Four from Caltech Faculty Elected to the National Academy of Sciences

PASADENA, Calif.—Four faculty members at the California Institute of Technology have been named to the National Academy of Sciences, an honor long considered one of the highest accolades in the scientific world. The election was held during the 144th annual meeting of the assembly in Washington, D.C.

This year's Caltech inductees are David Anderson, the Roger W. Sperry Professor of Biology, who is also a Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigator; William L. Johnson, the Ruben and Donna Mettler Professor of Engineering and Applied Science; Charles R. Plott, the Edward S. Harkness Professor of Economics and Political Science; and Mark B. Wise, the John A. McCone Professor of High Energy Physics.

Anderson's work led to the identification of stem cells in the embryonic nervous system and the discovery that embryonic arteries and veins are genetically distinct even before the onset of heartbeat. More recently, Anderson has undertaken a new initiative to develop and apply novel molecular biological tools to mapping and manipulating the neural circuits involved in innate animal behaviors, particularly those related to fear, in both mice and (in collaboration with Boswell Professor Seymour Benzer) fruit flies. The work could have implications for research on underlying emotional states in humans.

Johnson's research includes studies of metallic materials including liquid alloys, bulk metallic glasses, nanostructured metals, and metal-matrix composites. He also works on applications of metallic glasses for structural materials in sporting goods, aircraft, military hardware, and other objects for which custom-designed characteristics are an advantage. Those who use Liquidmetal golf clubs and tennis rackets are indebted to his discoveries.

Plott is the only economist elected to the NAS this year. His research areas are the behavioral foundations of economics and political science; laboratory experimental methods; and regulation, deregulation, and policy design. His fundamental work on experimental economics has isolated the equilibration process of large, multiple-market systems and information flows in markets. He has contributed extensively to the design of special, electronic-market processes that are used throughout the world, and his work is widely used in the development of regulatory mechanisms.

Mark Wise is involved in the field of high-energy physics, where he has developed information on the essential characteristics of particles and how they interact with each other to create the physical world. Among his accomplishments are the discoveries of heavy quark-mass expansion and heavy quark symmetry in quantum chromodynamics, which led to a quantitative theory of the decays of c- and b- flavored hadrons. These predictions are important for determining from experimental data the values of some of the parameters that occur in still another law that describes the weak interactions of quarks.

The National Academy of Sciences is a private organization of scientists and engineers dedicated to the furtherance of science and its use for the general welfare. It was established in 1863 by a congressional act of incorporation signed by Abraham Lincoln that calls on the academy to act as an official adviser to the federal government, upon request, in any matter of science or technology.

The election of the four new Caltech members brings the total Institute membership to 76 faculty and three trustees.