Clarke Elected to American Academy of Arts & Sciences

Byron SpiceTuesday, April 19, 2011

Edmund M. Clarke, FORE Systems University Professor of Computer Science and professor of electrical and computer engineering, is among 212 leaders in the sciences, social sciences, the humanities, the arts, business and public affairs to be elected members this year of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences.

Clarke, the 2007 winner of the A.M. Turing Award, will join the other newly elected members, including jazz icon Dave Brubeck, filmmaker Ken Burns, Ford CEO Alan Mulally, Cornell University President David Skorton and planet-discoverer Paul Butler, for the Oct. 1 induction ceremony at the Academy's headquarters in Cambridge, Mass.

Other new members include singer-songwriters Paul Simon and Leonard Cohen, actors Helen Mirren and Daniel Day-Lewis, and Nobel laureates Ei-Ichi Negish (chemistry) and H. David Politzer (physics). A list of the new Academy members is available.

"It is a privilege to honor these men and women for their extraordinary individual accomplishments," said Leslie Berlowitz, Academy President and William T. Golden Chair. "The knowledge and expertise of our members give the Academy a unique capacity - and responsibility - to provide practical policy solutions to the pressing challenges of the day. We look forward to engaging our new members in this work."

The Academy was established in 1780 by John Adams, John Hancock and other founders of the nation and is one of the nation's most prestigious honorary societies. Its members have included such "thinkers and doers" as Benjamin Franklin, Ralph Waldo Emerson and Albert Einstein.

The current membership includes more than 250 Nobel laureates and more than 60 Pulitzer Prize winners. Clarke will be the 17th Carnegie Mellon faculty member ever to become a member; current AAAS membership includes eight faculty members from the School of Computer Science: John R. Anderson, Manuel Blum, Randal E. Bryant, Stephen E. Fienberg, Takeo Kanade, Raj Reddy, Dana Scott (emeritus) and Jeannette Wing. The late Allen Newell also was an AAAS member.

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Byron Spice | 412-268-9068 | bspice@cs.cmu.edu