Three AAAS Fellows Elected

University President Steven Sample, and professors Solomon Golomb and Larry Swanson are among the 187 newly elected fellows to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (AAAS). The 2003 class was announced on May 5.

The winners—all of whom teach in the College—are in great company. Among this year’s new fellows and foreign honorary members are Kofi Annan, Secretary-General of the United Nations; journalist Walter Cronkite; philanthropist William H. Gates Sr., co-chair of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation; novelist Michael Cunningham; recording industry pioneer Ray Dolby; artist Cindy Sherman; and Nobel Prize-winning physicist Donald Glaser.

“It gives me great pleasure to welcome these outstanding and influential individuals to the nation’s oldest and most illustrious learned society,” says AAAS President Patricia Meyer Spacks. “Election to the American Academy is an honor that acknowledges the best of all scholarly fields and professions. Newly elected fellows are selected through a highly competitive process that recognizes those who have made pre-eminent contributions to their disciplines.”

The academy was founded in 1780 by John Adams, James Bowdoin, John Hancock and other scholars to cultivate art and science “which may tend to advance the interest, honor, dignity and happiness of a free, independent and virtuous people.” The unique structure of the AAAS allows members to conduct interdisciplinary studies that draw on a range of academic and intellectual disciplines.

New fellows are nominated and elected by current members of the academy. Members are divided into five distinct classes: mathematics and physical sciences; biological sciences; social sciences; humanities and arts; and public affairs and business. Sample was elected in public affairs and business. Golomb, whose appointment is jointly in the USC School of Engineering and the College, was elected in mathematics and physical sciences. Swanson, who heads the USC Neuroscience Program, was honored in biological sciences.

Previously inducted fellows from the College include Keiiti Aki, Thomas Crow, Richard Easterlin, Thomas Jordan, George Olah, Richard Thompson, Stephen Toulmin and Michael Waterman.