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Two SLAC Scientists Elected to National Academy of
Sciences
By Matthew Early Wright
The National Academy of Sciences (NAS), a society that
counts the nation’s best and brightest researchers among its membership,
has elected two SLAC scientists to join its ranks. In total, 72 new
members and 18 new foreign associates were formally announced by the
Academy in early May.
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Roger
Blandford (KIPAC), shown left, and Axel Brunger (SSRL), shown
right, were recently elected to The National Academy of Sciences
(NAS).
(Photos courtesy of Stanford University) |
Roger Blandford, astrophysicist and director of
KIPAC, and Axel Brunger, biophysicist and SSRL researcher, have been
chosen for membership based on their outstanding contributions to
original scientific research. Election to the Academy is considered one
of the highest honors a scientist can achieve.
Both
will be formally inducted next April. Blandford and Brunger will join
over 2,000 current NAS members in shaping the nation’s scientific
agenda, and advising the federal government on scientific and
technological matters. Blandford, who holds a joint appointment with the Stanford Physics
Department, first heard of his election via e-mail. “It was a bit of a
surprise,” he said. “But of course, it’s a huge honor.”
His research focuses on the astrophysics of black holes, neutron stars,
white dwarves and other phenomena. Blandford is especially captivated by
cosmology and the early history of the stars. “I’m most interested in
using gravitational lenses as tools to understand the universe,” he
explained. Blandford’s distinguished career has
taken him from his native England, where he earned his doctorate from
Magdalene College in 1974 and was a research fellow at St. John’s
College, to a professorship at Caltech starting in 1976. After 27 years
there, he joined the faculty at SLAC and Stanford as the Pehong and
Adele Chen Professor of Physics in 2003.
“I’m quite
happy here,” Blandford said. “There is a tremendous concentration of
talented physicists to work with.”
Brunger, who holds a joint appointment with Stanford’s Bio-X initiative
and is a Howard Hughes Medical Institute Investigator, received a phone
call early in the morning. “It’s a wonderful honor,” he said. “I’m very
excited about becoming a member of the NAS.”
His
work focuses on proteins involved in neurotransmission. By using both
simulations and experiments, Brunger works to resolve the structure and
function of proteins involved in synaptic vesicle fusion. “Using both
approaches allows us to better understand this complex molecular
machinery,” he explained. Brunger has followed an
illustrious path from his native Germany, where he earned his doctorate
from the Technical University of Munich in 1982, to postdoctoral
appointments at Harvard and the Max Planck Institute. He was named a
professor at Yale in 1987, the same year he became a Howard Hughes
Investigator. After 13 years there, he came to Stanford in 2000.
“I was drawn to Stanford because of SSRL and the Bio-X initiative,”
Brunger said. “The interdisciplinary nature of Bio-X was very attractive
to me.” The National Academy of Sciences is one of
four branches of the National Academies. The other three are The
National Academy of Engineering, The Institute of Medicine and The
National Research Council. Abraham Lincoln signed
the charter that brought the National Academy of Sciences into existence
in 1863, with a mandate to “investigate, examine, experiment, and report
upon any subject of science or art” whenever the government required
such information. The charter was expanded to include the other three
branches in 1916 (NRC), 1964 (NAE) and 1970 (IOM).
For more information, see:
http://www4.nationalacademies.org/news.nsf/isbn/05032005?OpenDocument |
