Fins

Gilovich

Strogatz

Weill

Three Cornell faculty members have been elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the academy announced April 17. The 232nd class of fellows includes leaders from academia, business, public affairs, the humanities and the arts.

They are: Steven H. Strogatz, the Jacob Gould Schurman Professor of Applied Mathematics; Thomas D. Gilovich, professor of psychology; and Dr. Joseph J. Fins, the E. William Davis Jr. M.D. Professor of Medical Ethics at Weill Cornell Medical College. Also elected was Sanford I. Weill '55, chair of the Board of Overseers of Weill Cornell Medical College and an emeritus member of the Cornell Board of Trustees.

Strogatz, who joined the Cornell faculty in 1994, holds a joint appointment in mathematics and mechanical and aerospace engineering. He works in nonlinear dynamics and complex systems, often on topics inspired by the curiosities of everyday life. Throughout his career, he has received many awards for research, teaching and public service. In 2009 he was elected a fellow of the Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics. He has been a frequent guest on National Public Radio's "Radiolab." In 2010, he wrote a weekly column on mathematics for The New York Times.

Gilovich has taught at Cornell since 1981. His research deals with how people evaluate the evidence of their everyday experience to make judgments, form beliefs and decide on courses of action, and how they sometimes misevaluate that evidence and make faulty judgments, form dubious beliefs and embark on counterproductive courses of action. He is also interested in the emotional states that both influence and follow from people's judgments. He has written popular books on decision making and behavioral economics and is a member of Cornell's Center for Behavioral Economics and Decision Research.

Fins, M.D. '86, serves as chief of the Division of Medical Ethics and professor of medicine, of public health and of medicine in psychiatry. He is an attending physician and the director of medical ethics at NewYork-Presbyterian/Weill Cornell Medical Center and an adjunct faculty member at Rockefeller University, where he is a senior attending physician at Rockefeller University Hospital. Fins is an elected member of the Institute of Medicine of the National Academies.

Weill, chairman emeritus of Citigroup Inc., serves on the Advisory Council of the Samuel C. Johnson Graduate School of Management and is a member of the board of trustees of NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital and an overseer of Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center. He and his wife, Joan, have donated more than $800 million to organizations including Weill Cornell Medical College; Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center; Sidra, a teaching hospital to be completed at Weill Cornell's Qatar location in 2012; and Weill Bugando Medical Centre in Tanzania.

The academy also elected alumnus James S. Tisch '75, president and CEO of Loews Corp., and former Cornell Provost Carolyn A. Martin, president of Amherst College.

The new class of 220 academy fellows will be inducted Oct. 6 in Cambridge, Mass.

Founded in 1780, the academy is an independent policy research center that conducts multidisciplinary studies of complex and emerging problems.