Selected letters from the Class of 2020

Transcription:

Paris (under confinement)

Dear Mrs. Andrews and Mr. Oxtoby,

I am deeply honored to be elected to the American Academy of Arts and Science, and I am delighted to accept membership in this prestigious society.

Being a French citizen, I am particularly thrilled. As you know, the concept of an Academy, in its modern sense of a learned society, is arguably a French invention – dating back to the Académie Française, created by Richelieu in 1635 and now one of the five Académies that constitute the Institut de France. I happen to be a member of the Institut; as an economist, I belong to the ‘Académie des sciences morales et politiques’, which was created by the Convention in 1795, then abolished by Napoleon (who disliked the critical views expressed by its economists, particularly about his fiscal policy) and finally reestablished as an Académie (by King Louis- Philippe) in 1832. The fact remains, however, that the French Académie des sciences morales et politiques was created after the American Academy of Arts and Science, which can thus benefit from the precedence due to seniority …

I have always felt that being an academic was an absolute privilege. I am now, in a sense, doubly academic, and for that I am extremely grateful. I am looking forward to participating to the Academy’s work.

Sincerely,

[signed]

Pierre-André Chiappori

Transcription:

Dear Dr. Andrews and Dr. Oxtoby:

Thank you for the honor of being elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. I gratefully and humbly accept your invitation to join this esteemed institution. When I first read your email and reflected on the prior and current members of the Academy, a painting my husband and I purchased while traveling in South Africa, jumped to mind. Painted by the Congolese artists Alda and Bikis, "Mandela Freedom Day Celebration" depicts the joy of the South African people rejoicing on the day Nelson Mandela was released from prison. To me the painting also represents a community celebrating their success in advancing the common good against great adversity. When I gaze at this painting, I am filled with hope. I hope that in the future, the members of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences will celebrate with all the world many new successes in the advancement of the common good including minimizing the impact of pandemics on our global community.

Sincerely,

[signed]

Trisha N. Davis
Professor and Chair
Earl W. Davie/Zymogenetics Endowed Chair

[detail of painting]
"Mandela Freedom Day Celebration" Artist: Alda and Bikis (close up)1

Endnotes

• 1http://www.b-alda.com/astists-bikis-alda.php

Transcription:

Dear Dr. Nancy C. Andrews
Dear Dr. David W. Oxtoby,

Thank you for your kind and enthusiastic message! In a few words, I am deeply honored and surprised by my election! It is a great honor for me to be elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and I humbly accept membership in your society.

I have always regarded the American Academy of Arts and Sciences as one of the finest learned institutions in the world. I deeply believe that cooperation is important in life and in science. My early research in pollination and more recently in bacterial ecology -- in particular in the stromatolites and microbial mats of Cuatro Ciénegas, in the north of Mexico-- has shown me that cooperation is essential for the maintenance of the high diversity and natural communities of our planet. Cooperation is also of critical importance for science, in particular in modern research, as no one can have all the expertise, knowledge or ability to solve the complex scientific problems that now we have to face.

Valeria Souza, my wife and also a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, made this drawing in 1982 of one of my favorite plants, a herbaceous agave (Manfreda brachystachya) and its bat pollinator for my undergraduate dissertation on pollination biology. I want to share this image, as it exemplifies both the mutualistic interaction of pollination, and of the many people that helped me in that study. As I at the time had no experience in many of these things, for example, in identifying and handling the nectar feeding bats or in analyzing the nectar characteristics, and also many people that helped me to make almost daily census of flowers, measure the plants and flowers and count the pollinators, both during the day and at night.

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[illustration]

I also want to share with you a recent picture (also taken by my wife) of me and of a nectar feeding bat, to remind us of the importance of these bats to Mexico, as they are the main pollinator of the agaves, including the one used to produce drinks like mezcal and tequila.

[photograph]

Without doubt, cooperation and generous, altruistic support from American researchers and institutions have been very important throughout my academic career. In the American

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laboratories I learned how to develop cutting edge science to better understand the evolution of the plants I am interested in (mainly Agave!) and of their pollinators.

My different advisors and colleagues, both from Mexico and from the USA have always been very important for me. Thus, I am deeply concerned for the calls to isolate both American and Mexican scientific communities. From our perspective it is critical to erase any intellectual and physical walls and barriers between the USA and other countries. I believe that American ingenuity and energy has been very important to develop modern science and research strategies, in particular regarding complex and important scientific issues, and I am sure the Academy will continue to play a critical role in developing this cooperation and an altruistic scientific community.

This is a complicated year because of the pandemic, but I will do my best to attend the induction ceremonies and see our beloved friends from the Academy.

¡Muchas gracias! and let's say ¡Salud! with a big shot of mezcal, and, again, thank you very much for this unexpected honor.

Yours sincerely,

[signed]

Luis E. Eguiarte
Investigador Titular C de tiempo completo
Instituto de Ecología
Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México
Mexico.

Transcription:

Dear Dr. Andrews and Dr. Oxtoby,

When I mentioned the news to my daughter—a lawyer in Silicon Valley—her first response was “fake news, poor gullible father.” Fortunately, confirmation in the form of kind emails from friends and colleagues —several of them already members of your prestigious institution— soon followed. I am therefore honored and thrilled to accept your invitation to join the Academy, which has for so long been a beacon of excellence and hope for a better world. Many of the names that appear on its members list are those of people whom I admire and who have inspired my work.

Due to my present circumstances—no printer at hand, no mail service in the French countryside where I am currently confined, I am unable to send you a signed letter of acceptance, and I hope that this email will suffice for the time being.

Thank you again for this wonderful news.

Yours truly,

Bernard Faure

Transcription:

Dear Nancy C. Andrews, Chair of the Board
Of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences,
And David W Oxtoby, President of the Board:

What an honor to be elected to the Academy
Of American Arts and Sciences!

On this day while we on earth are in self isolation
Your letter reaches across and through
Time and history

To embrace and bring me into a circle
Of thinkers, dreamers and visionaries
Who have inspired and continue to create
Within and of a story field beyond
Our collective imagination:

It never ends.

Thank you for this honor.

I am humbled to stand together with those
Who have gone before,
Those with whom I walked beside,
And those who follow.

Joy Harjo

[signed]

Poet, writer, musician and performer

Transcription:

Dear Ms. Andrews and Mr. Oxtoby:

Thank you for the delightful news: I accept membership in the American Academy of Arts and Sciences with deep gratitude.

“I had a lover’s quarrel with the world,” Robert Frost revealed in a poem. My quarrel has been fired by politics and an awareness of disparities and injustice since a young age. My father inspired me to scrutinize our politics and to think for myself. He supported his family by working on the railroad and as a stenographer in order to enjoy books and ideas and share his intellectual excitement. I entered the academy in political science - as do many of our graduate students – with a somewhat naive idea that my interests in political representation and inequality would be deepened. Academic conventions and methodology and its requirements of formalism tugged me in directions that were necessary to teach, publish, and advance in the profession. Career success sat uneasily with me. My childhood instilled a struggle between America’s ideals and its practices; my professional life pitted this lifelong struggle against the demands of reviewers who scrutinized my publications, promotional files, and my record.

Walter Mondale - now in his early 90s - is my second inspiration. For a number of years, we taught a (non-partisan) national security course and pursued other projects. Over time, he has become my most influential professional mentor, helping me find a path between the principled search for social betterment and the constraints of our lives. He provided a model on how to instill my moral questions and political’ disquiet into professional contexts - teaching, publications, and professional positions - for instance, as Chair of the American Political Science Association’s Task Force on American Democracy and Inequality and as founder and director of a center at the Humphrey School that is devoted to fostering collaborations conversations that span our divides. Candidly, some political science colleagues are uncomfortable with my blending of research with the problems of the public; my advantage is that I have been guided by the dignified and principled model of Walter Mondale.

Julie Schumacher is my third inspiration. We met forty-one years ago in a freshman English class at Oberlin College. Julie’s an accomplished novelist. I am proud of her success and am grateful to her for inspiring me to live an examined life.

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Professional life is personal, perhaps especially in the University world. My election to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences is a professional honor; it is, for me, also a recognition of my lifelong interest in questions about our democracy.

With thanks,

[signed]

Lawrence R. Jacobs
Mondale Chair

Transcription:

Dear Dr. Andrews and Dr. Oxtoby,

It is with the utmost joy and deep sense of humility that accept membership into the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Given the magnitude of this honor, words cannot express how moved I am to be asked to join such an esteemed group of scholars, artists, scientists, thought leaders, and policymakers.

I have dedicated my entire scholarly and artistic career to lifting up the voices of those who have not always had a platform from which to validate and affirm their lives. Prime among these marginalized voices are my maternal grandmother, Mary Lewis Adams, and my mother, Sarah M. Johnson, both of whom are now deceased, but whose stories live on through the words I’ve written about them and, hopefully, through the life I lead. While neither of these women completed high school they were indeed the smartest people I have ever known not only because they “made a way out of no way,” to help their families survive, but also because they were philosophers at heart, imparting knowledge that came from their life experiences. Because of their mother wit I have been afforded so many opportunities that they would never have imagined for themselves--except through their hopes and dreams for me.

Through my contributions to the AAA&S, I hope to live up to the standards set by these two brilliant women by always doing the work that transforms society for the greater good.

Sincerely,

[signed]

E. Patrick Johnson, Carlos Montezuma Professor
Department of Performance Studies and African American Studies
Northwestern University

Transcription:

Dear Chairman Andrews, President Oxtoby, distinguished Officers and Fellows,

With deep humility and great pleasure, I accept your invitation to become a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. I have long admired this learned society and its commitment to advancing the common good. Though American Founders eschewed aristocratic privilege, they did value nobility, which they measured by principled leadership, a drive for knowledge, and the ability to apply beneficial ideas to a nascent revolutionary society. There are other kinds of leaders and revolutions. Your august membership, by its commitment to intellectual integrity and excellence, as well as public service, has helped society stay focused on the best American ideals, devoted to realizing a more perfect union, which in turn inspires shared global goals. I am honored to join your company and the pursuit of wisdom that contributes to sound public policy.

The pursuit of new knowledge always has merit. But in these times, it has acute urgency. COVID 19 knows no boundaries. It has convulsed the entire globe at the same time, serving warnings most of the world misunderstood or chose to ignore. Viral spread, mitigated, so far, only by hygiene and isolation, leave fear, suffering and death in its dreadful wake. The very attributes that facilitated creativity and prosperity in the early twenty-first century--urban density, globalism, interconnectivity---have decimated, within weeks, global health, economic security and hope. Social media amplifies polarization and rage, stoking tribal aggression instead of inspiring practical, broadly embraced solutions. The scourge of inequity is visible everywhere. To this incendiary cocktail, comes the murder of George Floyd and too many others, by rogue police, igniting social protest and urban destruction not seen since the 1960’s.

What are our choices? How do we root out anger and despair and replace it with tangible progress towards health, security and a revitalized dedication to our common purpose?

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The rebuilding necessarily begins by insisting on impartial, fact-based evidence. No society prospers if respect for truth is not foundational. One opportunity, born of current turmoil, is a renewed examination of what “impartial” means.

The American Academy of Arts and Sciences is uniquely equipped to tackle this agenda. Its members, dedicated to pushing the boundaries of knowledge, are accustomed to harnessing powerful technology to aggregate and evaluate evidence. But intellectual specialization can lead to a different kind of myopia. An interconnected world cannot rely on conclusions derived from only one perspective, one data set.

While the sciences provide the best tools to solve the world’s most intractable problems, the arts provide the best tools to determine what problems to solve.

The arts provide the ultimate guidebook to varieties of human experience. They deal in behavioral complexity and nuance. They provide ways to visualize abstract concepts. They help us to imagine the costs of inadequate self-reflection, empathy; the imbalance between individual ambition and obligation to community.

The arts have the power to explicate and agitate but also to inform principles of harmony.

There was a time when a liberal arts education was understood to include the natural sciences, social sciences, arts and humanities. I hope the devastating crises of 2020 make clear that silos-intellectual, political, emotional, cultural---are wasteful and dangerous. We ignore insights from the arts and humanities, even as we master scientific solutions, at our peril.

The American Academy of Arts and Sciences is a significant convening authority, harnessing the talent of its extraordinary members to shine light on the world's dark corners. I sincerely hope that collaborations between experts in both arts and sciences inspire solutions to deal with the pandemic, tackle corrosive social inequity and bring the country back together, in pursuit of liberty, security, opportunity and prosperity.

Thank you for the honor of membership and the privilege of being part of the discussion.

Sincerely yours,

[signed]

Transcription:

Dear Dr. Andrews and Dr. Oxtoby,

I was humbled and elated by your notification that I have been elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

Growing up in China during and immediately after the Cultural Revolution, it was through the writings of some of the fellows in this Academy that I was able to sustain my dream and hope for a better future. During many of those cold hungry nights, I was nonetheless utterly excited by the intense dialogues with great philosophers, scientists, poets, novelists, statesmen, through their great books. Going through the Academy members list past and present, I recognize many of my “old” friends, mentors and heroes. For 240 years, members of this Academy have collectively helped humanity to chart a better course, one that is less cruel, more humane, peaceful and prosperous. Then and now, I dream of the day when I’d [sic] able to converse (for real) with the best minds and hearts of our age, and to engage in activities together to make the world a better place. Be bestowing to me this honor of fellowship, you have made my dream come true, literally. I thus humbly accept this honor. And I look forward to engaging with other esteemed fellow fellows to advance the goals of humanity and this Academy.

Humbly yours,

[signed]

Li Lu

Transcription:

Dear Ms. Andrews and Mr. Oxtoby,

I was stunned and humbled to receive your announcement that I have been elected to membership in the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and I am of course happy to accept. The honor is even more humbling in considering the giants of our society who have been elected since the beginning.

I write this while observing the “stay at home” restrictions placed on us by this frightening global pandemic, and am grateful that our many scientific and technological advances make it possible to continue to work and teach remotely. Like many of us, I’m also in agony for the many who are unable to work, are isolated from family and social contact, and have suffered and even died from this disease. I am optimistic that we will (eventually) emerge from this pandemic and that Earth’s societies will have learned valuable lessons about the need to be alert to the possibility of future, potentially increasingly frequent and severe pandemics.

Of course, I did not achieve this honor without help. To my wife, my parents, my siblings, my children and my grandchildren, I say thanks so much for your love and support through the years. I also owe a great debt to my many present and former graduate students, postdocs, and colleagues for their relentless prodding and challenges to keep growing and learning.

Thanks once again for this immense honor!

Best wishes,

[signed]

Bruce Menge

Transcription:

Dear Dr. Andrews and Dr. Oxtoby,

Thank you for your letter advising me of being elected as an International honorary member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. This is indeed a generous gift to receive in these troubled times of a global pandemic, which is forcing us to reconsider the way we relate to each other and mother earth.

I am immensely grateful for the recognition membership brings and it is incumbent upon me to acknowledge that the intellectual labor of others contributes to the scholarship produced. As an Australian Aboriginal woman, I am fortunate to follow in the footsteps of my Goenpul ancestors and I am indebted to my family and kin, my colleagues and students for all they have taught me.

I am honored and humbled to accept membership and the esteemed company it brings. My sincere thanks to members of the Academy for electing me and I look forward to contributing.

Yours sincerely,

[signed]

Distinguished Professor Aileen Moreton-Robinson

Goenpul, Quandamooka First Nation

Professor of Indigenous Research

Office of Indigenous Education and Engagement

Policy, Strategy and Impact Division

RMIT University.

Transcription:

Dear Dr. Andrews and Dr. Oxtoby,

It is with immense pleasure and deep gratitude that I accept membership of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. I am truly honored to be included within the ranks of this august body spanning the many areas of human endeavor. Needless to say, the news of my election was entirely unexpected and represents a most welcome bright spot during these uncertain times. I very much hope to attend the induction ceremony in October since I imagine it will be a stimulating and fun occasion and, more importantly, because attending the event would signify that this country has managed to successfully adapt to a new normal.

As a scientist working at the interface of chemistry and biology, I have become accustomed to the idea that problems can be usefully approached by integrating the tools and sensibilities of different disciplines. Collaboration is addictive on so many levels. Problems can obviously get solved faster and in more creative ways, but beyond that it affords us a rare unvarnished glimpse into how another human being really thinks and sees the world. The experience can at times be a raw one, but ultimately being forced to move beyond one’s comfort zone is invigorating and I always emerge the better for it. Thus, I very much look forward to feeding my addiction by learning more about, and hopefully contributing to in some small way, the very broad intellectual endeavors of the Academy. Once again, thank you for this wonderful honor.

Sincerely yours

[signed]

Tom Muir

Transcription:

Dear Chair of the Board Andrews and President Oxtoby

Your moving letter inviting me to join an extraordinary constellation of brilliant minds and souls both past and present in your Academy of Arts & Sciences “to cultivate every art and science which may tend to advance the interest, honor, dignity, and happiness of a free, independent, and virtuous people” touched me deeply, as it would ordinarily have done in any circumstance. Receiving it in the midst of a global pandemic that has shut me together with a plurality of mankind in the severest lockdown experienced in living memory literally took my breath away.

Isolated, as we are, in identical small cubicles that thread a similar path across the globe as we try to manage our new communal habits and to pursue our careers in virtual modes, we are reminded every day of the fragility of our very existence on this wounded planet.

This novel experience heightens our awareness - or should- of an inconvertible fact that has sealed its valediction throughout the centuries. The only way for all of us to find light at the end of this, or any other dark tunnel that may plague us in the future in a similar manner, is to forge a closer bond between nations, and to incite all resolute men and women of commitment, talent and honor to work together for the advancement of mankind, regardless of their race, creed or origin. Isolation siren calls that often rise in such troubled times notwithstanding, international solidarity, shared values, and the individual commitment to universal service remain a prerequisite condition for our own survival.

I have been remarkably lucky in witnessing what such a spirit can achieve in a small country that fought the odds in record time to build a knowledge-based economy founded on tolerance and indebted to a vast network of international partnerships and cultural exchanges. Rising on the moving sands of a weak, underdeveloped, and threatened region of the world, investing heavily in education and culture, the United Arab Emirates was able in fifty years to build from scratch a forward looking society in which two hundred different nationalities work harmoniously together to bring prosperity, progress and social security at home and to extend a hand of help and succor wherever needed in the world. A trajectory that was sealed in the historic “Document of Human Fraternity” signed by His Holiness Pope Francis and the Imam of Al Azhar in Abu Dhabi on the 4th February 2019.

It is therefore an honor and a great pleasure for me to accept your invitation in all humility. I pray and hope that I can help in any way I can in fulfilling the mission you have been set up to carry out. Quoting the words of 13th century Persian mystic Jalal ad-Din Rumi: “Don’t you know yet! It is your light that lights the worlds”.

Sincerely

[signed]

Zaki Nusseibeh

Minister of State

Transcription:

Dear Dr. Oxtoby and Dr. Andrews:

My earliest awareness of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences was as an undergraduate student, when I encountered its large and leafy but mysterious compound in cross-Cambridge walks. Since that time, I have come to appreciate the Academy’s place as one of the oldest learned societies in our country, peopled by individuals devoted to scientific, artistic, and social goals. The roster of past Academy members includes many whose work has made an indelible mark on my own professional, intellectual, and personal life – as a scientist, as a reader, and as a citizen.

Receiving your letter of April 23 was a surprise and a delight. I am grateful to the Astronomy, Astrophysics, and Earth Sciences Section for my nomination and selection, and honored to join such a distinguished company. With respect for the history of the institution, admiration for its current members, and interest in its activities and initiatives, I am thrilled to accept membership in the Academy.

Yours truly,

[signed]

Eve C. Ostriker
Professor and Associate Chair of Astrophysical Sciences

Transcription:

Dear Dr. Andrews and Dr. Oxtoby,

I am deeply honored to become part of the amazing group of individuals who are members of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. I gratefully accept this honor on behalf of my research team and many wonderful collaborators, past and present, who contributed to our scientific advances. In particular, I have been fortunate to be part of a long-standing interdisciplinary collaboration between Seattle- and Kenya-based scientists that has greatly enriched our research. This is recognition for all of us and the work we have done together.

It is an incredible honor - not only to join the existing group of luminary members - but also to be selected in a year with so many outstanding women, including three other Seattle women (Ana Mari Cauci, Trisha Davis and Catherine Peichel, who was formerly a colleague in Seattle) as well as women I have long admired from other fields, such as Joan Baez, Anita Hill and Ann Patchett to name a few.

I look forward to the chance to interact with this thoughtful and accomplished group.

Sincerely,

[signed]

Julie Overbaugh, Ph.D.

Transcription:

Dear Drs. Andrews and Oxtoby:

I accept the honor of being a member of the AAAS with great pride and appreciation. I am particularly proud to receive it now, in these unsettling times of COVID-19, when rational and scientific discourse should be taking center stage. As such, the Academy’s mission is perhaps as relevant as at any other time in its illustrious history. I also appreciate this honor as an opportunity to recognize all the bright Ph.D. students and postdoctoral fellows that have joined me to explore how our bodies sense temperature and pressure. A picture of some past and present trainees is enclosed in this letter of acceptance.

I hope to meet you in person soon!

Sincerely,

[signed]

Ardem Patapoutian

Transcription:

Dear Chairperson Andrews and President Oxtoby:

I am immensely pleased to have been elected to the American Academy of Arts & Sciences. I write to enthusiastically accept membership.

In receiving this honor, I reflect on the work of fellow Academy member, Paula J. Giddings. In her first book, When and Where I Enter: The Impact of Black Women on Race and Sex in America, Giddings quotes Anna Julia Cooper, who was born into slavery and went on to become one of the first Black women to earn a PhD. Speaking with bold authority, Cooper remarked that when and where Black women enter, “the whole…race enters with me.”

I feel this privilege and this responsibility to bring other Black people—especially Black women— into the Academy with me as I enter. In particular, I walk in the paths forged by Ida B. Wells, Zora Neale Hurston, and my mother. Ida B. Wells’ painstaking empirical documentation of the lynching of Black people at the turn of the 20th century has offered me a powerful model for using knowledge to address society’s injustices. Zora Neale Hurston’s ethnographic fieldwork informed her lyrical novels, short stories, plays, and essays, which advanced the dignity and showed the virtuosity of everyday Black folks doing everyday things. Her work inspired me to be a qualitative sociologist. And I bring my mother, Marva Parks Pattillo. Born and raised in Jim Crow New Orleans, my mother graduated from college at 19 years old and headed to New York City for graduate studies in mathematics. I marvel at her courage and determination. I have been guided by her example of excellence my entire life.

Bringing these scholars with me as I enter recognizes the erasures of the past and charts what I hope to be a more inclusive and just future. The Class of 2020 marks the election of the first Black women to the Sociology, Demography, and Geography Section of the Academy, despite generations of Black women’s genius that have come before us. I honor those who have been overlooked, and I look forward to celebrating the contributions of women and people of color in my field for decades to come. Because, as Zora Neale Hurston pronounced, with her characteristic wit and sass, “How can any deny themselves the pleasure of [our] company? It’s beyond me.” And, so, we enter.

Sincerely,

[signed]

Mary Pattillo
Harold Washington Professor of Sociology and African American Studies

Transcription:

Dear Drs. Andrews and Oxtoby,

Thank you for your letter today with the news of my election. It brought back a vivid memory when the President of the Academy at the time, Hudson Hoagland, brought me to a lecture (then at the Allandale St. House). At a time when I was primarily consumed by my lab bench, I was enthralled to witness a learned institution in which the sciences and the arts combine in “heterogeneous catalysis” (to borrow a term from chemistry). At my college graduation C.P. Snow had urged us to not fall into the “Two Cultures” trap he had been lamenting. Anyone fortunate enough to be at the American Academy, as guest or Member, is safe indeed.

I thank you and the Members for conferring this great honor upon me.

Sincerely

[signed]

Thoru Pederson, Ph.D.
Arnett Professor of Cell Biology
Professor of Biochemistry and Molecular Pharmacology
President emeritus
The Worcester Foundation for Biomedical Research

Transcription:

Dear Drs. Andrews and Oxtoby,

Thank you so very much for the extending to me the honor of membership in the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. I gratefully and humbly accept.

I write you today from my study at home, like nearly all Americans living under self-imposed social isolation in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. We have taken to Zoom meetings, wearing masks in public, keeping our distance and no longer shaking hands. These times of seclusion and confusion remind us that fellowship is natural to the human condition and that ingenuity is among the greatest of human virtues. We will rely upon both to deliver us to the other side of this pandemic.

As the Academy exists precisely to foster human ingenuity through fellowship, this is perhaps an apt moment to have been asked to join your ranks. For 240 years, the Academy has brought into vital conversation our latest discoveries, most profound insights, time-honored values, and pressing challenges. Notwithstanding the severe disruptions to our lives and livelihoods today, we will together seek and surely find better days ahead.

In the preface to the Academy’s first publication of 1785, the earliest members of the society expressed the hope that they, as scholar-citizens, might together elevate and inspire every citizen of the new American republic. “May they ever be as virtuous and industrious as they are free!” our forebears enthused. “May a spirit for advancing every kind of knowledge, that can redound to their honor, and promote the emolument and happiness of themselves and their country, more and more prevail!” (Mem. Am. Acad. Arts Sci., 1785, vol. 1, p. xi)

I share in the hope that it may be so. And if, as a member of this distinguished Academy, I can help in even a small way to achieve these laudable ends, I will be proud to do so.

With thanks and very best regards,

[signed]

Vincent E. Price

P.S. Keep washing those hands!

Transcription:

Dear Dr. Andrews and Dr. Oxtoby,

Your letter of invitation came as a complete surprise and about the only bright spot during what arguably is some of the most “interesting times” in human history ( COVID-19 epidemic). The membership in the Academy includes many world-renowned individuals to whom I have been looking for inspiration during my whole life, both as a professional and, in my spare time, as a citizen as well as a lover of art and literature. I feel honored and privileged to join this exquisite body and I very gladly accept your invitation.

Having thought of more specific remark to offer, I have realized that there is one important value that the Academy holds in high esteem and that is very close to my heart. This is best captured by two words, “connections” and “interdisciplinary”. The list of the Academy's Members is amazing not only in its excellence but also in diversity: it represents virtually all forms of human endeavor that contain a sufficient creative component. Having this forum committed to sharing different perspectives on often similar questions is, as I believe, vital and highly beneficial to all of us. I, on the other hand, have spent my whole professional life trying to forge connections between Mathematics and Computer Science, to the point when I am really not sure how to even self-identify myself. I am particularly glad to be joining the learned society that neither expects nor even encourages me to choose!

Again, thank you very much for your invitation, I am looking forward to serving our common cause in this new role.

[signed]

Alexander A. Razborov

Transcription:

Dear Dr. Andrews and Dr. Oxtroby [sic],

I accept your invitation to become a member of the AAAS with joy and humility, in equal measure.

For me, this honor weaves together the varied strands of my endeavors into a coherent whole. The study of sign languages illuminates the human genius for language – the universal endowment that makes it possible to formulate and share ideas, science, and art. The glimpse into the deaf world that this investigation has offered me has taught me that in diversity there is unity, if we can open our minds to both. Even artistic performance that is fostered and nurtured by bodily expression, so essential to sign languages, can penetrate the filmy barrier between signers and speakers, and lead to profound shared experience.

The mission and values of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences bring together seemingly disparate approaches to understanding and improving the human condition, and I am proud and deeply honored to become a member.

Sincerely,

[signed]

Wendy Sandler

Transcription:

Dear Dr. Andrews and Dr. Oxtoby,

I am ecstatic to have been elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and gladly accept this honor. Receiving your letter in the middle of a pandemic was both exhilarating and sobering. It is an enormous recognition which I value deeply.

I paused to reflect on what made it possible for me (a nontraditional nominee, as a latina [sic] in the mathematical sciences at a public university) to achieve this distinction. My husband and children’s trust, love and encouragement are the pillars upon which my successes have been built. The support of my grandparents and my parents who believed that education was the key to success, and that both my brother and I were equally deserving and capable, was fundamental for me. My friends and mentors have helped me navigate challenging situations. My mentees have inspired me to look beyond the mathematical theorems. Their eagerness to participate in the scientific ventures independently of their background has motivated me to work to create an environment where all voices are heard.

I look forward to working together with you,

Tatiana Toro

Transcription:

Dear Nancy and David

I am deeply honored to be elected to the Academy and am very excited to join its esteemed members.

I have devoted most of my career to the study of pain with a strong mechanistic neurobiological research and translational focus. However, pain is a deeply human experience that has been captured in literature, music, dance, and politics, as well as the laboratory and clinic. What enthuses me about the AAAS is that it includes so many fields and endeavors in its reward of excellence. Its 1780 charter fully resonates with me; how prescient it was.

Of all the notable members past and present, the one who particularly stands out for me, as someone born in South Africa, is Nelson Mandela. I am humbled to be elected to an academy of which he was a distinguished member.

I look forward to the induction meeting in October, hoping of course that the social isolation that the coronavirus has enforced on us is well over by then.

Sincerely

[signed]