Katana VentraIP

Member of the National Academy of Sciences

Membership of the National Academy of Sciences is an award granted to scientists that the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) of the United States judges to have made “distinguished and continuing achievements in original research”.[1][4] Membership is a mark of excellence in science and one of the highest honors that a scientist can receive.[5][6][7][8][9]

Member of the National Academy of Sciences

distinguished and continuing achievements in original research[1]

National Academy of Sciences

Annually since 1863 (1863)[2][3]

Washington, D.C.

United States

2,382 members
484 international members[1]

nasonline.org/member-directory

(1846–1919)[12] was the youngest scientist elected, only 26 years old at the time of his election in 1873[13][14]

Edward C. Pickering

(1871–1953)[15] was the first woman to be elected a member in 1924[13]

Florence R. Sabin

(1919–2010)[16] was the first African American elected in 1965[13]

David Blackwell

was the first woman to serve as president of the NAS,[17] following her election as a member in 2005[18]

Marcia McNutt

(1954–2017)[19] was the first transgender scientist elected in 2013[20][21]

Ben Barres

was the first woman to be elected to all three National Academies in the United States – the National Academy of Engineering (NAE, 2000), the National Academy of Medicine (NAM, 2004) and the National Academy of Sciences (NAS, 2008)[22]

Frances Arnold

resigned his NAS membership because of what he perceived as the Academy's elitism and in-group favoritism.[23][24] Feynman outlines the reasons for his resignation in his published correspondence Perfectly Reasonable Deviations from the Beaten Track[23][24] Though arguably the most famous, Feynman was not alone. Richard Lewontin also resigned for principled reasons (as opposed, say, to ill-health) in 1972, and Josiah Whitney was the first member to resign, in 1874.

Richard Feynman

Member biographies[edit]

Since 1966, newly elected members of the National Academy of Sciences have been invited to contribute an inaugural year article (IYA) to Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America (PNAS) which is accompanied by a brief biography of the author.[37] Biographies of deceased members are published in the Biographical Memoirs of the National Academy of Sciences (BMNAS), for example see David Arnett's biography of Alastair G. W. Cameron.[38]

Official website