American Academy of Arts and Sciences Elects 225th Class of Fellows

2005 Class Includes Eleven from Columbia

CAMBRIDGE, MA – The American Academy of Arts and Sciences today announced the election of 196 new Fellows and 17 new Foreign Honorary Members. The 213 men and women are leaders in scholarship, business, the arts, and public affairs.

The new members from Columbia University are:

• Andrew Robert Marks, M.D., Clyde & Helen Wu Professor of Medicine, Department Chair, Physiology & Cellular Biophysics

• Nancy Sabin Wexler, Ph.D., Higgins Professor of Neuropsychology

• Qais Al Awqati, M.D., CH.B., Robert F. Loeb Professor of Medicine and Physiology

• Gary Struhl, Ph.D., Professor of Genetics & Development and Howard Hughes Medical Institute Investigator

• Iva S. Greenwald, Ph.D., Professor of Biochemistry and Molecular Biophysics and Howard Hughes Medical Institute Investigator

• Zvi Galil, B.Sc., M.Sc., Ph.D., Dean of the Fu Foundation School of Engineering and Applied Sciences;

• Richard Brilliant, Ph.D., Anna S. Garbedian Professor in the Humanities

• Robert Henry Legvold, Ph.D., MAL.D., Professor of Political Science

• Victoria de Grazia, Ph.D., Professor of History

• Alice Kessler-Harris, Ph.D., R. Gordon Hoxie Professor of History
  
  
• Lynn Garafola, Professor of Dance, Barnard College

“It gives me great pleasure to welcome these outstanding leaders in their fields in this, the Academy’s 225th year,” said Academy President Patricia Meyer Spacks. “Fellows are selected through a highly competitive process that recognizes individuals who have made preeminent contributions to their disciplines and to society at large.”

“Throughout its history, the Academy has convened the leading thinkers of the day, from diverse perspectives, to participate in projects and studies that advance the public good,” added Executive Officer Leslie Berlowitz. “I am confident that this distinguished class of new Fellows will continue that tradition of cherishing knowledge and shaping the future.”

This year’s new Fellows also include Nobel Prize-winning physicist Eric Cornell of the University of Colorado; Supreme Court Chief Justice William Rehnquist; Steven Squyres, leader of NASA’s Rover program for the exploration of Mars; Dante scholar and chairman emeritus of the National Humanities Center, Robert Hollander; sculptor and painter Jeff Koons; Academy Award-winning actor and director Sidney Poitier; choreographers Mark Morris and Judith Jamison; journalist Tom Brokaw; Washington Post Company CEO Donald Graham; Google co-founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page; Time, Inc., CEO Ann Moore; architect, sculptor and designer of the Vietnam Veterans’ Memorial in Washington, Maya Lin; as well as four Pulitzer Prize winners -- dramatist Horton Foote; playwright Tony Kushner; novelist Alison Lurie and cartoonist Art Spiegelman.

Fellows and Foreign Honorary Members are nominated and elected to the Academy by current members. A broad-based membership, comprised of scholars and practitioners from mathematics, physics, biological sciences, social sciences, humanities and the arts, public affairs and business, gives the Academy a unique capacity to conduct a wide range of interdisciplinary studies and public policy research.

The Academy will welcome this year's new Fellows and Foreign Honorary Members at its annual induction ceremony on October 8, 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 Fellows and Foreign Honorary Members the finest minds and most influential leaders from each generation, including George Washington and Ben 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 more than 150 Nobel laureates and 50 Pulitzer Prize winners. An independent policy research center, the Academy undertakes studies of complex and emerging problems. Current Academy research focuses on science and global security; social policy; the humanities and culture; and education.

The 2005 class of new Academy members continues a tradition of honoring intellectual achievement, leadership and creativity in all fields. Also among the newly elected members are E.J. Dionne, Jr., political columnist and senior fellow at the Brookings Institution; Earl Powell III, director of the National Gallery of Art; lawyer and civic leader Frederick A. O. Schwarz; urban planner, author and longtime champion of New York’s Central Park, Elizabeth Rogers; Glenn Lowry, director of the Museum of Modern Art; Janice Stein of the University of Toronto, pioneer in the fields of negotiation theory and international conflict management; William Baker, president and CEO of public television station WNET in New York; and William Bridges, inventor of the Argon laser.

A complete list of newly elected members and their affiliations is available on the Academy web site at www.amacad.org.