President
Ronald J. Daniels and three Johns Hopkins University
faculty members are among the
210 fellows elected to the 229th class of the American
Academy of Arts and Sciences.
In addition to Daniels, the academy elected Andrew
Paul Feinberg, the King Fahd Professor of
Molecular Medicine in the School of Medicine; Jane Guyer,
professor of
anthropology in the Krieger
School of Arts and Sciences; and Barbara Landau, the Dick
and Lydia Todd Professor of Cognitive Science,
also in the Krieger School.
The academy was founded during the American Revolution
by John Adams, James Bowdoin, John
Hancock and others. Its dual role is to honor excellence in
the arts and sciences and to provide
independent, nonpartisan study of important societal
issues.
Ronald J. Daniels took office in March as Johns
Hopkins' 14th president and previously served
as provost at the University of Pennsylvania and dean of
the Faculty of Law at the University of
Toronto. Throughout his career, he has been deeply
committed to the role of universities in promoting
global understanding. His research focuses on law,
economics and public policy, in such areas as
corporate and securities law, social and economic
regulation, and the role of law and legal institutions
in promoting Third World development.
Daniels is author or editor of seven books, most
recently Rule of Law Reform and Development
(2008), on the role of legal institutions in the economies
of Third World countries, and Rethinking the
Welfare State (2005), an analysis of global social
welfare policies, especially the effectiveness of
government vouchers (both books co-authored with Michael
Trebilcock).
Andrew Paul Feinberg is director of the Center for
Epigenetics in the
Institute
for Basic
Biomedical Sciences at the Johns Hopkins University
School of Medicine. He is considered a pioneer in
epigenetics, a field that encompasses the study of non-DNA
sequence-related heredity.
Epigenetics literally means "beyond genes" and refers
to non-DNA modifications to genes,
modifications that carry information content and are
maintained during cell division. In 2004, Feinberg
founded the Johns Hopkins Center for the Epigenetics of
Common Human Disease to help
multidisciplinary teams investigate the role of epigenetics
not only in cancer but also in aging and
common disease. He has spearheaded efforts for genomewide
technology for epigenetics research.
Jane Guyer joined the Johns Hopkins faculty in 2002 as
a professor in the Anthropology
Department and added a secondary appointment in the
History Department
in 2007. She became a
member of the National Academy of Sciences in 2008. Before
coming to Johns Hopkins, she spent
seven years as director of the Program of African Studies
at Northwestern University. She also
served on the faculties of Harvard and Boston
universities.
Guyer has devoted her entire career to economic
transformations in West Africa, particularly
the productive economy, the division of labor and the
management of money. She has served on
several national committees including Oxfam America, the
Social Science Research Council, NSF-
Anthropology, the African Studies Association and an
international advisory group appointed by the
World Bank.
Barbara Landau is the Dick and Lydia Todd Professor
and chair of the Department of Cognitive
Science. Her work focuses on language learning, spatial
representation and the relationships between
these foundational systems of human knowledge. In
particular, Landau investigates these issues in
normally developing children and in people who have severe
spatial impairments due to a rare genetic
condition known as Williams syndrome.
She is a fellow of the Cognitive Science Society, the
American Psychological Society, the
American Psychological Association and the American
Association for the Advancement of Science.
Last month, the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation
named her a Guggenheim Fellow. She
also serves on the governing board of the Cognitive Science
Society and recently completed a term on
the board of scientific affairs of the American
Psychological Association. She is at work on a book to
be titled "Gene, Brain, Mind and Development: The Puzzle of
Williams Syndrome."
This year's new AAAS fellows and foreign honorary
members were nominated and elected to the
academy by current members. A broad-based membership of
scholars and practitioners from
mathematics, physics, biological sciences, social sciences,
humanities and the arts, public affairs and
business allows the academy to conduct a wide range of
interdisciplinary studies and public policy
research.
Daniels, Landau, Guyer and Feinberg will be inducted
on Oct. 10 in Cambridge, Mass., alongside
other fellows who include Nobel Peace Prize laureate Nelson
Mandela, U2 lead singer and advocate for
humanitarian causes Bono, Academy Award-winning actors
Dustin Hoffman and James Earl Jones,
green technology proponent John Doerr, author Thomas
Pynchon, Civil War historian James
McPherson, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, National
Public Radio journalist Susan Stamberg,
California Supreme Court Chief Justice Ronald George and
chemical engineer Adam Heller, who
invented the lithium chloride battery and photochemically
self-cleaning windows.
Their induction brings the number of Johns Hopkins
fellows of the academy to 44.