From: LARRY KLAES (ljk4@msn.com)
Date: Wed May 08 2002 - 10:26:23 PDT
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From: cunews@cornell.edu
Sent: Wednesday, May 08, 2002 12:41 PM
To: CUNEWS-CAMPUS-L@cornell.edu
Subject: Cornell News: Durrett, Sacks named to NAS
Oliver Sacks and mathematician Durrett named to American Academy
FOR RELEASE: May 8, 2002
Contact: David Brand
Office: 607-255-3651
E-mail: deb27@cornell.edu
ITHACA, N.Y. -- Cornell University mathematics professor Richard T.
Durrett, an expert in probability, and Andrew D. White
Professor-at-Large Oliver Sacks, the neurologist and author, have
been elected fellows of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
They are among the 177 fellows and 30 foreign honorary members
elected to join the class of 2002. The academy, founded in 1780,
honors distinguished scientists, scholars and leaders in public
affairs, business, administration and the arts. The two new fellows
will be inducted during academy ceremonies to be held at the
academy's headquarters in Cambridge, Mass., Oct. 5.
Durrett, a member of the Cornell Department of Mathematics faculty,
is a specialist in probability theory. Most of his work surrounds
applications of probability to ecology and genetics, and has involved
collaborations with a number of Cornell faculty members in the
biological sciences. Along with several other faculty members in a
variety of disciplines, he recently became a joint member of the new
Department of Biological Statistics and Computational Biology
(formerly Biometrics) in the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences.
He has been on the editorial board of a number of journals and the
main editor of the journal Annals of Applied Probability. He is
director of the National Science Foundation-funded program, VIGRE
(for Vertically InteGrated Research and Education), in the Cornell
math department. The program involves postdoctoral and graduate
students, undergraduates and local high school students in a wide
variety of research and teaching activities.
Durrett obtained his B.S. and M.S. degrees in mathematics at Emory
University, and his Ph.D. in operations research at Stanford
University. He was an assistant, associate then full professor of
mathematics at the University of California, Los Angeles, from 1976
to 1985, and joined the Cornell faculty as a full professor in 1985.
At Cornell, Sacks is one of 20 distinguished individuals from the
sciences, humanities and arts who hold six-year appointments as A.D.
White Professors-at-Large, visiting the campus for one or two weeks
at a time to meet with faculty and students and deliver public
lectures. The professorship is named for the university's first
president. Sacks is clinical professor of neurologyat the Albert
Einstein College of Medicine in New York City, adjunct professor of
neurology at the New York University School of Medicine and a
consultant neurologist to the Little Sisters of the Poor and at Beth
Abraham Hospital.
Sacks is the author of Awakenings (1973), a book that inspired the
Harold Pinter play, "A Kind of Alaska," and the Oscar-nominated
Hollywood movie, Awakenings. He gained international acclaim for the
1985 collection of neurological case histories, The Man Who Mistook
His Wife for a Hat, and is a member of the American Academy of Arts
and Letters.
-30-
The web version of this release may be found at
http://www.news.cornell.edu/releases/May02/Durrett.AAAS.deb.html
Cornell University News Service
Surge 3
Cornell University
Ithaca, NY 14853
607-255-4206
cunews@cornell.edu
http://www.news.cornell.edu
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