The American Philosophical Society (APS), the oldest learned society in North America, has announced the election of 38 new members. These new members represent outstanding achievement in the sciences, humanities, social sciences, and technology, as well as leadership in industry, higher education, and nonprofit administration. The current elected membership of the APS consists of 817 resident members and 159 international members. Only 5,854 members have been elected since it founding by Benjamin Franklin in 1743.
Of the 28 new members from the United States, 12 are women with current ties to the academic world.
Persis Drell is provost emerita and is the James and Anna Marie Spilker Professor, at Stanford University in California. She is the former director of the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center and earlier spent 14 years on the faculty at Cornell University in New York. Dr. Drell is a graduate of Wellesley College in Massachusetts. She holds a Ph.D. in atomic physics from the University of California at Berkeley.
Marcia Jean Rieke is the Regents’ Professor of Astronomy at the Steward Observatory of the University of Arizona. Her research interests include infrared observations of the center of the Milky Way and of other galactic nuclei and observation of the infrared sky at as faint a level as possible to study distant galaxies. She came to the University of Arizona in 1976 as a postdoctoral researcher. Dr. Rieke holds a doctorate in physics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Dianne K. Newman is the Gordon M. Binder/Amgen Professor of Biology and Geobiology and the Merkin Institute Professor at the California Institute of Technology. Her research is focused on bioenergetics and cell biology of metabolically diverse, genetically-tractable bacteria. She joined the faculty at Caltech in 2000. Dr. Newman is a graduate of Stanford University and holds a Ph.D. from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Mary Eleanor Power is a professor in the department of integrative biology at the University of California, Berkeley. Her research is focused on food webs, primarily algal-based river food webs and their linkages to upland and estuarine ecosystems. Professor Power served as president of the Ecological Society of America (2009–10) and the American Society of Naturalists (2005-2006). She holds a Ph.D. in zoology from the University of Washington.
Esther Duflo is the Abdul Latif Jameel Professor of Poverty Alleviation and Development Economics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. She joined the faculty at MIT in 1999. She also serves as the co-director of the Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab Chaire, Pauvreté et politiques at the College de France. She is the co-author of the critically acclaimed book Poor Economics: A Radical Rethinking of the Way to Fight Global Poverty (PublicAffairs, 2011). Professor Duflo holds a Ph.D. in economics from MIT.
Sherrilyn Ifill is the Vernon E. Jordan, Jr. Professor of Law at the Howard University School of Law. Earlier, Professor Ifill served as the seventh president and director-counsel of the NAACP Legal Defense & Educational Fund. Previously. she was a professor at the University of Maryland School of Law in Baltimore for 20 years. Professor Ifill is a graduate of Vassar College in Poughkeepsie, New York. She earned a juris doctorate at New York University.
Hazel Rose Markus is the Davis-Brack Professor in the Behavioral Sciences in the department of psychology at Stanford University. Her research focuses on the role of self in regulating behavior and on the ways in which the social world shapes the self. She joined the faculty at Stanford University in 1994 after teaching for nearly two decades at the University of Michigan. Professor Markus holds a Ph.D. in psychology from the University of Michigan.
Angela R. Riley ia a professor of law and American Indian studies and holds the Carole Goldberg Endowed Chair of Native American Law at the University of California, Los Angeles. She also serves as Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of the Citizen Potawatomi Nation. Professor Riley is a graduate of the University of Oklahoma. She earned a juris doctorate at Harvard Law School.
Brigitte Bedos-Rezak is a professor of history at New York University She is affiliated with the university’s Institute for the Study of the Ancient World and the Institute of Fine Arts. Her scholarship focuses on medieval France (900-1600), with some attention to England, Germany, and Spain. She is the co-author of Seals: Making and Marking Connections Across the Medieval World (Arc Humanities Press, 2019). Dr. Bedos-Rezak holds a Ph.D. from the Sorbonne in Paris.
Margaret Leah King is a professor emerita of history at Brooklyn College and the Graduate Center of the City University of New York. Dr. King is a 1967 graduate of Sarah Lawrence College in Bronxville, New York, where she majored in history. She went to Stanford University for graduate study in history, earning a master’s degree and a Ph.D. She became an assistant professor at California State University, Fullerton in 1969, and moved to Brooklyn College in 1972.
Julie A. Fairman is the Nightingale Professor in Nursing Emerita at the University of Pennsylvania School of Nursing. Dr. Fairman began teaching at the University of Pennsylvania School of Nursing as a lecturer in 1991. She was named an assistant professor in 1995, an associate professor in 2001, and a full professor in 2009. Professor Fairman is a graduate of Albright College in Reading, Pennsylvania. She holds a master’s degree and a Ph.D. in nursing from the University of Pennsylvania.
Valerie Smith is the fifteenth president of Swarthmore College in Pennsylvania. Before assuming this role in 2015, Dr. Smith was dean of the college and the Woodrow Wilson Professor of Literature at Princeton University in New Jersey. Dr. Smith is a graduate of Bates College in Lewiston, Maine, and holds a master’s degree and a Ph.D. from the University of Virginia. She is the author or editor of several books including Not Just Race, Not Just Gender: Black Feminist Readings (Routledge, 1998) and Self-Discovery and Authority in Afro-American Narrative (Harvard University Press, 1987).