Fellows of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences

Humphrey_Davy

Sir Humphry Davy, 1st Baronet, (17 December 1778 – 29 May 1829) was a Cornish chemist and inventor who invented the Davy lamp and a very early form of arc lamp. He is also remembered for isolating, by using electricity, several elements for the first time: potassium and sodium in 1807 and calcium, strontium, barium, magnesium and boron the following year, as well as for discovering the elemental nature of chlorine and iodine. Davy also studied the forces involved in these separations, inventing the new field of electrochemistry. Davy is also credited to have been the first to discover clathrate hydrates in his lab.
In 1799 he experimented with nitrous oxide and was astonished at how it made him laugh, so he nicknamed it "laughing gas" and wrote about its potential anaesthetic properties in relieving pain during surgery.Davy was a baronet, President of the Royal Society (PRS), Member of the Royal Irish Academy (MRIA), Fellow of the Geological Society (FGS), and a member of the American Philosophical Society (elected 1810). Berzelius called Davy's 1806 Bakerian Lecture On Some Chemical Agencies of Electricity "one of the best memoirs which has ever enriched the theory of chemistry."

Owen_Gingerich

Owen Jay Gingerich (; March 24, 1930 – May 28, 2023) was an American astronomer who had been professor emeritus of astronomy and of the history of science at Harvard University and a senior astronomer emeritus at the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory. In addition to his research and teaching, he had written many books on the history of astronomy.
Gingerich was also a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the American Philosophical Society, and the International Academy of the History of Science. A committed Christian, he had been active in the American Scientific Affiliation, a society of evangelical scientists. He served on the board of trustees of the Templeton Foundation.

Paul_Oskar_Kristeller

Paul Oskar Kristeller (May 22, 1905 in Berlin – June 7, 1999 in New York, United States) was a scholar of Renaissance humanism. He was awarded the Haskins Medal in 1992. He was last active as Professor Emeritus of Philosophy at Columbia University in New York, where he mentored both Irving Louis Horowitz and A. James Gregor.

Donald_D._Clayton

Donald Delbert Clayton (March 18, 1935 – January 3, 2024) was an American astrophysicist whose most visible achievement was the prediction from nucleosynthesis theory that supernovae are intensely radioactive. That earned Clayton the NASA Exceptional Scientific Achievement Medal (1992) for “theoretical astrophysics related to the formation of (chemical) elements in the explosions of stars and to the observable products of these explosions”. Supernovae thereafter became the most important stellar events in astronomy owing to their profoundly radioactive nature. Not only did Clayton discover radioactive nucleosynthesis during explosive silicon burning in stars but he also predicted a new type of astronomy based on it, namely the associated gamma-ray line radiation emitted by matter ejected from supernovae. That paper was selected as one of the fifty most influential papers in astronomy during the twentieth century for the Centennial Volume of the American Astronomical Society. He gathered support from influential astronomers and physicists for a new NASA budget item for a gamma-ray-observatory satellite, achieving successful funding for Compton Gamma Ray Observatory. With his focus on radioactive supernova gas Clayton discovered a new chemical pathway causing carbon dust to condense there by a process that is activated by the radioactivity.Clayton also authored a novel, The Joshua Factor (1985), a parable of the origin of mankind utilizing the mystery of solar neutrinos; a science autobiography and a memoir; and a history of the origin of each isotope, Handbook of Isotopes in the Cosmos (Cambridge Univ. Press, 2003).
Clayton died on January 3, 2024, at the age of 88.

Maurice_Ewing

William Maurice "Doc" Ewing (May 12, 1906 – May 4, 1974) was an American geophysicist and oceanographer.Ewing has been described as a pioneering geophysicist who worked on the research of seismic reflection and refraction in ocean basins, ocean bottom photography, submarine sound transmission (including the SOFAR channel), deep sea core samples of the ocean bottom, theory and observation of earthquake surface waves, fluidity of the Earth's core, generation and propagation of microseisms, submarine explosion seismology, marine gravity surveys, bathymetry and sedimentation, natural radioactivity of ocean waters and sediments, study of abyssal plains and submarine canyons.

Lloyd_Berkner

Lloyd Viel Berkner (February 1, 1905 in Milwaukee, Wisconsin – June 4, 1967 in Washington, D.C.) was an American physicist and engineer. He was one of the inventors of the measuring device that since has become standard at ionospheric stations because it measures the height and electron density of the ionosphere. The data obtained in the worldwide net of such instruments were important for the developing theory of short wave radio propagation to which Berkner himself gave important contributions.
Berkner was elected to the United States National Academy of Sciences in 1948.Later he investigated the development of the Earth's atmosphere. Since he needed data from the whole world, he proposed the International Geophysical Year in 1950. At that time, the IGY was the largest cooperative study of the Earth ever undertaken.
Berkner was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and a member of the American Philosophical Society in 1956. The IGY was carried out by the International Council of Scientific Unions while he was president in 1957–1959. He was also a member of the President's Scientific Advisory Committee in 1958 while he was president of Associated Universities Inc.
In 1963, Berkner, with L.C. Marshall, advanced a theory to describe the way in which the atmospheres of the Solar System's inner planets had evolved.
Beginning in 1926, as a naval officer, Berkner assisted in the development of radar and navigation systems, naval aircraft electronics engineering, and studies that led to the construction of the Distant Early Warning system, a chain of radar stations designed to give the United States advance warning in the event of a missile attack across the North Pole. In the 50s and 60s, Berkner held intelligence clearances in the Atomic Energy Commission and other agencies. He worked with the CIA in some capacity as well, but any activities are wholly classified as of 2015.Berkner worked with Dallas community leaders to establish the Graduate Research Center of the Southwest (later renamed the Southwest Center for Advanced Studies, which would eventually become The University of Texas at Dallas).He wrote more than 100 papers and several books, including Rockets and Satellites (1958), Science in Space (1961), and The Scientific Age (1964).
In 1961, Berkner was president of the Institute of Radio Engineers.

Mary_Haas

Mary Rosamond Haas (January 23, 1910 – May 17, 1996) was an American linguist who specialized in North American Indian languages, Thai, and historical linguistics. She served as president of the Linguistic Society of America. She was elected a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and a member of the National Academy of Sciences.

James_N._Morgan

James Newton Morgan (March 1, 1918 – January 8, 2018) was an American economist.
Morgan was born near Corydon, Indiana, on March 1, 1918. He obtained a bachelor's degree in economics from Northwestern University in 1939. He then worked for the North Appalachian Experimental Watershed of the Soil Conservation Service before returning to school, receiving a master's and doctoral degree in economics from Harvard University. Upon completing his doctorate, Morgan was named an assistant professor at Brown University. In 1949, Morgan began post doctoral work at the University of Michigan. He became an associate professor in 1953, and was named a full professor five years later. Morgan developed SEARCH, a data analysis program, during the 1960s, and became the first director of the Panel Study of Income Dynamics in 1968. Over the course of his career, Morgan was named a member of the National Academy of Sciences, and fellow of the American Statistical Association, Gerontological Society of America, and American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He retired in December 1987, and died on January 8, 2018, at the University of Michigan Hospital.