News Release

Johns Hopkins University Professors Inducted into Society Founded by Ben Franklin

Cropper and Dempsey, who are married, are scholars specializing in Renaissance and Baroque art. Cropper also is director of Hopkins' Charles Singleton Center for Italian Studies at the Villa Spelman, in Florence, Italy. Dempsey is the former chair of the History of Art Department at Hopkins. They co-authored Nicolas Poussin: Friendship and the Love of Painting (Princeton University Press, 1996). Though they have both individually written scores of books and articles on Renaissance and Baroque artists, this was the first book they wrote jointly. It was awarded the coveted Mitchell Prize, one of the highest honors in the country for books written on art history, and the Charles Rufus Morey Prize by the College Art Association of America.

Both were individually nominated and elected to the society.

Founded by Benjamin Franklin in 1743, the American Philosophical Society is the oldest learned society in the United States devoted to the advancement of scientific and scholarly inquiry. Among its members are George Washington, John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, Thomas Paine, Charles Darwin, Thomas Edison, John James Audubon, Albert Einstein, Robert Frost and George Marshall.

Current Hopkins faculty members of the society include Donald David Brown (biology), James Ebert (biology), Jack Greene (history), A. McGhee Harvey (medicine), Victor A. McKusick (medical genetics), Vernon B. Mountcastle (neuroscience), Daniel Nathans (medicine), J.G.A. Pocock (history), Solomon Snyder (neuroscience), Owsei Temkin (history of science) and Bert Vogelstein (oncology).

Today the society has 805 elected members, 666 from the United States and 139 from more than 24 foreign countries. Since 1901, more than 200 of these members have received the Nobel Prize.

Related sites:

The Johns Hopkins History of Art Department
http://www.jhu.edu/~arthist/

The American Philosophical Society http://www.amphilsoc.org/index.htm