The Center for Native American and Indigenous Research supports community- and campus-based projects related to cultural and language vitality, Indigenous self-determination, and Native American and Indigenous Studies through a variety of funding opportunities. 

These include academic residential fellowships and internships based at the American Philosophical Society in Philadelphia, as well as non-residential individual and group fellowships intended for community-oriented projects and goals. 

Eligibility is open to applicants anywhere in the world, although we are unable to offer visa sponsorship unless otherwise noted.

Funding At a Glance

CNAIR Fellowships

Postdoctoral Fellowship (Mellon/NASI)
This 9-month residential fellowship is intended for a recent doctoral graduate, a professor at any level seeking sabbatical support for a research project, or an independent postdoctoral scholar working closely with an Indigenous community on a project.

Award amount: 

• $50,000 stipend
• $20,000 to offset health insurance costs
• $5,000 travel/research fund
• $750 relocation

Application deadline: January 17, 2025

Predoctoral Fellowship (Mellon/NASI)
This 9-month residential fellowship is intended for an advanced doctoral degree student working toward the completion of the dissertation.

Award amount:

• $25,000 living stipend
• $10,000 to offset health insurance costs
• $5,000 travel/research fund 

Application deadline: January 17, 2025

Digital Knowledge Sharing Fellowship (Mellon/NASI)
These short-term fellowships support university- and community-based scholars and others working on digital projects that connect archives and Indigenous communities.

Award amount:

• $3,000 stipend
• Travel expenses to attend workshop in Philadelphia

Application deadline: March 3, 2025

Indigenous Community Research Fellowship
These short-term fellowships support travel for an individual or a group of people seeking to examine materials at the APS to further Indigenous community-based priorities. This fellowship program is for Indigenous community research by community members, such as elders, teachers, knowledge keepers, tribal officials, traditional leaders, museum and archive professionals, independent scholars, and others, regardless of academic background.

Award amount: variable

Applications will open in Fall 2024

CNAIR Internships

Summer Undergraduate Internship (Mellon/NASI)
These 8-week residential paid summer internships provide opportunities for undergraduates to conduct research, to explore career possibilities in archives and special collections, and to learn about advanced training in Native American and Indigenous Studies and related fields.

Award amount:

• $3,000 stipend
• Travel & lodging expenses

Application deadline: March 3, 2025

APS Grants & Fellowships

There are many additional grants and fellowships offered by the APS that could support Indigenous research. Several of these are highlighted below. Please visit our Grants and Fellowships pages for a full list of opportunities.

Highlights 

Short-Term Resident Research Fellowships

One- to three-month fellowships are available for Ph.D. candidates, holders of the Ph.D., and degreed independent scholars, within any field of study that requires using the collections of the APS's Library & Museum.

Lewis and Clark Fund for Exploration and Field Research

The Lewis and Clark Fund encourages exploratory field studies for the collection of specimens and data and to provide the imaginative stimulus that accompanies direct observation.

Phillips Fund for Native American Research

The Phillips Fund of the American Philosophical Society provides grants for research in Native American linguistics, ethnohistory, and the history of studies of Native Americans, in the continental United States and Canada.

The recipient of the 2023 Jacques Barzun Prize in Cultural History is Jared Farmer, in recognition of his book, Elderflora: A Modern History of Ancient Trees (Basic Books).  Dr. Farmer is Walter H. Annenberg Professor of History at the University of Pennsylvania. The 2023 Barzun Prize was presented at the Society's November 2023 Meeting.

At the opening of his book Elderflora: A Modern History of Ancient Trees Jared Farmer suggests that his twin subjects are ‘curiosity and care’. Later he adds the word ‘mourning’, which he sees as ‘at root an act of care’. The pun is part of the project, a gesture towards the different kinds of attention humans have given to trees over time and because of time. ‘People cherish big trees, old trees, and especially big old trees. Except when they don’t’. Professor Farmer has in mind not only past and present worlds but ‘the next new world... when gardens must grow in our ruins’.

The book takes us on a series of extraordinary journeys. We learn about a sequence of tree species, from cedar to baobab; the long life of the yew in English graveyards; German explorations of Mexican dragon trees; lost tree worlds of Pacific countries; the fate of sequoias in the American West; the life and career of Edmund Schulman, ‘whose quest for arboreal longevity mirrored his academic precarity’; new discoveries of ancient life; ancient trees about to die.

Trees can always surprise us, Professor Farmer suggests. At any moment our sensibilities may be ‘staggered’ by ‘a threefold combination: size plus age plus rarity’. Playing with the familiar idea of a ‘long’ century - one that also occupies patches of the time before it and after it - Professor Farmer says his book ‘concerns the longest nineteenth century’, when consciousness was ‘pulled... far backward in linear time, and, simultaneously, when the energy transition to fossil fuels hurtled human impacts far into the future’. One of the many interesting implications of this perspective is that science finds itself merging with philosophy. ‘The category “oldest known” is less biological than epistemological - a subset of the oldest knowable trees... that can be absolutely dated all the way back to their first year of growth’. In this world, both more resilient and more endangered than we think, trees ‘have an ethical claim... Nothing could be more pragmatically sacred’. To respect this claim is to be what Professor Farmer calls ‘timeful’, meaning the opposite of what we also often are, obsessed with quantifying. ‘We store our quantifications in the cloud, and we continue to lose our planet’. On a similar perch between fear and wish he says, ‘I hope to say something hopeful, or at least anti-hopeless, about linear time’. Many of us will want to tell him that he more than amply succeeds.

The Jacques Barzun Prize in Cultural History is awarded annually to the author whose book exhibits distinguished work in American or European cultural history.  Established by a former student of Jacques Barzun, the prize honors this historian and cultural critic who was elected a member of the American Philosophical Society in 1984.  

The selection committee consisted of Michael Wood (chair), Charles Barnwell Straut Professor of English and Comparative Literature, Princeton University; David Hollinger, Preston Hotchkis Professor Emeritus, University of California, Berkeley; and Robert B. Pippin, Evelyn Stefansson Nef Distinguished Service Professor, Committee on Social Thought, Department of Philosophy, University of Chicago.

Pursuit & Persistence: 300 Years of Women in Science, a new exhibition at the American Philosophical Society's Library & Museum, explores how women scientists have overcome obstacles to achieve breakthroughs, make places for themselves in science, and help others along the way. The gallery can only share a small fraction of these stories. 

In tandem with this exhibition, the APS has created a blog to highlight the lives and work of living APS Members and grant and fellowship recipients. Each month of the exhibition, four new scientists are featured.

Photo courtesy of Claire Parkinson

The recipient of the American Philosophical Society’s 2023 Karl Spencer Lashley Award is Silvia Arber, Professor for Neurobiology/Cell Biology, Biozentrum, University of Basel, Switzerland in recognition of her elegant elucidation of brainstem mechanisms that control movement of the body.  The award was presented at the November 2023 meeting of the American Philosophical Society. 

Silvia Arber has made fundamental discoveries concerning the organization and operation of intricate motor circuitry in the brainstem, advancing our understanding of circuit computation in cell populations that implement downward control of the spinal cord during movement. Using elegant behavioral dissection methods in combination with state-of-the-art cell type-specific molecular interventions, she showed that hitherto undescribed, spatially intermingled brainstem circuits have specialized roles in the activation of specific muscle groups via particular motoneurons in the spinal cord. Furthermore, she showed that well-defined subsets of these brainstem nuclei receive functionally specific inputs from locomotor circuits in the midbrain and further upstream, as well as the brain’s fear and escape circuits in the amygdala and periaqueductal grey, pointing to multiple circuits for activation of specific behaviors. As a result of Arber’s spectacular work, the premotor brainstem nuclei are being converted from a terra incognita to an interesting and functionally understandable system of microcircuits. Her discoveries have opened fertile new ground for understanding how movement is controlled in the healthy brain and how it is affected in neurodegenerative disease.

The Karl Spencer Lashley Award was established in 1957 by a gift from Dr. Lashley, a member of the Society and a distinguished neuroscientist and neuropsychologist.  His entire scientific life was spent in the study of behavior and its neural basis.  Dr. Lashley’s famous experiments on the brain mechanisms of learning, memory and intelligence helped inaugurate the modern era of integrative neuroscience, and the Lashley Award recognizes innovative work that continues exploration in the field.

The members of the selection committee are William T. Newsome III (chair), Harman Family Provostial Professor, Vincent V. C. Woo Director of the Stanford Neurosciences Institute, Professor of Neurobiology and, by courtesy, of Psychology, Stanford University; John E. Dowling, Gordon and Llura Gund Research Professor of Neurosciences Emeritus, Harvard University; Catherine Dulac, Higgins Professor of Molecular and Cellular Biology, Lee and Ezpeleta Professor of Arts and Sciences, Harvard University, and Investigator for Howard Hughes Medical Institute; Ann M. Graybiel, Institute Professor, Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences, Investigator, McGovern Institute for Brain Research, Massachusetts Institute of Technology; John G. Hildebrand, Regents Professor of Neuroscience, University of Arizona; Eric Knudsen, Sewell Professor of Neurobiology Emeritus, Stanford University School of Medicine; Edvard Moser, Professor of Neuroscience, Director, Kavli Institute for Systems Neuroscience, Norwegian University of Science and Technology; and Larry R. Squire, Distinguished Professor of Psychiatry, Neurosciences, and Psychology, University of California, San Diego, Research Career Scientist, Veterans Affairs Medical Center, San Diego.

The American Philosophical Society’s 2023 Patrick Suppes Prize for Experimental or Mathematical Psychology is awarded to Elke Weber “in recognition of her research showing how people make decisions important for society, using creative experiments and mathematically precise models and theory.”

Elke Weber is one of the world’s most respected decision scientists. Her research is marked by her desire to help society by helping people make wise decisions in real world settings. At Princeton Dr. Weber runs the Behavioral Science for Policy Lab that cuts across three academic units -- the Andlinger Center for Energy and the Environment within the School of Engineering, the Science, Technology, and Environmental Policy Center within the School of Public and International Affairs, and the Department of Psychology.  

Traditional economic theories of decision making have traditionally been based on rational principles, but humans routinely violate these in both the laboratory and the real world. Real decision makers are not rational, in good part because their cognition is limited.  Dr. Weber explores the way that humans with a strictly limited capacity for reasoning and cognition act, live, and make decisions in a world that is only partially predictable. The real world often fails to tell a decision maker what is the outcome of a decision, and often fails to tell the decision maker what is the decision’s personal or societal benefit. When the world does provide such feedback, it often does so at quite long delays. Dr. Weber’s research shows how humans deal with such an unpredictable world by discounting both risk and time, doing so not just in laboratory studies but when they make decisions in their natural environment. Traditional theories also have focused on humans as individuals. Her research has shown how the social network in which humans are embedded plays a critical role in their decision making, and has shown the important role of social norms and their violations. As an example, her research has been applied to energy policy and climate change.  Most generally, Dr. Weber’s research is aimed to help individuals and social planners deal with their limited cognitive abilities, the unpredictable world, and the unprecise knowledge of the consequences of their decisions, in order to capitalize on the full range of their human capabilities to choose goals well, and to make wise decisions.

The Patrick Suppes Prize honors accomplishments in three deeply significant scholarly fields, with the prize rotating each year between philosophy of science, psychology or neuroscience, and history of science. The Patrick Suppes Prize in Psychology or Neuroscience is awarded for a body of outstanding work which consists of at least three articles published within the preceding six years.  The work in psychology is to be either in mathematical or experimental psychology.

The committee members were Richard M. Shiffrin, Distinguished Professor, Luther Dana Waterman Professor, Professor of Psychology and Cognitive Science, Indiana University; Mahzarin Banaji, Richard Clarke Cabot Professor of Social Ethics, Psychology Department, Harvard University; Susan T. Fiske, Eugene Higgins Professor of Psychology, Professor of Public Affairs, Princeton University; John G. Hildebrand, Regents Professor of Neuroscience, University of Arizona; Elizabeth Loftus, Distinguished Professor, Criminology Law and Society, UC Irvine School of Social Ecology; and Jay McClelland, Lucie Stern Professor in the Social Sciences, Chair, Department of Psychology, Director, Center for Mind, Brain and Computation, Stanford University. 
 

The 2023 recipient of the American Philosophical Society’s Benjamin Franklin Medal for Distinguished Achievement in Science is Martine Rothblatt “in recognition of her many transformative, diverse, singular scientific and public service contributions, including but not limited to:  creating and patenting a system for providing global portable internet access using low earth orbit satellite and satellite direct radio broadcast system resulting in the successful commercialization of the first global satellite radio network; founding a biotechnology company that seeks to repair donated organs previously considered too damaged for transplant and thereby provide an unlimited supply of transplantable organs, advancing xenotransplantation through genetic engineering and digital modeling creating organs that are directly transplantable into humans, revolutionizing the timely delivery of transplant organs through the development of a battery powered helicopter setting world records for electric flight while culminating in the drone delivery of donor organs for transplant, becoming a leading advocate for transgender rights, and investigating the future of artificial intelligence as a cognitive enabler with her work on digital consciousness and immortality.”

Martine Rothblatt founded United Therapeutics in 1996 and has served as chairman and chief executive officer since the inception of the company. Prior to creating United Therapeutics, Dr. Rothblatt founded and served as chairman and chief executive officer of Sirius Satellite Radio and was principally responsible for several other unique applications of satellite communications technology. She also represented the radio astronomy interests of the National Academy of Sciences’ Committee on Radio Frequencies before the Federal Communications Commission. On behalf of the International Bar Association, she led efforts to present the United Nations with a draft Human Genome Treaty. She moved to biotechnology from satellite technology and started United Therapeutics to find a cure or better treatment for primary pulmonary hypertension that affects one of her daughters, a disease that was deadly at the time. It sells five FDA-approved drugs to help people with the disease.  Now publicly traded, the company is experimenting with pig cloning and genetic modification to create lung transplants the human body doesn’t reject.

Dr. Rothblatt received a combined Law and Master of Business Administration degree from the University of California, Los Angeles. She earned her Ph.D. in medical ethics from the Royal London School of Medicine and Dentistry, Queen Mary College, University of London. Her book, Your Life or Mine: How Geoethics Can Resolve the Conflict Between Public and Private Interests in Xenotransplantation, was published in 2004. Dr. Rothblatt is a member of the International Institute of Space Law and the International Academy of Astronautics and the International Bar Association. She was elected a member of the American Philosophical Society in 2008.

In 1906 Congress authorized the medal to commemorate the 200th anniversary of Franklin’s birth.  President Roosevelt directed that the 1st one go to the Republic of France.  50 copies were given to the American Philosophical Society for its use.  The Society has chosen to be to be parsimonious in their distribution.  For three decades only one was given and that was to Marie Curie in 1921.  Since 1937 they have been awarded more liberally but still quite selectively, for major contributions in the sciences, humanities or public service.

The selection committee members are Ronald M. Fairman, Emeritus Clyde F. Barker - William Maul Measey Professor of Surgery, Chief of Vascular Surgery and Endovascular Therapy, Vice-Chairman for Clinical Affairs, Department of Surgery, and Professor of Surgery in Radiology, Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania; Clyde F. Barker, Former President, American Philosophical Society, Donald Guthrie Professor, Department of Surgery, Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania; Lawrence H. Einhorn, Distinguished Professor, Livestrong Foundation Professor of Oncology, Professor of Medicine, Indiana University; and John N. Loeb, Professor Emeritus of Medicine, Columbia University.

December 2022

Kamal Bawa (APS 2019) received the Global Lifetime Service Award from the Balipara Foundation

For ‘spirit of innovation,’ Vijay Kumar (APS 2018) among three from Penn named National Academy of Inventors Fellows

‘A rediscovery of the ancient world’: Anthony Grafton (APS 1993) discusses new book The Art of Discovery

President Ruth Simmons (APS 1997) completes 5 years of Dynamic Leadership at Prairie View A&M University

November 2022

Venki Ramakrishnan (APS 2020) receives Order of Merit

October 2022

Louise Glück (APS 2014) has published a new book, Marigold and Rose

Kathleen Hall Jamieson (APS 1997) will speak at the 2022 Stanfield Conversation, covering “Technology, Media Fragmentation, and the Crisis of Democracy in America”

Orhan Pamuk (APS 2018) has published a new book, Nights of Plague

The Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences was awarded to Ben S. Bernanke (APS 2006), the former Federal Reserve chair

Carol Greider (APS 2016) to receive Award for Excellence in Molecular Diagnostics

Jianguo "Jack" Liu (APS 2015) has been elected to the prestigious Royal Norwegian Society of Sciences and Letters

Annette Gordon-Reed (APS 2019) will discuss her book “On Juneteenth” at The University of Scranton’s Values In Action Lecture

Richard A. Meserve (APS 2002) has been selected as the recipient of the Joseph A. Burton Forum Award by the American Physical Society

David Tatel (APS 2007) will give the Edward Levi Distinguished Visiting Jurist lecture at University of Chicago

The SJU Nardi Symposium on Law and Justice will include the talk Civil Rights Queen: A Conversation with Tomiko Brown-Nagin (APS 2021)

Barbara J. Grosz (APS 2003), Higgins Research Professor of Natural Sciences at Harvard University, will be giving the lecture "Fostering Responsible Computing Research"

David A. Tirrell (APS 2019) will be the featured School of Molecular Sciences’ Eyring Lecture Series speaker at Arizona State University

Frank Wilczek (APS 2005) has won the Templeton Prize

Villanova University is pleased to award the 2022 Mendel Medal to Dr. William Newsome (APS 2011) from Stanford University

Darren Walker (APS 2021) Preaches at Church of the Heavenly Rest

Jill Abramson (APS 2012), the first woman to direct the New York Times, spoke on The Legacy of Women

September 2022

Angus Deaton (APS 2014) explains how COVID-19, deaths of despair, and a slow in progress on cardiovascular diseases led to a drop in life expectancy.

The Mendel Medal will be awarded to Dr. William Thomas Newsome, III (APS 2011) from Stanford University, for his contributions toward improved understanding of systems and cognitive neuroscience

David Hollinger (APS 2017) has published a new book, Christianity's American Fate: How Religion Became More Conservative and Society More Secular

Kathryn Sikkink (APS 2013) will moderate "Explaining Public-Sector Union Mobilization: A Mixed-Methods Approach with Evidence from Argentina"

Rebecca Richards-Kortum (APS 2017) will deliver the lecture "Designing and Delivering Medical Devices to Help Every Newborn, Everywhere Survive and Thrive"

APS member John W. O'Malley (APS 1997) died on September 11, 2022, in Baltimore, MD, at the age of 95. Father O’Malley was known for his scholarly works on the Catholic Church’s last four ecumenical councils as well as his many writings interpreting the 20th-century history of the Society of Jesus. He was an incredibly active member (serving, among other ways, as Vice President from 2010-16) and won the Society's Jacques Barzun Prize in Cultural History in 1993 and Henry Allen Moe Prize in the Humanities in 2013.

APS member A. Bruce Mainwaring (APS 2004) died on September 6, 2022, in Bryn Mawr, PA, at the age of 95. A highly successful businessman and philanthropist, Mainwaring had a lifelong interest in the sciences and was able to maintain an active interest in scholarly institutions, especially the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology & Anthropology.

APS member Saul A. Kripke (APS 2004) died on September 15, 2022, in New York, NY, at the age of 81.  Kripke was well-known for his work in philosophy of language and logic, with his Naming and Necessity widely recognized as one of the most important works of 20th Century analytic philosophy.

APS member Maarten Schmidt (APS 2000) died on September 17, 2022, in Fresno, CA, at the age of 92.  Schmidt was well known for his 1963 discovery of quasars—extremely bright and distant cosmic objects powered by active supermassive black holes.

APS member George A. Kennedy (APS 1984) died on July 28,2022, in Spring, TX, at the age of 94. Kennedy was a scholar of classical rhetoric and literature.

August 2022

Lawrence Tribe (APS 2010) was recently interviewed about the Supreme Court by the Washington Post

APS member David McCullough (APS 2004) died on August 7, 2022, in Hingham, MA, at the age of 89.  He was known to millions as an award-winning, best-selling author and an appealing television host and narrator with a rare gift for recreating the great events and characters of America’s past.

July 2022

Barry Mazur (APS 2001) Awarded 2022 Chern Medal

Jonathan Lear has published "Imagining the End: Mourning and Ethical Life"

APS member Richard Taruskin (APS 1998) died on July 1, 2022, in Oakland, CA, at the age of 77.  He was a commanding musicologist and public intellectual whose polemical scholarship and criticism upended conventional classical music history.

APS member Hans Frauenfelder (APS 1981) died on July 10, 2022, in Tesuque, NM, at the age of 99. He was an American physicist and biophysicist notable for his discovery of perturbed angular correlation (PAC) in 1951.

APS member Ho-Wang Lee (APS 1998) died on July 5, 2022, in Seoul, South Korea, at the age of 94.  He was a virologist who isolated the pathogen behind a deadly form of haemorrhagic fever.
 

June 2022

Lessons Learned from the Life of Constance Baker Motley: A Conversation with Dean Tomiko Brown-Nagin (APS 2021) to Celebrate The Law Library of Congress’ 190th Anniversary on July 14

Johns Hopkins to host conversation with Donna Shalala (APS 2009), former HHS secretary and member of Congress on June 19

Laurie H. Glimcher (APS 2019) named to Modern Healthcare’s 50 Most Influential Clinical Executives Class of 2022

Frances H. Arnold (APS 2018) and Evelyn Higginbotham (APS 2009) will receive honorary degrees from Carnegie Mellon University.

Jane Carol Ginsburg (APS 2013) was appointed "Ambassador of the University of Salento"

Exo Therapeutics Appoints Laura Kiessling (APS 2017) to Scientific Advisory Board

APS member Dale W. Jorgenson (APS 1998) died on June 10, 2022, in Cambridge, MA, at the age of 89.  He conducted groundbreaking research on information technology and economic growth, energy and the environment, tax policy and investment behavior, and applied econometrics.

APS member Anne Cutler (APS 2007) died on June 7, 2022, in Nijmegen, the Netherlands, at the age of 77.  She was a world renowned pioneer whose contributions advanced the scientific understanding of spoken language processing, and shaped the field as it is known today.

APS member Roger Newland Shepard (APS 1999) died on May 30, 2022, in Tucson, Arizona, at the age of 93.  Awarded the National Medal of Science, Roger Shepard, professor emeritus of psychology at Stanford, introduced techniques for quantifying mental processes.
 

May 2022

The following members were elected to the National Academy of Sciences:

• Kamaljit S. Bawa (APS 2019)
• France A. Córdova (APS 2022)
• Paul DiMaggio (APS 2016)

Tracy P. Palandjian (APS 2022) was elected to the American Academy of Arts & Sciences

Claudia Goldin (APS 2015) received an honorary degree from Dartmouth.

ProPublica announced Friday the appointment of Tomiko Brown-Nagin (APS 2021) and Carrie Lozano to its board of directors.

GSD names Danielle Allen (APS 2015) 2022 Class Day Speaker

TMT International Observatory names Robert P. Kirshner (APS 2005) new executive director

The Ecology Society of America honors Jianguo "Jack" Liu (APS 2015) as an "eminent ecologist."

Jeffrey Hamburger will give the talk "Flesh and Fabric: the Raiment of the Passion in a Crucifixion by Pietro Lorenzetti" on May 19

Mellon President Elizabeth Alexander (APS 2020) is one of the TIME 100 most influential people of 2022

Architect Billie Tsien (APS 2017) to Receive Honorary Doctorate at the Boston Architectural College’s 2022 Commencement

Linda Greenhouse (APS 2001) offers insight into a transformed court in "What’s Really Going On With the Supreme Court?"

Michael Bloomberg (APS 2015) Plans a $242 Million Investment in Clean Energy

Oxford University will be awarding honorary degrees to William Chester Jordan (APS 2000), Jane Lubchenco (APS 1998), Theda Skocpol (APS 2006), and Susan Solomon (APS 2008). 

APS member Ben R. Mottelson (APS 2011) died on May 13, 2022, in Copenhagen, Denmark, at the age of 95. He shared the 1975 Nobel Prize in Physics for discoveries of forces that can distort the shape of an atomic nucleus, with implications for human-made nuclear fission.

APS member Michael Sela (APS 1995) died on May 27, 2022, in Rehovot, Israel, at the age of 98.  He was a renowned immunologist who served as the sixth president of the Weizmann Institute of Science.

APS member Richard Herr (APS 1993) died on May 29, 2022, in Berkeley, California, at the age of 100.  Dr. Herr was one of the historians who contributed decisively to the renewal of Spanish historiography.

April 2022

Frantz Grenet (APS 2017) has been elected to the Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-lettres.

Frans de Waal (APS 2005) appeared on Sean Carroll's (APS 2017) Mindscape podcast

Éva Tardos (APS 2020) was named ACM Athena Lecturer For Technical and Mentoring Contributions

Eikon Therapeutics Announces the Election of Kenneth C. Frazier (APS 2018) to Its Board of Directors

Joy Harjo to address University of Tennessee, Knoxville Class of 2022 and receive an honorary degree

Freeman A. Hrabowski, III, (APS 2003) Transformative Leader in Higher Education, to Speak at Drexel’s 2022 Commencement

Stephen Breyer (APS 2004) to be honored with the Thomas Jefferson Foundation Medal by Monticello and the University of Virginia

Mark Morris (APS 2008) - “L’Allegro” returned to the Brooklyn Academy of Music, where it had its United States premiere in 1990

Tony Hunter (APS 2006) Honored with 2022 AACR Award for Lifetime Achievement in Cancer Research

Patrick V. Kirch (APS 1998) will be one of three individuals honored at the 47th annual Living Treasures of Hawaiʻi virtual event on May 22. The award recognizes Kirch for his significant contributions to the field of Polynesian archaeology and its positive impact on the quality of life in the local community.

Glenn Loury (APS 2011), distinguished economist and scholar, selected as a 2022 Bradley Prize winner

The speech made by Peter Dervan (APS 2002) as he received the Priestly Medal is now available.

The 2022 Haueter Award is awarded to Dr. Martine Rothblatt (APS 2008), founder, and chair of the board of United Therapeutics. (Presentation on YouTube)

Lorraine Daston (APS 2017) will give the lecture “The Origins of International Governance in Science”

Larry Bartels (APS 2019) honored with SEC Faculty Achievement Award

Frans de Waal’s (APS 2005) new book “Different” is a fascinating study of gender among monkeys and apes.

Jed Buchwald (APS 2011) will be giving the lecture “Isaac Newton and the Origin of Civilization” on May 13 

APS member Sidney Altman (APS 1990) died on April 5, 2022, in Rockleigh, NJ, at the age of 82. He shared a Nobel for finding that RNA was not just a carrier of genetic information but could also trigger life-changing chemical reactions in cells.

APS member Richard J. Franke (APS 2011) died on April 15, 2022, in New York City, at the age of 90.  Richard Franke served as the chief executive officer of John Nuveen & Company for 22 years.

March 2022

The 2022 Holberg Prize is awarded to Sheila Sen Jasanoff (APS 2021) for her pioneering research in the field of Science and Technology Studies.

Anthony S. Fauci (APS 2001) will speak at the May 7 “comeback ceremony,” at Michigan State University, for 2020 graduates who didn’t have an in-person commencement because of the COVID-19 pandemic. He and Thomas Holt (APS 2016) will receive honorary degrees.

Barnard College has received the largest gift in its more than 130-year history - a $55 million donation from former Merck CEO P. Roy Vagelos (APS 1993) and his wife Diana.

Join WHYY and PBS for a live, virtual discussion on Benjamin Franklin: A Film by Ken Burns (APS 2011), featuring clips from the two-part series.

As Joy Harjo (APS 2021) concludes her appointment as US Poet Laureate, she joins poet and Mellon Foundation President Elizabeth Alexander (APS 2020) in conversation about the role of poetry in our current moment, and how the discipline of writing poetry has shaped the lives of both women.

Andrew Delbanco (APS 2013), Alexander Hamilton Professor of American Studies at Columbia University and president of the Teagle Foundation, will present three lectures on the theme “What Do Our Colleges and Universities Owe to Black Americans?”

Prof. Wendy Freedman (APS 2007) named speaker for UChicago’s 2022 Convocation celebration

Walter Isaacson (APS 2005), author, professor, executive, and television host (among other roles) will receive Research!America’s Isadore Rosenfeld Award for Impact on Public Opinion for his commitment to bringing public attention to revolutionary figures in science and technology.

Johns Hopkins University President Ron Daniels (APS 2018) Named Chair of IDI’s International Advisory Council

The Department of Chinese Language and Literature organized an academic conversation entitled “Cultural Memory and Early Chinese Civilization” with Professor Martin Kern (APS 2015) and Professor Zhang Yue.

Dr. Roger Myerson (APS 2019), an internationally-recognized economist and 2007 Nobel Memorial Prize recipient in Economic Sciences, offered an informal guest lecture with Naval Postgraduate School (NPS) students and faculty in the Defense Analysis (DA) department, Feb. 28.

Physicist S. James Gates (APS 2012) to present virtual talk as part of J. Mark Sowers Distinguished Lecture Series

The Marine Biological Laboratory announced the decision to name the directorship of the Semester in Environmental Science program the Jerry M. Melillo (APS 2005) Directorship in Environmental Science.

During the 2022 Ted Belytschko Lecture, Harvard professor Joanna Aizenberg (APS 2016) spoke about HAIRS. No, not the hair on top of your head, but Hydrogel-Actuated Integrated Responsive Structures.

Harold Hongju Koh (APS 2007) will speak at the Nelson Mandela Auditorium in the FedEx Global Education Center on Thursday, March 24th at 5:30 PM ET: “Suing Russia for Ukraine at the World Court.”

APS member Howard C. Berg (APS 2002) died on December 30, 2021, in Cambridge, MA, at the age of 87.  Berg, through five decades of study of bacterial motile behavior, helped establish foundations for modern quantitative biology.

February 2022

Jacqueline K. Barton (APS 1999) has been named the recipient of this year’s Theodore William Richards Medal Award by the Northeastern Section of the American Chemical Society (ACS).

Danielle Allen (APS 2015) will be giving the talk Democracy in the Time of Coronavirus on March 16.

Anthony Fauci (APS 2001) will be the keynote speaker at the University of Maryland, Baltimore Commencement Ceremony.

Alondra Nelson (APS 2020) will perform the duties of director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP)

Carol Greider (APS 2016), recipient of the 2009 Nobel Prize in physiology or medicine, will deliver the next Fralin Biomedical Research Institute at VTC’s Maury Strauss Distinguished Public Lecture on Feb. 24.

Annette Gordon-Reed (APS 2019) of Harvard University will deliver the 2021-22 Rutman Distinguished Lecture on the American Presidency on Thursday, April 7, 2022. She also spoke on Feb. 10 at James Branch Cabell Library.

Howard Gardner (APS 2006) and Wendy Fischman will give the talk The Real World of College: What Higher Education Is and What It Can Be in March.

Mary Beard (APS 2012) will give a talk on her book Twelve Caesars: Images of Power from the Ancient World to the Modern in March.

John P. Holdren (APS 2015) to Receive Public Welfare Medal – National Academy's Most Prestigious Award

Andrew Knoll (APS 1997) awarded the 2022 Crafoord Prize in Geosciences by the Royal Swedish Academy

University of Pennsylvania doctors, including Carl June (APS 2020), say cancer patients cured a decade after gene therapy.

Michael Dine, in conversation with Lisa Randall (APS 2010), will present the Harvard Science Book Talk: "This Way to the Universe: A Theoretical Physicist's Journey to the Edge of Reality"

Patricia and Stephen Benkovic (APS 2002) have created The Patricia and Stephen Benkovic Research Initiative as a funding mechanism designed to directly support fresh, bold research projects at the interface of chemistry and the life sciences.

Lonnie G. Bunch III (APS 2020) will be recognized with the NMHS Distinguished Service Award for his outstanding contributions to the public understanding of the maritime experience of enslaved Africans taken to America and the subsequent relationship of African Americans with the sea.

APS member Sir David Cox (APS 1990) died on January 18, 2022, in Oxford, UK, at the age of 97. Sir David was an internationally renowned statistician who made outstanding contributions to research in the fields of statistics and applied probability, including the development of the Cox Model, which is widely used in medicine when analysing patients’ chances of survival.

APS member Richard S. Dunn (APS 1998) died on January 24, 2022, in Winston-Salem, NC, at the age of 93. He was an early Americanist, founder and first director of the what is now the McNeil Center for Early American Studies, and served as Co-Executive Officer, with Mary Maples Dunn, of the American Philosophical Society

APS member Mireille Delmas-Marty (APS 2021) died on February 12, 2022, in Saint-Germain-Laval, Loire, France, at the age of 80. She was Professor at the College de France and member of the Academy of Moral and Political Sciences.

APS member Paul Farmer (APS 2018) died on February 21, 2022, in Butaro, Rwanda, at the age of 62.  He was a physician, anthropologist and humanitarian who gained global acclaim for his work delivering high-quality health care to some of the world’s poorest people.

APS member Charles G. Dempsey (APS 1998) died on February 22, 2022, in Washington, DC, at the age of 84.  Specializing in Renaissance and Baroque art, Dempsey was a rigorous and exacting scholar and mentor to several generations of students. He is survived by his wife, APS Vice President Elizabeth Cropper.
 

January 2022

Shirley Tilghman (APS 2000) wins award for ‘exemplary contributions to the genetics community and society’

Olufunmilayo Olopade (APS 2011) received the prestigious William L. McGuire Award for transformative breast cancer research.

Nicholas Canny (APS 2007) has published "Imagining Ireland's Pasts: Early Modern Ireland Through the Centuries."

Opera Colorado and The Stanley Hotel Present an Immersive Weekend Exploring composer Paul Moravec (APS 2010) and librettist Mark Campbell's Operatic Adaptation of The Shining in February.

Justice Rosalie Silberman Abella (APS 2018) of Canada’s Supreme Court Named Mulligan Distinguished Visiting Professor at Fordham Law

The University of Chicago's Marine Biological Laboratory proudly announces the decision to name the directorship of the Semester in Environmental Science program the Jerry M. Melillo (APS 2005) Directorship in Environmental Science, an endowed fund.

APS member Jonathan M. Brown (APS 1988) died on January 17, 2022, in Princeton, NJ, at the age of 83.  Jonathan Brown was a pioneering art historian who brought the study of both Spanish and Viceregal Mexican art to wide public and academic attention with his teaching, voluminous writing and exhibition curating, from the 1960s until the present decade.

APS member Beatrice Mintz (APS 1982) died on January 3, 2022, in Philadelphia, PA, at the age of 100.  She was an American embryologist who contributed to the understanding of genetic modification, cellular differentiation and cancer, particularly melanoma. Mintz was a pioneer of genetic engineering techniques, and was among the first scientists to generate both chimeric and transgenic mammals.

APS member Edward O. Wilson (APS 1976) died on December 26, 2021, in Burlington, MA, at the age of 92. A Harvard professor for 46 years, he was an expert on insects and explored how natural selection and other forces could influence animal behavior. He then applied his research to humans.

APS member Franklin A. Thomas (APS 2006) died on December 22, 2021, in New York, NY, at the age of 87.  He rose from working-class Brooklyn to become the first Black person to run a major American philanthropy, and he revitalized it, shifting its focus to poverty and education.

APS member Sara McLanahan (APS 2016) died on December 31, 2021, in Princeton, NJ, at the age of 81. She was an American sociologist. She is known for her work on the family as a major institution in the American stratification system.

APS member Jonathan Dermot Spence (APS 1992) died on December 25, 2021, in West Haven, CT, at the age of 85.  His classes at Yale and well-regarded books explored China’s vast history through details that illuminated bigger pictures and themes.

APS member Thomas E. Lovejoy (APS 1999) died on December 25, 2021, in McLean, VA, at the age of 80.  His ambitious, long-running project in Brazil explored the impact of deforestation on animals and plants — and how to deal with it.

APS member Joan Didion (APS 2006) died on December 23, 2021, in New York, NY, at the age of 87.  She established a distinctive voice in American fiction before turning to political reporting and screenplay writing.

The following Members were found to have passed at an earlier date in our annual membership check:

APS member Jean-Michel Dubernard (APS 2010) died on July 10, 2021, in France, at the age of 80.  Jean-Michel Dubernard was a medical doctor specializing in transplant surgery who served as a Deputy in the French National Assembly.

APS member Chie Nakane (APS 1977) died on October 12, 2021, in Tokyo, Japan, at the age of 94. Chie Nakane was a Japanese anthropologist and Professor Emerita of Social Anthropology at the University of Tokyo.

December 2021

Philip Kitcher (APS 2018) has been awarded the Carl Gustav Hempel Award for 2020 from the Philosophy of Science Association. Additionally he has published two books this year: Moral Progress and The Main Enterprise of the World: Rethinking Education.

Claire L. Parkinson (APS 2010) was inducted into the Maryland Women’s Hall of Fame and received NASA’s Distinguished Service Medal, the highest recognition awarded by NASA to its employees.

APS Member Robert Jervis (APS 2014), the Adlai E. Stevenson professor of international politics, passed away from lung cancer complications in his home on Dec. 9, 2021. He was 81 years old.

APS Member Michael E. Fisher (APS 1993) died on November 26, 2021, in Silver Springs, MD, at the age of 90.

November 2021

The Carnegie Corporation of New York has named Louise Richardson (APS 2017), currently the vice chancellor of Oxford University, as its next president, succeeding Vartan Gregorian who died in April.

Michael Fried (APS 2003), Johns Hopkins Academy professor and professor emeritus of the humanities, gave the Johns Hopkins Academy Lecture titled "All or Nothing: Manet in the 1860s."

Cora Diamond (APS 2007), a distinguished philosopher, received an Honorary Degree of Doctor of Humane Letters from the University of Chicago.

Mark Thompson (APS 2017) and Maria  Ressa will co-chair the board of the new initiative, called International Fund for Public Interest Media, beginning Oct. 1.

APS member Frederik Willem de Klerk (APS 1994) died on November 11, 2021, in Cape Town, at the age of 85.  As president of South Africa he dismantled the apartheid system that he and his ancestors had helped put in place.

October 2021

Harvard faculty member Danielle Allen (APS 2015) to speak in Viterbo ethics series.

Vinton G. Cerf (APS 2008), vice president and chief internet evangelist for Google, will speak at Hood College.

National Gallery of Art Board of Trustees Elects Indra Nooyi (APS 2021) as New Trustee and David Rubenstein (APS 2019) as Chairman.

Ruth J. Simmons (APS 1997) gave the Washington Post Live lecture Race in America: HBCUs with Ruth J. Simmons, PhD.

Andrea M. Ghez (APS 2012), 2020 Nobel Prize Winner and Astrophysics Expert, Named Honorary Member of Zonta International.

APS member Prof. Dr Jack David Dunitz (APS 1997) died on September 12, 2021, in Switzerland, at the age of 98.  He is credited with shaping contemporary structural chemistry and was renowned as a teacher and mentor.

APS member Colin L. Powell (APS 1998) died on October 18, 2021, in Bethesda, Maryland, at the age of 84.  He was an American politician, diplomat, and four-star general who served as the 65th United States secretary of state from 2001 to 2005.

APS member Ronald S. Stroud (APS 2005) died on October 7, 2021, in Berkeley, California, at the age of 88. Ron Stroud was one of the world's leading Greek epigraphists.

Marjorie McCarty, a beloved colleague and the widow of Rockefeller’s Maclyn McCarty, has passed away at the age of 94. We have lost a cherished, long-time member of our community.

September 2021

Giorgio Parisi (APS 2013) won the 2021 Nobel Prize in Physics "for the discovery of the interplay of disorder and fluctuations in physical systems from atomic to planetary scales."

Joy Harjo (APS 2021) released her second memoir, entitled Poet Warrior.

The program Sandra Day O'Connor: The First has appeared on PBS, highlighting Sandra Day O'Connor (APS 1992), with commentary by Linda Greenhouse (APS 2001).

Mary Beth Norton (APS 2010) wins 2021 George Washington Prize for “1774: The Long Year of Revolution”

Jeffrey Gordon (APS 2014) is a recipient of this year’s Balzan Prize for his role in founding the field of human gut microbiome research and revolutionizing the understanding of gut microbes and their roles in human health and disease.

Anne-Marie Slaughter (APS 2011) explains what she has learned from a long career of public service in her new book, Renewal: From Crisis to Transformation in Our Lives, Work, and Politics.

Indra Nooyi (APS 2021), former CEO of PepsiCo, narrates her rise to the top in her new book, My Life In Full: Work, Family, and Our Future.

Kara Walker (APS 2018) will be part of a virtual discussion on September 27.

Giorgio Parisi (APS 2013) has been named a Clarivate Citation Laureate.

Pamela Björkman (APS 2002) has been named the recipient of the 2021 Pearl Meister Greengard Prize, a major international award recognizing outstanding women scientists and presented by The Rockefeller University.

Jianguo “Jack” Liu (APS 2015) of Michigan State University, has been honored with the World Sustainability Award for his leadership in integrating the needs of both humans and nature and succeeding in having the work translated into policy and practice. 

August 2021

Paul Alivisatos (APS 2015), the incoming president of the University of Chicago, received the Priestley Medal at the American Chemical Society’s annual meeting.

Geoffrey R. Stone (APS 2010) is one of the recipients of this year’s Norman Maclean Faculty Award of the University of Chicago.

APS member Hugo Freund Sonnenschein (APS 2001) died on July 15, 2021, in Chicago, IL, at the age of 80. He was a renowned economist and longtime university administrator who led the University of Chicago through a transformational period as its 11th president.

APS member Ying-shih Yu (APS 2004) died on August 1, 2021, in Princeton, NJ, at the age of 91.  He was a historian of China who taught at Harvard, Princeton and Yale Universities; his books were banned by the ruling Communist Party in 2014 after he expressed support for pro-democracy activism.

APS member Gary B. Nash (APS 2000) died on July 29, 2021, in California, at the age of 88.  He was a leading UCLA scholar revered for his role in shaping K-12 American history curricula and admired for standing his ground — even in a public entanglement with the wife of a U.S. vice president.

APS member Noel M. Swerdlow (APS 1988) died on July 24, 2021, in California, at the age of 79. Dr. Swerdlow was famous for his approach to studying the works of ancient scientists, which held that modern scholars should be able to understand the mathematics used by ancient writers—from the Babylonians to Kepler. His translations of and commentary on 16th-century astronomer Copernicus, and other astronomers from antiquity to the Renaissance, are foundational texts still read around the world.

July 2021

Jack Szostak (APS 2012) will join the faculty of the University of Chicago as University Professor in the Department of Chemistry and the College.

The American Chemical Society (ACS) has announced that it will honor Peter B. Dervan (APS 2002), Caltech's Bren Professor of Chemistry, Emeritus, with the 2022 Priestley Medal, the society's highest honor.

Paul Alivisatos (APS 2015) has been named the John D. MacArthur Distinguished Service Professor in the Department of Chemistry, the Pritzker School of Molecular Engineering and the College, effective Sept. 1 at the University of Chicago, where he's the incoming President.

Craig Calhoun (APS 2012) joins Melikian Center as interim director.

APS member Purnell W. Choppin (APS 1988) died on July 3, 2021, at home in Washington, DC, at the age of 91.  He was a physician, virologist, and scientific administrator who performed pioneering research on viruses at The Rockefeller University and later exerted a powerful influence on biomedical research as president of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute.

APS member Steven Weinberg (APS 1982) died on July 23, 2021, in Austin, TX, at the age of 88.  His discoveries deepened understanding of the basic forces at play in the universe, and he took general readers back to its dawn in his book “The First Three Minutes.”

June 2021

Noted researcher and scientific leader Jack E. Dixon (APS 2010) retires. In a career spanning almost half-a-century, Dixon pioneered new discoveries and advanced science at both UC San Diego and the Howard Hughes Medical Institute.

Harvard conferred seven honorary degrees, including to Frances H. Arnold (APS 2018), Arlie R. Hochschild (APS 2021), and Margaret H. Marshall (APS 2017).

Billie Tsien (APS 2017) was appointed by President Biden to the Commission of Fine Arts.

Read Mellon President Elizabeth Alexander’s (APS 2020) feature in the June issue of National Geographic.

Sarah B. Pomeroy (APS 2014), was interviewed by Lynn Sherr about her book, Benjamin Franklin, Swimmer (American Philosophical Society Press 2021)

NBAA present the Meritorious Award to Martine Rothblatt (APS 2008).

Yo-Yo Ma (APS 1999) and long-time musical partner Emanuel Ax (APS 2009) have released Hope Amid Tears on Sony Classical.

Danielle Allen (APS 2015) is running for Governor of Massachusetts.

Jianguo "Jack" Liu (APS 2015) received the Gunnerus Award in Sustainability Science.

Pioneering climate change researcher Warren Washington (APS 2003) receives honorary degree

Veerabhadran Ramanathan (APS 2006) will receive the Blue Planet Prize, the international environmental award sponsored by Japan’s Asahi Glass Foundation.

APS member Lewis Wopert (APS 2002) died on January 28, 2021.  A charismatic advocate of his science, Lewis originated the concept of positional information to explain the formation of pattern in the development of an embryo. His work played a central role in building the field.

APS member Jean D. Wilson (APS 2000) died on June 13, 2021, in Dallas, TX, at the age of 88.  Dr. Wilson made scientific discoveries that led to effective prostate treatments, insights into sexual differentiation.

May 2021

Stephen Benkovic (APS 2002) was elected a Foreign Member of Royal Society.

Roger Ferguson, Jr. (APS 2016) to deliver Tuck Investiture Address.

Annette Gordon-Reed (APS 2019) to be Dartmouth Class of 2021 Commencement speaker.

Politics and Prose will be hosting lectures by several APS Members

• Joan Steinau Lester — Loving before Loving: A Marriage in Black and White - with Beverly Daniel Tatum (APS 2014)
• Joy Harjo (APS 2021) — Living Nations, Living Words: An Anthology of First Peoples Poetry - with Deborah A. Miranda & Eric Gansworth
• Annette Gordon-Reed (APS 2019) — On Juneteenth - with Rebecca Hall

Robert B Pippin (APS 2009) will discuss Philosophy by Other Means. He will be joined in conversation by Jensen Suther.

SCC Justice Rosalie Abella (APS 2018) will serve as Pisar visiting professor at Harvard Law School for three years.

Claire L. Parkinson (APS 2010) receives the 2020 Roger Revelle Medal.

Anthony Fauci (APS 2001) acclaimed infectious disease expert will deliver the 67th Beatty Lecture virtually on Friday, October 1, 2021.

Dr. Jane Goodall (APS 1988) wins 2021 Templeton Prize.

APS member Sally Falk Moore (APS 2005) died on May 2, 2021, in Cambridge, Massachusetts, at the age of 97.  Professor Moore was a giant in the fields of legal and political anthropology. She did her major fieldwork in Tanzania and published extensively on cross-cultural, comparative legal theory.

APS member Marye Anne Fox (APS 1996) died on May 9, 2021, in Austin, Texas, at the age of 73. She was a tough-minded chemist who guided UC San Diego through eight often difficult years of growth as the school’s chancellor and was awarded the National Medal of Science for her insights about sustainable energy.

April 2021

Regna Darnell (APS 2004) has won two awards and has three publications coming out:

• She won the 2020 Lifetime Service Award from the Women’s Caucus, Canadian Anthropology Society
• She won the 2020 Lifetime Achievement Award from the American Society for Ethnohistory
• She published History of Anthropology: A Critical Window on the Discipline in North America (2021)
• She will publish Method and Theory in the History of Anthropology (2022)
• She edited the forthcoming Franz Boas Papers: Documentary Edition

Annette Gordon-Reed (APS 2019) will soon publish On Juneteenth.

Henry Louis Gates Jr. (APS 1995) was named Don M. Randel Award recipient at the American Academy of Arts & Sciences.

Roger W. Ferguson Jr. (APS 2016) will join the Council on Foreign Relations as the Steven A. Tananbaum Distinguished Fellow for International Economics starting on May 10, 2021.

Jeffrey Gordon (APS 2014) has been awarded the 2021 Kober Medal, in recognition of his outstanding contributions to the field of gut microbiome research.

Laurence Tribe (APS 2010) named to Presidential Commission on the Supreme Court.

Judith Butler (APS 2007) will be giving the lecture "Debt, Guilt, Responsibility, Obligation."

Retired Mass. Supreme Judicial Court Chief Justice Margaret H. Marshall (APS 2017) to receive 2021 Bolch Prize.

Ruth J. Simmons (APS 1997) will speak at Princeton’s Baccalaureate ceremony.

Benjamin Isaac (APS 2003) has published Empire and Ideology in the Graeco-Roman World.

Steven Weinberg (APS 1982) and Simon Levin (APS 2003) will be presenters at the University of Texas at Arlington’s College of Science's Science Week.

Rosalie Silberman Abella (APS 2018), justice of the Supreme Court of Canada, will serve as Pisar visiting professor of law at Harvard Law School, effective July 1, 2022 for a three-year term.

APS Member Robert L. Herbert (APS 1993) died on December 17, 2020, in Northampton, MA, at the age of 91.  He was a pioneering scholar of 19th-century art whose 1988 history of Impressionism, viewed through a social lens, delivered a robust transfusion to the study of that period.

APS Member Vartan Gregorian (APS 1985) died on April 16, 2021, in Manhattan, at the age of 87. He was best known for resurrecting the New York Public Library from a fiscal and morale crisis in the 1980s.

APS Member Charles M. Geschke (APS 2012) died on April 16, 2021, in Los Altos, California, at the age of 81. He was a computer scientist who teamed up with John Warnock (APS 2009) at Xerox and formed Adobe, a firm that rendered traditional printing equipment obsolete.

APS Member David Wake (APS 1996) died on April 29, 2021, in Berkeley, California, at the age of 84. He was one of the world’s leading experts on salamanders and among the first to warn of a precipitous decline in frog, salamander and other amphibian populations worldwide.

March 2021

Steven Weinberg (APS 1982) will be participating in the Harvard Science Book Talk: "an Evening with Steven Weinberg, in conversation with Andrew Strominger"

Gordon Baym (APS 2000) will be giving the talk "Neutron stars & matter under extreme conditions: from Copenhagen to the Golden Age"

Elaine Fuchs (APS 2005) will be giving the talk "Stem Cells: It’s All about the Environment"

Lawrence Bobo (APS 2008), Henry Louis Gates, Jr. (APS 1995), and Claude Steele (APS 2008) will be webcasting "America's Black-White Divide: Looking Back, Looking Around, Looking Forward" in conversation with Margaret Levi (APS 2018).

Martha C. Nussbaum (APS 1995) has won the 2021 Holberg Prize for her groundbreaking contribution to research in philosophy, law and related fields.

Justice Goodwin Liu (APS 2020) will be chairing a workshop entitled "The Science of Implicit Bias: Implications for Law and Policy".

Margaret Murnane (APS 2015) has been awarded the 2021 Benjamin Franklin Medal in Physics.

Kathryn Sikkink (APS 2013) will be inducted as a Fellow of the American Academy of Political Science (AAPSS) in 2021.

Yale Chief Executive Leadership Institute Presents Anthony Fauci (APS 2001) with the Legend in Leadership Award.

Susan Neiman (APS 2018) will be giving the talk "Conversations on Europe. Learning from Memory: A Transatlantic Conversation with Susan Neiman and Michael Rothberg."

Walter Isaacson (APS 2005) will be giving the talk "A Conversation with Jennifer Doudna & Walter Isaacson."

Stuart H. Orkin (APS 2017) has been awarded the 2021 Gruber Genetics Prize, for pioneering our understanding of the development of blood cells (hematopoiesis) and the genetic underpinnings of both rare and common blood cell disorders.

Olufunmilayo I. Olopade (APS 2011) will be giving the lecture "What African Genomes Tell Us About the Origins of Breast Cancer" at the STAGE International Speaker Seminar Series.

The Harvard Gazette published a memorial tribute to the late Sidney Verba (APS 2003).

The 2021 Wolf prize in Medicine was awarded to Joan Steitz (APS 1992) for ground-breaking discoveries on RNA processing and its function.

The 2021 Wolf prize in Physics is awarded to Giorgio Parisi (APS 2013) for ground-breaking discoveries in disordered systems, particle physics and statistical physics.

Twyla Tharp (APS 2015) biography on American Masters premieres March 26.

APS Member Alexander Spirin (APS 1997), Director Emeritus of the Institute of Protein Research, Russian Academy of Sciences, died December 30.

APS Member Robert Middlekauff (APS 1997), Preston Hotchkis Professor of American History Emeritus at the University of California, Berkeley, died March 10.

APS Member George F. Bass (APS 1989), pioneering underwater archaeologist and Texas A&M Distinguished Professor Emeritus, died Tuesday March 2 in Bryan, Texas, at 88.

February 2021

Anthony Fauci (APS 2001) has won the $1 million Dan David Prize for “defending science” and advocating for vaccines now being administered worldwide to fight the coronavirus pandemic.

Carl June (APS 2020) has won a "future" Dan David Prize for Molecular Medicine.

Corning Incorporated today appointed Roger W. Ferguson Jr. (APS 2016), president and chief executive officer of TIAA, to Corning’s Board of Directors, effective April 1, 2021.

Henry Louis Gates, Jr. (APS 1995) has recently published The Black Church: This Is Our Story, This Is Our Song.

Sean B. Carroll (APS 2017), a world-renowned evolutionary biologist whose discoveries have shed light on the evolution of animal diversity, will deliver the 2021 Darwin Day Lecture at Vanderbilt University.

Joanna Aizenberg (APS 2016) will be giving the lecture "New Bio-inspired Materials: When Chemistry Meets Optics, Mechanics and Surface Science"

Katherine Sikkink (APS 2013) will give a lecture on her book The Hidden Face of Rights: Towards a Politics of Responsibilities.

Anthony Fauci (APS 2001) was named recipient of the 2021 Ivan Allen Jr. Prize for Social Courage. An annual award from the Georgia Institute of Technology, the Ivan Allen Jr. prize honors individuals who have stood up for moral principles at the risk of their careers and livelihoods.

Judge David S. Tatel (APS 2007) has notified President Biden that he will assume senior status effective upon the appointment of his successor. He has served on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit for 27 years and looks forward to serving many more as a senior judge.

APS Member Paul J. Crutzen (APS 2007) died on January 28, 2021, in Mainz, Germany, at the age of 87.  He was a Nobel-winning chemist who revealed threats to the ozone layer, developed the concept of “nuclear winter” and concluded that humans were having such a profound impact on the planet that it was time to recognize a new geological epoch.

APS member George P. Shultz (APS 1992) died on February 6, 2021, in Stanford, CA, at the age of 100.  He carried one of Washington’s weightiest résumés — labor secretary, treasury secretary and budget director for Nixon and secretary of state under Reagan as the Cold War waned. He won the Medal of Freedom in 1989.

APS member J. Hillis Miller (APS 2004) died on February 9, 2021, in Sedgwick, Maine, at the age of 92.  He was a massively influential literary critic and theorist.

APS Member I. M. Singer (APS 1985) died on February 11, 2021, in Boxborough, MA, at the age of 96. Dr. Singer created a bridge between two seemingly unrelated areas of mathematics and then used it to build a further bridge into theoretical physics. He won the National Medal of Science in 1983 and the Abel Prize in 2004.

APS member William B. Eagleson, Jr. (APS 1977) died on February 5, 2021, in Lafayette Hill, PA, at the age of 95.  He was former chairman of Girard Bank, Philadelphia, and chairman emeritus of Mellon Bank Corp.

January 2021

Meave Leaky (APS 2017) has a new book out, entitled The Sediments of Time.

Louise Richardson (APS 2017) will be part of the Irish Embassy's 2021 St Brigid’s Day Festival.

Anthony Fauci (APS 2001) was named recipient of the National Academy of Sciences Public Welfare Medal. The Public Welfare Medal is the Academy’s most prestigious award and was presented to him for his "decades-long leadership in combatting emerging infectious diseases, from the AIDS crisis to the COVID-19 pandemic, and being a clear, consistent, and trusted voice in public health."

Theda Skocpol (APS 2006) will be speaking at an event entitled "The Next Four Years: what should we expect for America?"

Georgia Tech to Award Anthony S. Fauci (APS 2001) the 2021 Ivan Allen Jr. Prize for Social Courage.

Anthony Fauci (APS 2001) was awarded the 2020 Harris Dean's Award.

Eric Foner (APS 2018) will deliver the opening Foley Distinguished Lecture, “The crisis in historical context: What the era of Reconstruction tells us,” on Feb. 16.

Sir Angus Deaton (APS 2014), Nobel Prize winning economist and co-author of Deaths of Despair and the Future of Capitalism, joins the CFA Society for its February Distinguished Speaker Series webinar to discuss his book, address the challenges threatening large parts of middle America, and offer solutions that can alter the current system to one that may work for all.

Jane Goodall (APS 1988) will be speaking at the Salesforce Nonprofit Summit.

Teodolinda Barolini (APS 2002) will unveil Dante's views of “others” in the Divina Commedia and ponder on sexuality issues - his views on women and homosexuality, as well as his attitude towards non-Christians - at an event put on by the Embassy of Italy and the Italian Cultural Institute in Washington, DC.

APS member Giles Constable (APS 1987) died on January 18, 2021, in Princeton, NJ, at the age of 92.  He was a vigorous explorer of medieval religious and intellectual history whose expansive work has provided new and authoritative perspectives on the Middle Ages.

APS member Lionel Gossman (APS 1996) died on January 11, 2021, in Philadelphia, at the age of 91. He was a specialist in French literature and history and "one of the great humanists and scholar-teachers of his generation."

APS member Shirley S. Abrahamson (APS 1998) died on December 19, 2020, in Berkeley, CA, at the age of 87.  She was the first woman to serve on the Wisconsin Supreme Court and its first female Chief Justice.

APS member Leo A. Goodman (APS 1976) died on December 22, 2020, in California, at the age of 92. He was considered a “giant in his field” of statistics and sociology.

The following Members were found to have passed at an earlier date in our annual membership check:

APS member Larissa Adler Lomnitz (APS 2011) died on April 19, 2019, in Mexico, at the age of 87.  Since the publication of her book Como sobreviven los marginados in 1975, she became known worldwide. Her numerous anthropological studies have long been important references for social science research.

APS member Robert McCredie May (APS 2001) died on April 28, 2020, in the UK, at the age of 84.  As chief scientific adviser to the UK government from 1995 to 2000, he shook up the cozy relationship between politicians and the scientific community, and made both think about the public they served.

APS member Jean-Louis Ferrary (APS 2019) died on August 9, 2020, in France, at the age of 72.  Jean-Louis Ferrary was interested in the history of institutions, law and the laws of ancient Rome, in the history of ideas and ancient political philosophy, in Greek and Latin epigraphy of Roman times, Latin philology and historiography.

APS member Jacques Mehler (APS 2009) died on February 11, 2020, in France, at the age of 84.  Jacques Mehler became one of the founders of twentieth-century psycholinguistics, having gained one of the earliest Ph.D.s in the subject at Harvard in 1964. 

APS member Michael J. Berridge (APS 2007) died on February 13, 2020, in the UK, at the age of 81.  Sir Michael’s work on cell signaling and the landmark discovery of the key role that calcium plays in controlling cellular activity led ultimately to important insights into the physiology of conditions as diverse as cancer, bipolar disorder, cardiovascular and neurological diseases.

APS member Louis Nirenberg (APS 1987) died on January 26, 2020, in New York City, at the age of 95.  He was a mathematician who explored the complexities of equations commonly used by physicists and engineers and shared the 2015 Abel Prize for doing so.