Juris Hartmanis, the Walter R. Read Professor Emeritus of Computer Science and founding chair of the Department of Computer Science, and Eva Tardos, the Jacob Gould Schurman Professor of Computer Science, former chair of the Department of Computer Science, and senior associate dean of the Faculty of Computing and Information Science, are among 84 new members elected to the National Academy of Sciences in 2013.

The National Academy of Sciences is charged with providing independent, objective advice to the nation on matters related to science and technology. New members are elected by the membership based on extensive documentation of their distinguished and continuing achievements in original research.

Hartmanis is a pioneer in the theory of computational complexity, which deals with determining whether a problem can be solved by a computer, and what computing resources might be required for a solution. He arguably founded the field with a seminal paper, co-authored with Richard Stearns, “On the Computational Complexity of Algorithms,” which earned the 1993 Turing Award. He is a member of the National Academy of Engineering, American Academy of Arts and Sciences and Latvian Academy of Sciences, and holds honorary doctorates from the University of Missouri and the University of Dortmund.

Hartmanis joined the faculty in 1955, then spent seven years at the General Electric Research Laboratory in Schenectady, N.Y., returning to Cornell in 1965 as the first chair of the newly created Department of Computer Science, serving until 1971 and returning as chair for 1977-82. He chaired the influential National Research Council 1992 study, Computing the Future: A Broader Agenda for Computer Science and Engineering.

Tardos joined Cornell in 1989 and became chair of the Department of Computer Science in 2006. Her recent work concerns algorithmic game theory applied to networks. She is most known for her work on network-flow algorithms, approximation algorithms, and quantifying the efficiency of selfish routing, an emerging new area of designing systems for “selfish users” who all seek the best possible outcome for themselves, as in competing for bandwidth on the Internet.

She is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the National Academy of Engineering, and the recipient of honors including the Packard Fellowship, the Gödel Prize, Fulkerson Prize, Dantzig Prize and the IEEE Technical Achievement Award.

NAS members have often been enlisted to work with the National Research Council, the agency through which the academy advises the government, to produce reports that have led to some of the most significant and lasting improvements in the health, education and welfare of all the world’s citizens.