April 29, 2008

16 Women Elected to National Academy of Sciences

The National Academy of Sciences announced today the election of 72 new members, including 16 women. That’s a significant reversal from just one year ago, when only nine women were inducted, the fewest since 2001.

The record year remains 2005, when 19 women were elected.

The academy, most of whose members are white and male, says it has been trying to do better to identify qualified candidates who are women and members of minority groups underrepresented in science. (The academy has also said, however, that it does not track members by race.) Under the academy’s rules, new members must be nominated and elected by the existing membership.

The academy is a private organization chartered by Congress to advise policy makers on technical matters, and being elected a member is considered one of the highest honors in American science. With the latest election, the academy’s total number of active members now numbers 2,041, most of them at universities.

The academy also announced the election of 18 foreign associates from nine countries. —Jeffrey Brainard

Comments

1. The NAS was founded in 1863 and for the first century of its existence only one African American – chemist Percy L. Julian – was ever elected to membership. In 2003 only two of the 1,922 members of the academy were black:
   David Blackwell, a statistician at Berkeley, and William Julius Wilson, the Harvard sociologist.
   After 2003 the black membership of the academy doubled with the election of Stanford psychologist Claude M. Steele and Edward L. Miles, a marine scientist at the University of Washington. Later three additional African Americans were elected to the academy (* Lawrence D. Bobo, Norman Tishman and Charles M. Diker Professor of Sociology and African and African-American Studies at Harvard University; * Stephen L. Mayo, an associate investigator at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute and professor of biology and chemistry at Cal Tech; and * S. George Philander, a professor of geosciences and director of the program in Atmospheric and Ocean Sciences at Princeton University) bringing the total black membership to seven, less than four tenths of one percent of the total NAS membership. I don’t belive the number of African American in the NAS has increased. Less than ten members in more than a hundred years is really trying hard.

   — George E. Miller III    Apr 29, 04:36 PM    #

2. Once again, the great land-grant institutions in the Southeast US have been ignored completely. Who says there is an East and West-coast bias?

   — Fellman    Apr 29, 04:53 PM    #

3. In 1863, the southeast US wasn’t the southeast US. It was the CSA.

   — Bill S.    Apr 29, 10:12 PM    #

4. Why does this piece make 16/72 sound like a triumph? It is an embarrassment that the NAS continues to over-emphasize the contributions of male scientists. Are women scientists supposed to feel grateful that they did not make the same mistake as last year, even though the rates are still pathetic?

   — L    Apr 30, 08:54 AM    #

5. Well if most NAS members are white and male, and the process is that members elect new members, well then, what does that say for diversity in the NAS and seeking out diverse scientists. A fair assumption is that the majority of this white male organization would know a lot of other white male pals and pals help pals.

   — Mali    Apr 30, 03:44 PM    #

6. 16 women is not enough.
   Are you really saying that there are only few women available for this recognition….or are you just not spreading the net wide enough?
   Oh come on guys. Where are our women and where are our minorities? Could you not have dug deeper to find
   women and people of color who have contributed to higher education and research over the last few years?

   Your credibility as an organization is in serious doubt if you cannot break out of your white, male, anglo saxon mold.

   Let’s get serious now!
   It is 2008 not 1908!

   Renee Jones

   — Renee Jones    May 2, 09:33 PM    #

7. Folks,

   You are absolutely right. There are only few women available for this recognition. Do your homework. Fact is, there are few women in science that have reached the stature required for induction into the NAS. The problem isn’t that the NAS is full of stogy old chauvanistic white men per se. The problem is that there aren’t that many women in research science at the faculty level (much less at the full professor level), and FAR fewer americans of color — compared to white men. Point your fire and brimestone at the stogy old white chauvanistic men who don’t hire/promote (insert minority here), not the NAS. The NAS should not lower its standards of measuring scientific merit just to accomodate (insert minority group here). As the article states, the NAS’ mission is advise congress on issues of Science. Not on issues of culture or diversity, so is diversity needed? I think not. The best scientists are needed. Science is hypothesis based, so cultural/gender viewpoints are moot.

   As I said before, if you are inflammed because there are no women or minorities, focus your energies on the right group of stogy old white chauvenstic men. It isn’t the NAS.

   — J    May 6, 07:37 PM    #

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