ITHACA, N.Y. -- Four members of the Cornell University faculty have been named fellows of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS). They are among 348 researchers chosen to receive the prestigious award this year.

The four are Donald Campbell, professor of astronomy; David Grusky, professor of sociology; David Hammer, the J. Carleton Ward Professor of Nuclear Energy Engineering, and Ray Wu, professor of molecular biology and genetics.

The four Cornell faculty members were cited, in a tradition going back to 1874, for their efforts toward advancing science or fostering applications that are deemed scientifically or socially distinguished. They will receive an official certificate and a rosette pin at the Fellows Forum during the 2004 AAAS annual meeting in Seattle, Feb. 14. Founded in 1848, the AAAS represents the world's largest federation of scientists and has nearly 140,000 members in more than 130 countries.

Donald Campbell has been a Cornell professor since 1988 and, since 1993, associate director of the National Astronomy and Ionosphere Center at Cornell, which manages the Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico for the National Science Foundation (NSF). From 1981 to 1987, he was director of the observatory itself.

His current research into solar system bodies uses radar and radio-astronomical measurements. As a graduate student, Campbell was among the first to conduct radar studies of the surface of Venus, beneath that planet's clouds, and he also was involved in early searches for pulsars. Following major improvements to the Arecibo telescope in the 1970s, Campbell used the instrument to obtain the first high-resolution radar images of the surface of Venus, leading to the discovery of Venus's relatively young resurfacing age. This was followed by participation as a co-investigator in the NASA Magellan mission to Venus.

Working with current and former Cornell graduate students, Campbell has continued his studies of Venus, searched for ice deposits at the poles of the our moon and initiated the development of radar synthesis imaging of near-earth asteroids. Campbell earned his B.S. (1962) and M.S. (1965) from the University of Sydney and his Ph.D. from Cornell in 1971. David Grusky , who is director of Cornell's Center for the Study of Inequality, was cited by the AAAS for his "innovative comparative analyses and theoretical contributions to the understanding of social inequalities and of social mobility across the globe."

His current research involves efforts to systematize and consolidate new developments in social inequality research and analysis. With support from the NSF, and in collaboration with many colleagues, he is re-examining the structure of social classes and developing new models of occupational segregation by gender, race and ethnicity. He also is building new models of social mobility and exploring the rise of post-modern anomie and disillusionment.

Grusky is the author and editor of numerous papers and books in the field of sociology, including Occupational Ghettos (with Maria Charles), Social Differentiation and Inequality (with James Baron and Donald Treiman) and Social Stratification: Class, Race, and Gender in Sociological Perspective . He also serves as co-editor for the book series Studies in Social Inequality and its precursor, Series on Social Inequality , which together account for 19 published books and seven forthcoming titles.

Grusky received his B.A. from Reed College in 1980 and his master's degree and Ph.D. in sociology from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 1983 and 1987, respectively.

David Hammer's current research involves pulsed-power-driven high energy density plasmas; plasma radiation sources; controlled fusion; high-resolution X-ray imaging; physics and technology of intense charged particle beams and their interaction with gases and plasmas and nonneutral plasmas.

He helped initiate the intense electron beam research program at Cornell in 1967 and carried out both experimental and theoretical research. He initiated intense electron beam propagation experiments at the Naval Research Laboratory in 1970, including those for nuclear weapons effects simulation, microwave generation and E-beam plasma interaction.

A Cornell faculty member since 1977, Hammer has directed experimental research on the physics and technology of intense pulsed ion beams and their applications to magnetic and inertial confinement fusion. In 1988 he began experiments to develop the X pinch as a point source of radiation for X-ray lithography and, later, with Lebedev Institute scientists, for high-resolution

X-ray imaging. For the past few years Hammer has been involved in research on exploding-wire-initiated high energy density plasmas, conducting those studies since 2002 as part of the Cornell Center for the Study of Pulsed-Power-Driven High Energy Density Plasmas. Hammer received his B.S. at the California Institute of Technology (1964) and his Ph.D. at Cornell in 1969. Ray Wu's current research focus is on developing genetic transformation techniques to produce transgenic rice plants with agronomically useful genes, most recently the genes for drought and salt tolerance.

Previously the Wu laboratory made insect-resistant rice by inserting genes for the production of Bt crystal proteins. And as early as 1968, two years after joining the Cornell faculty, Wu designed a location-specific primer-extension strategy that enabled other scientists to develop a faster method for sequencing DNA as well as to perfect the polymerase chain reaction (PCR) method for amplifying DNA and to develop a site-specific mutagenesis method.

A native of Beijing and a naturalized citizen of the United States, Wu earned his B.S. in chemistry in 1950 at University of Alabama and his Ph.D. in biochemistry in 1955 at the University of Pennsylvania. Before joining Cornell's Section of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology in 1966, Wu was a biochemist in the Public Health Research Institute of the City of New York.

He also has taught or conducted research at Stanford University, the MRC Laboratory in Cambridge, England, and Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He serves as an adjunct professor at Beijing University and is an honorary research scientist at 10 other institutes in China.

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