Paul Nurse elected fellow of American Academy of Arts and Sciences

Rockefeller University President Paul Nurse has been elected a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, an independent policy research center that undertakes studies of complex and emerging problems. The Academy announced the election April 24.

Founded in 1780 by John Adams, James Bowdoin, John Hancock and other scholar-patriots, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences has elected as fellows and foreign honorary members the finest minds and most influential leaders from each generation, including George Washington and Ben Franklin in the 18th century, Daniel Webster and Ralph Waldo Emerson in the 19th, and Albert Einstein and Winston Churchill in the 20th. The current membership includes more than 170 Nobel laureates and 50 Pulitzer Prize winners. Current Academy research focuses on science and global security; social policy; the humanities and culture; and education.

Among this year’s new fellows are former Presidents George H.W. Bush and William Jefferson Clinton; Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts; the chair and vice chair of the 9/11 Commission, Thomas Kean and Lee Hamilton; actor and director Martin Scorsese; choreographer Meredith Monk; conductor Michael Tilson Thomas; and New York Stock Exchange Chairman Marshall Carter.

Nurse, who has been president of Rockefeller since 2003, won the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 2001 for fundamental discoveries concerning control of the cell cycle. He is also a fellow of the Royal Society and a foreign associate of the National Academy of Sciences, and has received the Gairdner Foundation International Award, the Alfred P. Sloan Jr. Prize and the Albert Lasker Award for Basic Medical Research.