American Academy names 13

The American Academy of Arts and Sciences recently announced its newly elected fellows and foreign honorary members. Among this year’s class of 187 fellows and 29 foreign honorary members – honored for their achievements in business, science, and the arts – are 13 Harvard faculty members.

They include Wilfried Schmid, professor of mathematics; Louis Kaplow, professor of law; Frederick Ausubel, Michael Eldon Greenberg, Dennis Ausiello, and Barry Morton Brenner of Harvard Medical School; Andrew P. McMahon, professor of science; Michael Kremer, professor of economics; Michael J. Sandel, professor of government; David Carrasco, professor of the study of Latin America; Laurel Thatcher Ulrich, professor of history; Michael Witzel, professor of Sanskrit; and Hue-Tam Ho Tai, professor of Sino-Vietnamese history.

“It gives me great pleasure to welcome these outstanding and influential individuals to the nation’s oldest and most illustrious learned society,” said Academy President Patricia Meyer Spacks. “Election to the American Academy is an honor that acknowledges the best of all scholarly fields and professions.”

New fellows and foreign honorary members are nominated and elected by current members of the academy. The unique structure of the American Academy allows members to conduct interdisciplinary studies that draw on the range of academic and intellectual disciplines.

The academy 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 current membership includes more than 150 Nobel laureates and 50 Pulitzer Prize winners.