Yale Faculty among Scholars, Scientists, Artists, and Leaders

Eight distinguished members of the Yale University faculty were named among the 203 newly elected Fellows and 24 new Foreign Honorary Members of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

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

“It gives me great pleasure to welcome these outstanding leaders in their fields to the Academy,” said Academy President Emilio Bizzi. “Fellows are selected through a highly competitive process that recognizes individuals who have made preeminent contributions to their disciplines and to society at large.”

The Academy will welcome this year’s new class at its annual Induction Ceremony on October 6, at the Academy’s headquarters in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

This year’s class of Fellows from Yale includes:

• Akhil Amar, Southmayd Professor of Law and Political Science, who teaches constitutional law, is co-editor of a leading constitutional law casebook, “Processes of Constitutional Decisionmaking” and author of several books, including most recently, “America’s Constitution: A Biography” (Random House, 2005);
• Henry Hansmann, Augustus E. Lines Professor of Law, whose scholarship has focused principally on the law and economics of organizational ownership and structure;
• Robert A.M. Stern, Dean of the Yale School of Architecture and J.M. Hoppin Professor of Architecture, is founder and senior partner of Robert A. M. Stern Architects, a 260-person firm with commissions ranging from the Museum for African Art in New York to the World headquarters of Mexx International in The Netherlands. Stern is author and co-author of many books on the history of architecture, particularly that of New York City and hosted the celebrated PBS series “Pride of Place: Building the American Dream”;
• Margot Fassler, Director of the Institute of Sacred Music and Robert S. Tangeman Professor of Music History, is a historian of music and liturgy, with specialization in medieval and American sacred repertories. Her book “Gothic Song” won the Nicholas Brown Prize of the Medieval Academy and the Otto Kindelday Prize of the American Musicological Society;
• William L. Jorgensen, Whitehead Professor of Chemistry, whose research focus is computer-aided drug design, the basis of polypeptide and nucleic acid folding, and modeling of organic and enzymatic reactions;
• Lawrence G. Manley, William R. Kenan, Jr. Professor of English, specializes in literature of the English and Continental Renaissance, theater studies and the history of literary criticism. He is the author of “Literature and Culture in Early Modern London,” and “Convention, 1500–1750,” which won the René Wellek Prize of the American Comparative Literature Association;
• Frances M. Rosenbluth, Professor of Political Science, is a comparative political economist with a special interest in Japan.  Her current work focuses on the electoral microfoundations of different forms of capitalism, and on the politics of gender inequality. Rosenbluth is director of the Georg Walter Leitner Program in International and Comparative Political Economy, part of the Whitney and Betty MacMillan Center for International and Area Studies;
• Bernard G. Forget, M.D., Chief of Hematology, Department of Internal Medicine, researches the mechanisms of normal and abnormal gene expression during red blood cell differentiation;

The Academy, founded in 1780 by John Adams, James Bowdoin, John Hancock and other scholar-patriots, has elected as Fellows and Foreign Honorary Members the finest minds and most influential leaders from each generation. Noted Fellows include George Washington and Benjamin Franklin, Daniel Webster, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Albert Einstein and Winston Churchill.

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 current membership includes more than 170 Nobel laureates and 50 Pulitzer Prize winners.

The 227 scholars, scientists, artists, civic, corporate and philanthropic leaders come from 27 states and 13 countries and range in age from 36 to 92. Represented among this year’s newly elected members are 70 universities, including seven presidents or chancellors; more than a dozen corporations; as well as museums, research institutes, media outlets and foundations.

Those elected this year include a former Vice President of the United States; a former Associate Justice of the United States Supreme Court; the mayor of New York City; and Nobel Prize and Academy Award winners; Foreign Honorary Members in this year’s class come from Europe, Asia, Canada and the Middle East.