News & Notes | May 7 - The Princetonian

Faculty elected to National Academy of Sciences

Professors Emily Carter and Jose Scheinkman, along with senior research biologist Rosemary Grant, were chosen to join the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) on April 29.

Carter is the Arthur W. Marks ’19 professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering and applied and computational mathematics. Her work focuses on the intersection between quantum mechanics, applied mathematics and solid-state physics.

Scheinkman, the Theodore A. Wells ’29 professor of economics, has done work in “dynamic optimization theory, optimal growth theory, and nonlinear dynamics,” according to a University of Rochester website.

Grant studies evolutionary biology and works closely with her husband, Peter Grant. The Grants spend half of every year studying finches on the Galapagos Islands.

According to the NAS website, the purpose of the Academy is to “investigate, examine, experiment, and report upon any subject of science or art whenever called upon to do so by any department of the government.” Today, according to the website, members of the Academy form “committees of the nation’s top scientists, engineers, and other experts, all of whom volunteer to study specific concerns.”

The NAS was founded by Abraham Lincoln in 1863 and is currently composed of 2,041 members.

Behrman Award granted to Rodgers and Muldoon

Professors Paul Muldoon and Daniel Rodgers won the University’s Behrman Award, granted each year to recognize achievement in the humanities. The two professors received the award at a dinner on May 3.

Rodgers, the Henry Charles Lea professor of history, has taught at Princeton since 1980, according to a statement on the University website. Rodgers was chair of the history department from 1988 to 1995. According to Rodgers’ website, he teaches graduate seminars in American cultural history and U.S. history from transnational perspectives.

Rodgers was a recipient of the American Historical Association’s Beer Prize and the Organization of American Historians’ Hawley Prize. Rodgers has written three books, “The Work Ethic in Industrial America, 1850-1920,” “Contested Truths: Keywords in American Politics” and “Atlantic Crossings: Social Politics in a Progressive Age.”

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Muldoon is the Howard G.B. Clark ’21 University professor in the humanities and has been the chair of the Lewis Center for the Arts since 2006. Muldoon teaches creative writing, directs the Princeton Atelier and is chair of the Fund for Irish Studies.

“Moy Sand and Gravel,” Muldoon’s ninth collection of poetry, won the Pulitzer Prize in 2003. A member of the Royal Society of Literature and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, Muldoon also serves as the poetry editor for The New Yorker.

Professor fails sobriety test

Professor Robert Hutchings, Diplomat-in-Residence at the Wilson School, was charged with drunken driving after he crashed his car on Saturday night, The Times of Trenton reported.

According to the Times, Hutchings drove his car into a mailbox, a fence and a tree on Millstone River Road in Montgomery. During the accident, Hutchings cut his finger on a wine bottle that was in his car, which broke from the force of the impacts. Hutchings was standing outside his car when the police found him at 8:50 p.m. near Dead Tree Run Road.

Other than the cut, Hutchings was not seriously injured.

Hutchings joined the Princeton faculty in 1997 when he was appointed assistant dean of the Wilson School. Hutchings was the chair of the National Intelligence Council in Washington from 2003-2004 and received the National Intelligence Medal of Achievement in 2004.

“Hutchings’ accomplishments represent the finest traditions of the federal service, bringing honor and credit to the intelligence community,” Director of Central Intelligence Porter Goss said in 2004, according to a statement on Princeton’s website.

— Mendy Fisch