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May 3, 2001

Media Contact: Jan Jennings (858) 822-1684, jnjennings@ucsd.edu

Six professors at the University of California, San Diego have been elected to membership in the American Academy of Arts & Sciences, Class of 2001. They are Nancy Cartwright, Jeremy Bradford Cook Jackson, Matthew D. McCubbins, John W. Newport, John B. West, and Charles Zuker.

The UCSD professors are among 185 new Fellows from across the nation and 28 Foreign Honorary Members named to the academy, an international society of the world’s leading scientists, scholars, artists, business people, and public leaders.

"Election is the result of a highly competitive selection process that recognizes those who have made preeminent contributions to all fields and professions," said Academy president James O. Freedman.

The UCSD scholars, their field, and academy comments:

• Cartwright is a professor of philosophy at UCSD and a professor of philosophy, logic, and scientific method and director of the Center for Philosophy of Natural and Social Science at the London School of Economics and Political Science. She was cited by the AAAS as being "among the major philosophers of science in the world."
  
  

• Jackson is the William Emerson and Mary B. Ritter Professor of Oceanography at UCSD, whose qualifications are summarized in the academy announcement as "world-class scholarship, teaching, and leadership in marine biology and ecology, ecologic and devolutionary theory, and paleontology."
  
  

• McCubbins is a professor of political science. "A theoretically inclined Americanist, he has written prolifically on national institutions, particularly the Congress and its interaction with the courts. In addition, he has applied theoretical ideas developed in the American context to policy-making by the Japanese Diet."
  
  

• Newport is a professor of biology. "He continues to move cell cycle research in new directions. Earlier he discovered the mid-blastula transition and pioneered analysis of nuclear membrane assembly. He has recently discovered a key regulator of entry into mitosis and devised a system for precisely regulated chromosomal DNA duplication in the absence of nuclei."
  
  

• West is a professor of medicine and physiology, who "has made important contributions in physiology and medicine during the last 40 years. He studied human respiration at ever-increasing altitudes from sea level to the high Andes, Mount Everest, and recently, outer space."
  
  

• Zuker is professor of biology and neurosciences, who has "made fundamental contributions to our understanding of G protein coupled receptor pathways in a genetically tractable organism. His studies defined the genetic, molecular and physiological workings of the phototransduction pathway in Drosophila, and resulted in the identification and characterization of most components involved in this signaling cascade."

The American Academy of Arts and Sciences, based in Cambridge, Mass., was founded in 1780 by John Adams, James Bowdoin and John Hancock and was chartered "to cultivate every art and science which may tend to advance the interest, honor, dignity, and happiness of a free, independent, and virtuous people." It has a current membership of 3,700 American Fellows and 600 Foreign Honorary Members. Among its goals is to honor excellence by electing to membership men and women in fields ranging from mathematics to medicine, computer science to literary criticism, and public affairs to the performing arts.

New members will be welcomed at the annual Induction Ceremony at academy headquarters in Cambridge Oct. 13. For further information on the academy or its members call Charles Rooney at (617) 576-5047, or e-mail crooney@amacad.org.