Four Women Receive the Barry Prize for Distinguished Intellectual Achievement

The Barry Prize for Distinguished Intellectual Achievement is the premier recognition of excellence in scholarship by the American Academy of Sciences and Letters. This prestigious annual prize, open to scholars across diverse fields and disciplines, honors those whose work has made outstanding contributions to humanity’s knowledge, appreciation, and cultivation of the good, the true, and the beautiful.

Ten scholars were presented with the Barry Prize in 2024. Four of the 10 recipients are women.

Jeannie Suk Gersen is the John H. Watson, Jr. Professor of Law at Harvard University. She has written three books and many articles in scholarly journals and general media. Her book At Home in the Law: How the Domestic Violence Revolution Is Transforming Privacy (Yale University Press, 2009) was awarded the Law and Society Association’s Herbert Jacob Prize for the best law and society book of the year.

The prize citation for Dr. Gersen’s Barry Prize reads: “Combining a profound knowledge of law and its development with keen insight into personal life, Jeannie Suk Gersen has contributed to both scholarly and popular understanding of how law shapes us even in the most intimate, sensitive, and private dimensions of our lives. Her legal scholarship explores the difficulty of both doing justice and respecting personal freedoms in such areas as artistic expression, freedom of speech, cultural identity, pedagogy, psychological trauma, and intimate violence. The Academy honors Dr. Gersen’s distinguished contributions to humanity’s pursuit of a social order that is humane, just, and free.”

Before joining the Harvard Law School faculty in 2006, Professor Gersen served as a law clerk to Justice David Souter on the United States Supreme Court. She is a graduate of Yale University and Harvard Law School. She earned a Ph.D. at the University of Oxford in England as a Marshall Scholar.

Marianne Bertrand is the Chris P. Dialynas Distinguished Service Professor of Economics at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business. She is a research fellow at the National Bureau of Economic Research, the Center for Economic Policy Research, and the Institute for the Study of Labor. Professor Bertrand is an applied micro-economist whose research covers the fields of labor economics, corporate finance, political economy, and development economics.

The citation for her award reads: “Through wide-ranging scholarly work in labor economics and related fields, Marianne Bertrand has expanded our knowledge of the complex and dynamic realities of corporate and household finance, political economy and corporate governance, gender and ethnic discrimination, and development economics. She has also contributed to the establishment of governing principles for universities seeking to reconcile the rights of academic free expression with orderly teaching and learning. The Academy honors Dr. Bertrand’s distinguished contributions to humanity’s understanding of everyday economic relationships, and to the integrity of the modern university.

Born in Belgium, Professor Bertrand received a bachelor’s degree in economics and a master’s degree in econometrics from Belgium’s Universite Libre de Bruxelles. She holds a Ph.D. in economics from Harvard University.

Karin I. Öberg is Thomas Dudley Cabot Professor of the Natural Sciences at Harvard University. Her specialty is astrochemistry and her research aims to uncover how chemical processes affect the outcome of planet formation, especially the chemical habitability of nascent planets.

The citation for her Barry Award reads: “Karin Öberg’s research has broken new ground in our knowledge of the stars, while reminding us of the wonder and beauty that inspire scientific inquiry. Her pioneering observations of the molecular composition of protoplanetary disks have revolutionized our understanding of the chemical processes underlying the formation of stars and planets. The Academy honors Dr. Öberg’s distinguished contributions to humanity’s knowledge of the cosmos, and its sense of awe at the panorama of the night sky.”

A native of Sweden, Dr. Öberg holds a bachelor’s degree in chemistry from the California Institute of Technology. She holds a Ph.D. in astronomy from Leiden University in the Netherlands.

Megan Sykes is Michael J. Friedlander Professor of Medicine, professor of microbiology and immunology, professor of surgical sciences, and director of the Columbia Center for Translational Immunology at Columbia University. She is also director of Research for the Transplant Initiative, and director of Bone Marrow Transplantation Research in the Division of Hematology/Oncology, at Columbia University Medical Center. In 2010, after 20 years at Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School, Dr. Sykes joined the faculty at Columbia University.

The citation for her award reads: “Elucidating basic immunology and carrying its discoveries to clinical application, Megan Sykes has advanced our ability to modulate the immune system in conditions ranging from blood cancers to Type I diabetes. Her breakthrough approach to immune tolerance causes a transplanted organ to be accepted by the recipient’s immune system as part of the self, thereby avoiding the need for immunosuppression with its potential for infections, cancers, and organ damage. The Academy honors Dr. Sykes’ distinguished contributions to excellence in medicine, improving humanity’s life-saving and life-changing capacity to regulate the human immune system.”

Dr. Sykes earned her medical degree at the University of Toronto. She completed internships at Montreal General Hospital and McGill University in Montreal.