Four Women Named Winners of the National Medal of Science

President Obama recently announced 12 winners of the National Medal of Science. The award was created in 1959 and is administered for the White House by the National Science Foundation. The National Medal of Science recognizes individuals who have made outstanding contributions to science and engineering. Of the 12 winners this year, four are women.

(L to R) Sallie Chisholm, Sandra Faber, Lucy Shapiro, and Anne Treisman

Sallie Chisholm is the Lee and Geraldine Martin Professor of Environmental Studies at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Dr. Chisholm is a distinguished biological oceanographer. In 1988, she was part of a team that discovered the world’s smallest, yet most abundant, photosynthetic organism. Professor Chisholm has been on the MIT faculty since 1976.

Dr. Chisholm is a graduate of Skidmore College in Saratoga Springs, New York. She holds a Ph.D. in biology from the State University of New York at Albany.

Sandra Faber is a University Professor of astronomy and astrophysics at the University of California at Santa Cruz. She also serves as the interim director of the University of California Observatories. Dr. Faber is the author of more than 250 scientific papers which have been cited more than 37,000 times. Her research focuses on the formation and evolution of galaxies.

Dr. Faber is a graduate of Swarthmore College in suburban Philadelphia. She holds a Ph.D. from Harvard University.

Lucy Shapiro is a professor of developmental biology at the Stanford University School of Medicine. She also serves as director of the Beckman Center for Molecular and Genetic Medicine at Stanford. Dr. Shapiro joined the Stanford faculty in 1989 after teaching at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine and the College of Physicians and Surgeons at Columbia University.

Dr. Shapiro is a graduate of Brooklyn College of the City University of New York system. She holds a Ph.D. in molecular biology from the Albert Einstein College of Medicine.

Anne Treisman is the James S. McConnell Distinguished University Professor of Psychology at Princeton University. She joined the Princeton faculty in 1993 after teaching at the University of California at Berkeley and the University of British Columbia.

Professor Treisman is a graduate of Cambridge University in England and holds a Ph.D. from Oxford University.