Three faculty named to AAAS

Caltech professors Fred Anson, Colin Camerer, and Joseph Kirschvink have been elected as 2003 fellows by the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Their appointments bring to 82 the number of Institute faculty named to the academy.

“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, noting that the honor “acknowledges the best of all scholarly fields and professions.” The “highly competitive” selection process, said Spacks, “recognizes those who have made preeminent contributions to their disciplines.”

Anson, Caltech’s Gilloon Professor of Chemistry, Emeritus, has carried out pioneering work on the electrochemistry of polymers, the catalysis of electrode reactions, and electrochemical reactions involving ultrathin coatings of molecules on electrode surfaces.

Camerer, who is the Axline Professor of Business Economics, specializes in experimental and behavioral economics, incorporating psychology in the study of decision sciences and game theory. His experiments and field studies of people’s decision-making behavior have given insights into predicting economic trends and understanding social policy.

Professor of Geobiology Kirschvink, who has been honored by students for his teaching excellence, studies how biological evolution has influenced and been influenced by major events on Earth’s surface. His most significant contributions include the “snowball” theory, which posits that Earth may have entirely frozen over several times in its history, possibly stimulating evolution. Another original concept concerns the Cambrian evolutionary explosion, which he believes may have been partly precipitated by Earth’s rotational axis moving to the equator in a short interval of time.

Also among this year’s class of 187 fellows and 29 foreign honorary members are United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan; journalist Walter Cronkite; philanthropist William Gates, Sr.; novelist Michael Cunningham; recording industry pioneer Ray Dolby; artist Cindy Sherman; and Nobel Prize–winning physicist Donald Glaser. The academy will welcome the class members at its annual induction ceremony in Cambridge, Massachusetts, in October.

Founded in 1780 by John Adams, John Hancock, and other scholar-patriots, the academy has over the generations elected the finest minds and most influential leaders, including George Washington, Benjamin Franklin, Albert Einstein, Winston Churchill, and, currently, more than 150 Nobel laureates and 50 Pulitzer Prize winners. Drawing on its members’ expertise, the AAAS conducts innovative nonpartisan studies on international security, social policy, education, and the humanities.
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