Four UC Berkeley scientists elected to National Academy of Sciences
Four University of California, Berkeley, faculty members – two physicists, a chemist and an ecologist – have been elected members or foreign associates of the National Academy of Sciences, according to an announcement today (Tuesday, May 1) from the NAS.
The four are among 84 new members and 21 foreign associates from 15 countries elected in recognition of their distinguished and continuing achievements in original research. NAS membership is one of the highest honors given to a scientist or engineer in the United States.
The new members are John F. Hartwig, the Henry Rapoport Chair in Organic Chemistry; Mary Power, professor of integrative biology; and Bernard Sadoulet, professor of physics. John Clarke, professor of physics and a citizen of the United Kingdom, was elected a foreign associate.
A total of 141 members of the organization are current or retired UC Berkeley faculty members. There are currently 2,152 active NAS members.
The new members will be inducted into next April during the academy’s 150th annual meeting in Washington, D.C.
Hartwig, who obtained his Ph.D. in chemistry from UC Berkeley in 1990, returned to the campus in 2011 as a professor of chemistry and a faculty scientist at Lawrence Berkeley National laboratory (LBNL). He conducts research on rare “transition” metals – elements such as palladium, rhenium and ruthenium – that have catalytic properties useful for synthesizing new chemicals.
A stream ecologist, Power joined the faculty in 1987 and directs the California Biodiversity Center. She conducts experiments in rivers and watersheds to untangle the complex food webs and intricate species interactions in fresh water habitats.
Sadoulet came to UC Berkeley in 1985 as a professor of physics witha long involvement in the search for dark matter, a so-far unidentified form of matter that makes up a quarter of the mass of the universe. A faculty scientist in the physics division at LBNL, he is a spokesperson for the Cryogenic Dark Matter Search, a collaboration that operates an underground experiment in Minnesota to detect weakly interacting massive particles.
Clarke joined the UC Berkeley physics faculty in 1969 and is a member of LBNL’s materials science division. He is a pioneer in developing exquisitely sensitive detectors of magnetic fields, in particular SQUIDs, or superconducting quantum interference devices.
Established in 1863, the National Academy of Sciences is a private, nonprofit honorific society of distinguished scholars engaged in scientific and engineering research, dedicated to the furthering science and technology and to their use for the general welfare.
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