Twenty-four scholars affiliated with the University of California, including UC Provost and Senior Vice PresidentAcademic Affairs M.R.C. Greenwood, are among the 213 new fellows and foreign honorees elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the organization has announced.
Selected by current academy members, election to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences is a competitive process that acknowledges individuals whose contributions are influential to their field and to society.
As provost and senior vice president, Greenwood is UC’s highest-ranking woman. She was chancellor of UC Santa Cruz from July 1996 to March 2004 and held an appointment as a professor of biology on the campus before her current appointment.
Greenwood is a fellow and past president of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and member of the Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of Sciences.
With the 2005 election of the 225th class of academy fellows and foreign honorees, 509 UC faculty are a part of this learned society, composed of the world’s leading scientists, scholars, artists, business people, and public leaders.
“The UC researchers who were elected to the academy underscore the stellar faculty for which our university is known worldwide, and I congratulate our newest fellows on this important honor,” said UC President Robert C. Dynes, who is himself an academy fellow. “These honorees and their UC colleagues are making important contributions in creating new knowledge, in teaching and mentoring their students, and in producing innovative research that will benefit our nation and the world.”
The American Academy of Arts and Sciences was founded in 1780 by John Adams, James Bowdoin, John Hancock and other scholar-patriots “to cultivate every art and science which may tend to advance the interest, honor, dignity, and happiness of a free, independent, and virtuous people.”
The academy has elected as fellows and foreign honorary members the finest minds and most influential leaders from each generation, including George Washington and Ben Franklin in the 18th century, Daniel Webster and Ralph Waldo Emerson in the 19th, and Albert Einstein and Winston Churchill in the 20th. The current membership includes more than 150 Nobel laureates and 50 Pulitzer Prize winners. Drawing on the wide-ranging expertise of its membership, the American Academy conducts thoughtful, innovative, non-partisan studies on international security, social policy, education, and the humanities.
These esteemed UC faculty are part of an impressive and eclectic class of fellows that includes Supreme Court Chief Justice William Rehnquist, journalist Tom Brokaw and playwright Tony Kusnher who will be honored at the annual induction ceremony on Oct. 8, at the academy’s headquarters in Cambridge, MA.
