Academy Announces 2008 Class of Fellows
Newly Elected Members Include Scholars,
Scientists, Artists, Civic, Corporate, and Philanthropic Leaders
April 28, 2008
CAMBRIDGE, MA - The American Academy of
Arts & Sciences, one of the nation’s oldest and most prestigious honorary
societies and independent policy research centers, today announced the election
of a new class of members. Drawn from the sciences, the arts and humanities,
business, public affairs, and the nonprofit sector, the 190 new Fellows and 22
Foreign Honorary Members are leaders in their fields and include Nobel
laureates and recipients of Pulitzer and Pritzker prizes, Academy and Grammy
awards, and Kennedy Center Honors.
The 212 scholars, scientists, artists, civic, corporate
and philanthropic leaders come from 20 states and 15 countries, and range in
age from 37 to 86. Represented among this year’s newly elected members are more
than 50 universities and more than a dozen corporations, as well as museums,
national laboratories and private research institutes, media outlets and
foundations.
This year’s new Fellows include U.S. Supreme Court
Senior Associate Justice John Paul Stevens; mathematician and
philanthropist James H. Simons; soprano Dawn Upshaw;
winners of the Nobel Prize in physiology or medicine, Linda Buck,
a 2004 laureate who discovered a molecular understanding of the sense of smell,
and molecular biologist Craig Mello, a 2006 recipient for the
discovery of RNA interference; computer company founders Michael Dell
(Dell Computer), and Charles M. Geschke and John E.
Warnock (Adobe Systems, Inc.); two-time cabinet secretary and
former White House Chief of Staff James A. Baker III;
astronomer Adam Riess, who contributed to the discovery of
dark energy in the universe; electrical engineer Henry Smith,
the father of x-ray lithography; Academy Award-winning filmmakers Ethan and
Joel Coen and Milos Forman; Emory University
Provost and historian Earl Lewis; Darwin biographer Janet
Browne; Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist Edwards P. Jones;
and blues guitarist B.B. King.
Also among this year’s newly-elected Fellows
are PepsiCo CEO Indra Nooyi; former eBay CEO Margaret
Whitman; University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign Chancellor
Richard Herman; research center directors
Piermaria Oddone (Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory), Peter
S. Kim (Merck Research Laboratories), and Bruce Stillman
(Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory); seismologist Paul G. Richards,
who applies his work to monitoring underground nuclear test explosions;
tropical agriculture specialist Pedro A. Sanchez; AIDS
researcher Judith Lieberman; Larry V. Hedges,
founder of the meta-analysis method of social research; Margaret Jane Radin,
specialist in the jurisprudence of cyberspace; architect Elizabeth Diller;
installation artist David Hammons; Baltimore Symphony
Orchestra Music Director Marin Alsop; and composer Yehudi
Wyner.
Foreign Honorary Members in this year’s class come from
Europe, Asia, Africa, Australia, Canada, Mexico and Israel and include former
Chief Justice of South Africa Arthur Chaskalson; Nobel
Prize-winning Israeli biologist Aaron Ciechanover; British
climate change expert John H. Lawton; former Mexican Foreign
Minister Jorge G. Castañeda; Nobel Prize-winning Turkish
novelist Orhan Pamuk; and Spanish film director, producer and
screenwriter Pedro Almodóvar.
“The Academy honors excellence by electing to
membership remarkable men and women who have made preeminent contributions to
their fields, and to the world,” said Academy President Emilio Bizzi. “We are
pleased to welcome into the Academy these new members to help advance our
founders’ goal of ‘cherishing knowledge and shaping the future.’”
An independent policy research center, the Academy
undertakes studies of complex and emerging problems. Its diverse membership of
scholars and practitioners from many disciplines and professions gives the
Academy a unique capacity to conduct a wide range of interdisciplinary,
long-term policy research. Current studies focus on science, technology and
global security; social policy and American institutions; the humanities and
culture; and education.
“For 228 years, the Academy has served the public good
by convening leading thinkers and doers from diverse perspectives to examine –
and provide practical policy solutions to -- the pressing issues of the day,”
added Chief Executive Officer and William T. Golden Chair Leslie Berlowitz. “I
am confident that this distinguished class of new members will continue that
tradition.”
The new class will be inducted at a ceremony on October
11, at the Academy’s headquarters in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
Founded in 1780 by John Adams, James Bowdoin, John
Hancock and other scholar-patriots, the Academy has elected as members the
finest minds and most influential leaders from each generation, including
George Washington and Benjamin Franklin in the eighteenth century, Daniel
Webster and Ralph Waldo Emerson in the nineteenth, and Albert Einstein and
Winston Churchill in the twentieth. The current membership includes some 200
Nobel laureates and more than 60 Pulitzer Prize winners.
Lists of the 2008 newly elected Fellows and Honorary
Foreign Members with their affiliations at the time of election:
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