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Congratulations to Professor Alison Etheridge (Mathematical Institute and Department of Statistics) and Professor Marta Kwiatkowska (Department of Computer Science, and Associate Head for Finance in the MPLS Divisional Office) who have been elected as International Honorary Members of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

Alison Etheridge, American Academy of Arts and Sciences logo and Marta Kwiatkowska

Founded in 1780, the Academy honours excellence and aims to examine new ideas, address issues of importance, and advance the public good.

This year, the Academy elected 269 new members from a wide range of disciplines including Mathematical and Physical Sciences, Biological Sciences, Social and Behavioural Sciences, Humanities and Arts, and Leadership, Policy, and Communications.

Most honourees were from the US, with just 42 International Honorary Members elected, of which five were from the University of Oxford (including Professors Neta Crawford and Jane Green at the Department of Politics and International Relations, and Richard Ovenden, Bodley's Librarian.

Announcing this year’s new members, Academy President David W. Oxtoby said:
‘With the election of these members, the Academy is honouring excellence, innovation, and leadership and recognising a broad array of stellar accomplishments. We hope every new member celebrates this achievement and joins our work advancing the common good.’

The new members join a distinguished group of individuals elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences before them, including Benjamin Franklin and Alexander Hamilton in the eighteenth century; Ralph Waldo Emerson, Maria Mitchell, and Charles Darwin in the nineteenth; Albert Einstein, Robert Frost, Margaret Mead, Milton Friedman, Martin Luther King, Jr., Stephen Hawking, and Condoleezza Rice in the twentieth; and, more recently, Bryan Stevenson , M. Temple Grandin, John Legend, Viet Thanh Nguyen, James Fallows, Joan Baez, Sanjay Gupta, and Heather Cox Richardson.

Professors Etheridge and Kwiatkowska join other members of the Mathematical, Physical and Life Sciences Division who have been elected to the Academy in recent years: Professor Véronique Gouverneur and Professor Dame Carol Robinson (Department of Chemistry), and Professor Raymond Pierrehumbert (Department of Physics).

The full list of recipients is available on the American Academy of Arts and Sciences website.