. Frans B. M. de Waal | | | Institution: | Yerkes Primate Research Center; Emory University | | | Year Elected: | 2005 | | | Class: | 3. Social Sciences | | | Subdivision: | 305 | | | Residency: | Resident | | | Living? : |
Deceased
| | | Birth Date: | 1948 | | | Death Date: | March 14, 2024 | | | | | | |
At a time when animal behavior was classified as either instinctive or acquired through trial-and-error learning, Frans de Waal produced convincing evidence that chimpanzees jockey for status with cunning and strategic foresight. His observations of "chimpanzee politics" were documented with such care for detail, both qualitative and quantitative, that they greatly stimulated the cognitive study and interpretation of animal behavior. At the same time, Dr. de Waal reported how chimpanzees resolve conflicts, assist one another reciprocally and console distressed individuals. His research on peacemaking, tit-for-tat, and empathy has inspired a new approach to the study of animal behavior. To date, it has produced over 125 scientific publications on conflict resolution in animals and children and is in the process of replacing the traditional evolutionary view of "everyone for itself" with a postulate of shared interests among social animals and a consequent need for compromise and reconciliation. In his work, Dr. de Waal has skillfully translated novel ideas into testable hypotheses, leading to elegant studies in peer-reviewed journals, including Science and Nature. He has significantly raised methodological standards for the study of animal social behavior and is internationally recognized for his depiction of primates as complex social beings as well as his empirically supported opposition to the view that the natural world is necessarily ruled by selfishness. Dr. de Waal has directed the Living Links, Yerkes Primate Research Center since 1997 and has been Research Professor of Psychobiology at Emory University since 1991 and Charles Howard Candler Professor of Primate Behavior since 1996. Winner of the 1989 Los Angeles Times Book Award, he is the author of works such as Peacemaking Among Primates (1989); Good Natured (1996); Bonobo: The Forgotten Ape (1997); Chimpanzee Politics (1998); The Ape and the Sushi Master (2001); The Age of Empathy: Nature's Lessons for a Kinder Society (2009); The Bonobo and the Atheist (2013); Are We Smart Enough to Know How Smart Animals Are? (2016); and Mama's Last Hug: Animal and Human Emotions (2019). | |
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