Office of Public Information and Communications Columbia University New York, N.Y. 10027 (212) 854-5573
Three members of the faculty of Columbia University have been elected to the American Philosophical Society, the nation's oldest learned society.
They are Peter M. Blau, Quetelet Professor Emeritus of Sociology; Malvin A. Ruderman, Centennial Professor of Physics; and Harriet Zuckerman, Professor Emerita of Sociology.
They join 22 other Columbia scholars in the organization, founded in 1743 by Benjamin Franklin and others, which recognizes extraordinary accomplishment in the sciences and humanities. The three were among 39 new members elected at the society's annual meeting April 26 in Philadelphia. Also elected was Nelson J. Leonard, the Reynold C. Fuson Professor of Chemistry Emeritus at the University of Illinois, who received his Ph.D. at Columbia in 1942. There are now 723 members from two dozen countries. Since the Nobel Prize was created in 1901, it has been awarded to 226 members of the society.
Professor Blau, who is also Robert Broughton Distinguished Research Professor at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, has produced a long series of outstanding works on the sociology of organizations, including important contributions on the theory of exchange and on power and social stratification in society. Born in Vienna, he received the A.B. from Elmhurst College in 1942 and the Ph.D. from Columbia in 1966. He has also taught at Wayne State University, Cornell University, the University of Chicago, and the State University of New York. He was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1975 and to the National Academy of Sciences in 1980 and was a Guggenheim Fellow in 1985. He was named Quetelet Professor in 1977 and designated professor emeritus in 1988.
Professor Ruderman has pioneered the science of neutron stars and pulsars and has also contributed to the understanding of the earth's atmosphere, including the sources of climate change and the effects of acid rain. Born in New York, he received the A.B. from Columbia in 1945 and the Ph.D. from California Institute of Technology in 1951. He has taught at the University of California, Berkeley and New York University, and has held appointments as visiting professor or lecturer at more than a dozen universities in the United States and abroad. He was named a Guggenheim Fellow in 1957 and was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the National Academy of Sciences in 1974. He was named Centennial Professor in 1980.
Professor Zuckerman, vice president of the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, a position she has held since 1991, is among the world's most important sociologists of science. She has studied the scientific reward system and her 1977 book, Scientific Elite: Nobel Laureates in the United States, is a classic. A new edition of it was published this year. She received the A.B. from Vassar College in 1958 and the Ph.D. from Columbia in 1965, and has been a faculty member at Barnard College and Rockefeller University. She was named professor at Columbia in 1978 and served as department chairman from 1978 to 1982. She was named a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in 1979, a Guggenheim Fellow in 1980 and a Phi Beta Kappa Visiting Scholar in 1982. In 1985 she was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. She has been professor emerita since 1992.
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