News Release

American Academy of Arts and Sciences elects three U of M faculty to 2015 class

April 23, 2015

Three University of Minnesota professors have been elected members of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, one of the nation’s most prestigious honorary societies.

University of Minnesota faculty that have been elected include:

Dante Cicchetti, McKnight Presidential Chair; William Harris Professor of Child Psychology and Psychiatry. Cicchetti is one of the world’s leading researchers in developmental and clinical psychology that has long studied the effects of child maltreatment. Recognized by peers as a visionary, he is credited with conducting innovative, interdisciplinary research that has defined and shaped the field of developmental psychopathology.
Allen F. Isaacman, Regents Professor of History. Isaacman is a preeminent Africanist, an accomplished and internationally recognized scholar, teacher, political activist and leader. He is co-founder of the Interdisciplinary Center for the Study of Global Change, an exceptionally successful and innovative interdisciplinary program in international studies. His influence reaches across the African continent via the scores of academics and leaders there who have come to Minnesota to study with him.
Donald G. Truhlar, Regents Professor of Chemistry. Considered among the top physical chemists in the world, Truhlar has made seminal contributions that have advanced chemistry and chemical physics in transformational ways, including developing the use of accurate quantum dynamics calculations to explore the quantum mechanics of reactive dynamics and transition states, which was among the first in the history of computational chemical dynamics.

Cicchetti, Isaacman and Truhlar join a class of 197 newly elected members who will be inducted at a ceremony on October 10, 2015, in Cambridge, Mass. Members of the 2015 class include winners of the Nobel Prize and the Pulitzer Prize; MacArthur and Guggenheim Fellowships; and Grammy, Emmy, Oscar, and Tony Awards. Members contribute to Academy publications and studies of science and technology policy, global security and international affairs, social policy and American institutions, and the humanities, arts, and education.

Since its founding in 1780, the Academy has elected leading “thinkers and doers” from each generation, including George Washington and Benjamin Franklin in the eighteenth century, Daniel Webster and Ralph Waldo Emerson in the nineteenth, and Margaret Mead and Martin Luther King, Jr. in the twentieth. The current membership includes more than 250 Nobel laureates and more than 60 Pulitzer Prize winners.

The complete list of the new members can be viewed here.

Cicchetti, Isaacman and Truhlar join 55 previous and current members from the University of Minnesota: