The American Philosophical Society (APS), the oldest learned society in North America, has announced the election of 38 new members. These new members represent outstanding achievement in the sciences, humanities, social sciences, and technology, as well as leadership in industry, higher education, and nonprofit administration. The current elected membership of the APS consists of 817 resident members and 159 international members. Only 5,854 members have been elected since it founding by Benjamin Franklin in 1743.
Of the 28 new members from the United States, three are African Americans with current ties to the academic world.
Paul Turner is the Rachel Carson Professor of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at Yale University. He also serves as director of Center for Phage Biology and Therapy at Yale. Dr. Turner is a graduate of the University of Rochester in New York, where he majored in biology. He holds a Ph.D. in microbial ecology and evolution from Michigan State University. Before joining the Yale faculty in 2001, Dr. Turner conducted postdoctoral research at the National Institutes of Health, the University of Valencia in Spain, and the University of Maryland College Park
Sherrilyn Ifill is the Vernon E. Jordan, Jr. Professor of Law at the Howard University School of Law. Earlier, Professor Ifill served as the seventh president and director-counsel of the NAACP Legal Defense & Educational Fund. Previously. she was a professor at the University of Maryland School of Law in Baltimore for 20 years. Professor Ifill is a graduate of Vassar College in Poughkeepsie, New York. She earned a juris doctorate at New York University.
Valerie Smith is the fifteenth president of Swarthmore College in Pennsylvania. Before assuming this role in 2015, Dr. Smith was dean of the college and the Woodrow Wilson Professor of Literature at Princeton University in New Jersey. Dr. Smith is a graduate of Bates College in Lewiston, Maine, and holds a master’s degree and a Ph.D. from the University of Virginia. She is the author or editor of several books including Not Just Race, Not Just Gender: Black Feminist Readings (Routledge, 1998) and Self-Discovery and Authority in Afro-American Narrative (Harvard University Press, 1987).
