American Academy of Arts & Sciences Announces New Members Elected in 2022

CAMBRIDGE, Mass., April 28, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- Founded in 1780, the American Academy of Arts & Sciences honors excellence and convenes leaders to examine new ideas, address issues of importance to the nation and the world, and advance the public good.

For more than 240 years, the Academy has been electing and engaging exceptional individuals. This year's election of 261 new members continues a tradition of recognizing accomplishments and leadership in academia, the arts, industry, public policy, and research.

"We are celebrating a depth of achievements in a breadth of areas," said David Oxtoby, President of the American Academy. "These individuals excel in ways that excite us and inspire us at a time when recognizing excellence, commending expertise, and working toward the common good is absolutely essential to realizing a better future."

"The Academy was founded on the belief that the new republic should honor truly accomplished individuals and engage them in meaningful work," said Nancy C. Andrews, Chair of the Academy's Board of Directors. "The Academy's dual mission continues to this day. Membership is an honor, and also an opportunity to shape ideas and influence policy in areas as diverse as the arts, democracy, education, global affairs, and science." 

The artists, scholars, scientists, and leaders in the public, non-profit, and private sectors elected to the Academy this year include:

Computer scientist Chieko Akasawa, IBM Research

National military leader (ret.) and diplomat John R. Allen, Brookings

Political scientist Erica Chenoweth, Harvard Kennedy School and Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study

Writer Sandra Cisneros             

Actor Glenn Close                     

Constitutional law scholar Justin Driver, Yale Law School

Artistic director Oskar Eustis, The Public Theater

Musician Rhiannon Giddens     

Painter Sam Gilliam                   

Epidemiologist and activist Camara Phyllis Jones, Morehouse School of Medicine

mRNA technology pioneers: Katalin Karikó, BioNTech and Drew Weissman, University of Pennsylvania Perelman School of Medicine

Physicist Gabriel Kotliar, Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey

Surgeon and biomedical engineer Raphael C. Lee, University of Chicago Pritzker School of Molecular Engineering

Evolutionary biologist Harmit Singh Malik, Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center

Clinical psychologist Terrie E. Moffitt, Duke University

Critic Wesley Morris, The New York Times

Sociologist Manuel Pastor, University of Southern California

Historian Heather Cox Richardson, Boston College

Novelist Salman Rushdie          

Singer-songwriter Buffy Sainte-Marie         

Mathematician Claire Voisin, Centre National De La Recherche Scientifique

The complete list of individuals elected in 2022, including 37 International Honorary Members from 16 countries, is online HERE.

The new members join a distinguished group of individuals elected to the Academy before them, including Benjamin Franklin (elected 1781) and Alexander Hamilton (1791) in the eighteenth century; Ralph Waldo Emerson (1864), Maria Mitchell (1848), and Charles Darwin (1874) in the nineteenth; Albert Einstein (1924), Robert Frost (1931), Margaret Mead (1948), Milton Friedman (1959), Martin Luther King, Jr. (1966), Stephen William Hawking (1984), and Condoleezza Rice (1997) in the twentieth; and more recently Jennifer Doudna (2003), Bryan Stevenson (2014), M. Temple Grandin (2016), John Legend (2017), Viet Thanh Nguyen (2018), James Fallows (2019), Joan Baez (2020), and Sanjay Gupta (2021).

About: The American Academy of Arts & Sciences, founded in 1780, is both an honorary society that recognizes and celebrates the excellence of its members and an independent research center convening leaders from across disciplines, professions, and perspectives to address significant challenges. Learn more at amacad.org

SOURCE American Academy of Arts & Sciences