What do Benjamin Franklin, Albert Einstein and four UW-Madison faculty members have in common? They are all fellows of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
UW-Madison Engineering Professor Juan J. de Pablo, Archaeologist J. Mark Kenoyer, Biochemistry Professor Marvin Wickens and Economics Professor Steven Durlauf were among the newest 212 members to be elected to the Academy Tuesday.
John Adams, James Bowdoin and John Hancock, as well as other revolutionary leaders, founded the Academy 230 years ago during the American Revolution.
The Academy aims to bring together ""men and women of exceptional achievement, drawn from science, scholarship, business, public affairs, and the arts"" to ""anticipate, examine, and confront the critical challenges facing our society.""
Kenoyer, the current president of the American Institute of Pakistan Studies and director of the UW-Madison
Center for South Asia, has excavated in Pakistan and India for more than 30 years.
De Pablo is the Howard Curler Distinguished Professor of Chemical and Biological Engineering and Wickens is the Max Perutz Professor of Molecular Biology.
Durlauf is an expert in economic growth, inequality and poverty and is a research associate of the National Bureau of Economic Research.