The American Philosophical Society is pleased to welcome new Members elected to the Society in 2021. Election to the American Philosophical Society honors extraordinary accomplishments in all fields. The APS is unusual among learned societies because its Membership is composed of top scholars from a wide variety of academic disciplines.
CLASS 1 MATHEMATICAL AND PHYSICAL SCIENCES
Joseph S. Francisco
President’s Distinguished Professor of Earth and Environmental Science, Professor of Chemistry, University of Pennsylvania; William E. Moore Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences and Chemistry, Purdue University
Barbara V. Jacak
Faculty Senior Scientist, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Professor of Physics, University of California, Berkeley
Deb Niemeier
Clark Distinguished Chair in Sustainability, Professor, Civil and Environmental Engineering, University of Maryland, College Park; Professor Emerita, Civil and Environmental Engineering, University of California, Davis
Daniel G. Nocera
Patterson Rockwood Professor of Energy, Department of Chemistry and Chemical Biology, Harvard University; Founder and Board of Directors, Kula Bio
Billie Lee Turner II
Regents’ Professor, Gilbert F. White Professor of Environment and Society, School of the Geographical Sciences and Urban Planning and School of Sustainability, Arizona State University; Distinguished Research Professor of Geography, Clark University
Neil deGrasse Tyson
Astrophysicist, Frederick P. Rose Director of the Hayden Planetarium, Rose Center for Earth and Space, American Museum of Natural History;
Co-founder, Executive Producer, and Host, StarTalk Radio
International
Michael Victor Berry
Melville Wills Professor of Physics Emeritus, University of Bristol, United Kingdom
CLASS 2 BIOLOGICAL SCIENCES
Anna Katherine “Kay” Behrensmeyer
Senior Research Geologist, Curator of Vertebrate Paleontology, Department of Paleobiology, National Museum of Natural History, Smithsonian Institution
Kristen Hawkes
Distinguished Professor, Department of Anthropology, University of Utah
Marc Kirschner
John Franklin Enders University Professor, Harvard University, Professor of Systems Biology, Harvard Medical School
Trudy Frances Charlene Mackay
Director, Clemson Center for Human Genetics, Self Family Endowed Chair of Human Genetics, and Professor of Genetics and Biochemistry, Clemson University
Gene E. Robinson
Director, Carl R. Woese Institute for Genomic Biology, Swanlund Chair, Center for Advanced Study Professor in Entomology and Neuroscience, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
International
Charles Godfray
Director, Oxford Martin School, Professor of Population Biology, Department of Zoology, University of Oxford
K. VijayRaghavan
Principal Scientific Advisor, Government of India; Professor Emeritus, Former Director, National Centre for Biological Sciences, Tata Institute of Fundamental Research, Bangalore, India
CLASS 3 SOCIAL SCIENCES
Daron Acemoglu
Institute Professor, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
David W. Blight
Sterling Professor of History, of African American Studies, and of American Studies, Director, Gilder Lehrman Center for the Study of Slavery, Resistance, and Abolition, Yale University
Philip Joseph Deloria
Leverett Saltonstall Professor of History, Harvard University
Arlie Russell Hochschild
Professor Emerita of Sociology, University of California, Berkeley
Sheila Jasanoff
Pforzheimer Professor of Science and Technology Studies, John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University
Diana L. Kormos-Buchwald
General Editor and Director, The Einstein Papers Project, Robert M. Abbey Professor of History, Division of the Humanities & the Social Sciences, California Institute of Technology
Cecilia Elena Rouse
Lawrence and Shirley Katzman and Lewis and Anna Ernst Professor in the Economics of Education, Professor of Economics and Public Affairs, Princeton University
International
Mireille Delmas-Marty
Member, French Academy of Moral and Political Sciences; Professor Emeritus, Collège de France
CLASS 4 HUMANITIES
Elizabeth Anderson
John Dewey Distinguished University Professor of Philosophy and Women’s & Gender Studies, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor
Kathleen Mary Coleman
James Loeb Professor of the Classics, Chair, Department of Classics, Harvard University
Ronald Egan
Confucius Institute Professor of Sinology, Department of East Asian Languages and Cultures, Stanford University; Emeritus Professor of Chinese, Department of East Asian Languages and Cultural Studies, University of California, Santa Barbara
Mary Miller
Director, Getty Research Institute
Richard J. Powell
John Spencer Bassett Professor of Art and Art History, Duke University
International
Moshe Halbertal
Professor of Jewish Thought and Philosophy, Hebrew University; Gruss Professor of Law, New York University Law School
Deborah Howard
Professor of Architectural History Emerita, Faculty of Architecture and History of Art, Fellow, St. John’s College, University of Cambridge
Sarah Stroumsa
Alice and Jack Ormut Professor of Arabic Studies Emerita, Hebrew University of Jerusalem
CLASS 5 THE ARTS, PROFESSIONS, LEADERS IN PUBLIC AND PRIVATE AFFAIRS
Tomiko Brown-Nagin
Dean, Harvard Radcliffe Institute, Daniel P.S. Paul Professor of Constitutional Law, Harvard Law School, Professor of History, Faculty of Arts and Sciences, Chair, Presidential Committee on Harvard and the Legacy of Slavery, Harvard University
Lydia Davis
Short story writer, novelist, essayist, and translator; Professor of English Emerita, SUNY Albany
Denyce Graves
Operatic Mezzo-Soprano; Rosa Ponselle Distinguished Faculty Artist (Voice), Peabody Institute, Johns Hopkins University
Joy Harjo
U.S. Poet Laureate, Musician
Indra Nooyi
Former Chief Executive Officer, PepsiCo; Board of Directors, Amazon; Co-Chair, Board of Directors, AdvanceCT (Connecticut Economic Resource Center); Class of 1951 Chair for the Study of Leadership, West Point
Darren Walker
President, Ford Foundation
About the American Philosophical Society
The American Philosophical Society, the oldest learned society in the United States, was founded in 1743 by Benjamin Franklin for the purpose of “promoting useful knowledge.” The Society sustains its mission in four principal ways. It honors and engages distinguished scientists, humanists, social scientists, and leaders in civic and cultural affairs through elected membership and opportunities for interdisciplinary, intellectual fellowship, particularly in the semi-annual Meetings in Philadelphia. It supports research and discovery through grants and fellowships, lectures, publications, prizes, exhibitions, and public education. It serves scholars through a research library of some 13 million manuscripts and other collections internationally recognized for their enduring scholarly value. The American Philosophical Society’s current activities reflect the founder’s spirit of inquiry, provide a forum for the free exchange of ideas, and convey the conviction of its members that intellectual inquiry and critical thought are inherently in the public interest.
Early members included George Washington, John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, Alexander Hamilton, and John Marshall. In the nineteenth century, John James Audubon, Robert Fulton, Charles Darwin, Thomas Edison, Maria Mitchell, and Louis Pasteur were among those elected. Hans Bethe, Willa Cather, Marie Curie, Albert Einstein, John Hope Franklin, Robert Frost, George Marshall, Barbara McClintock, and Robert Merton hint at the scientific, humanistic, and public accomplishments of twentieth-century members. The first woman was elected in 1789 - the Russian Princess Dashkova, president of the Imperial Academy of Sciences of St. Petersburg.
Today the Society has 1,011 elected members, 847 resident members and 164 international members from more than two dozen foreign countries. Only 5,746 members have been elected since 1743. Since 1900, 269 members have received the Nobel Prize.
New Member photo credits:
Neil deGrasse Tyson: Brandon Royal, for StarTalk/National Geographic.
Kay Behrensmeyer: Kate Sherwood
Marc Kirschner: Lipofsky
Daron Acemoglu: L. Barry Hetherington
Cecilia Rouse: Egan Jimenez
Elizabeth Anderson: David Paterson
Richard Powell: Chester Higgins
Lydia Davis: Theo Cote
Joy Harjo: Matika Wilbur
Darren Walker: Justin-French