Five University of Washington faculty members were among those recently elected as fellows of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences, one of the highest honors accorded to scholars in the United States.
New members include: Michael Hechter, professor of sociology; Edward D. Lazowska, Bill and Melinda Gates Chair in Computer Science & Engineering; Thalia Papayannopoulou, professor of medicine; George Stamatoyannopoulos, professor of genome sciences and medicine; and Robert H. Waterston, professor and Gates Chair, genome sciences. Stamatoyannopoulos and Papayannopoulou are husband and wife.
Those elected to membership, according to the Academy, are among the finest minds and most influential leaders of their generation. Past members have included George Washington and Benjamin Franklin, Daniel Webster and Ralph Waldo Emerson, and Albert Einstein and Winston Churchill.
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 Academy conducts interdisciplinary studies on international security, social policy, education, and the humanities, drawing on the range of academic and intellectual disciplines of its members. The current membership of over 4,500 includes more than 150 Nobel laureates and 50 Pulitzer Prize winners.