Four Elected to American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2024
Charles Kane, Christopher H. Browne Distinguished Professor of Physics; Edward D. Mansfield, Hum Rosen Professor of Political Science; Virgil Percec, P. Roy Vagelos Professor of Chemistry; and Deborah A. Thomas, R. Jean Brownlee Professor of Anthropology, were elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, among 250 new members in 2024. The honor recognizes individuals for their contributions to their respective fields.
Kane is a theoretical physicist whose groundbreaking work on topological insulators—materials with a special kind of electrical conduction on their surface—has initiated a new field in condensed matter physics and garnered external recognition at the highest levels. He is a member of the National Academy of Sciences, and has received numerous awards, including the Breakthrough Prize in Fundamental Physics, Benjamin Franklin Medal of the Franklin Institute, Dirac Prize of the International Center for Theoretical Physics, Oliver Buckley Prize of the American Physical Society, and Physics Frontiers Prize of the Fundamental Physics Prize Foundation. In addition to his research, Kane has taught physics courses at all levels and on a range of topics, from quantum condensed matter to introductory honors electromagnetism. He received the 2024 Lindback Award for Distinguished Teaching.
Mansfield, who directs the Christopher H. Browne Center for International Politics, focuses on international political economy, institutions, and security. He has authored several books, including Electing to Fight: Why Emerging Democracies Go to War, and Votes, Vetoes, and the Political Economy of International Trade. A recipient of the 2000 Karl W. Deutsch Award in International Relations and Peace Research, Mansfield has served as a National Fellow at the Hoover Institution, chair of the International Political Economy Society’s Steering Committee, vice president of the International Studies Association, and term member of the Council on Foreign Relations. Mansfield is co-editor of the Cambridge University Press Elements Series in International Relations, and has served as co-editor of the University of Michigan Press Series on International Political Economy and associate editor of the journal International Organization.
Percec is a chemist whose interests lie at the interface between organic, macromolecular, supramolecular chemistry, catalysis, nanoscience, complex systems, and synthetic biology. He holds 80 American and European patents and has presented more than 1,296 endowed, plenary, and invited lectures in more than 30 countries. He also has more than 827 publications, including 20 books. He has received many honors, including honorary memberships to Romanian, European, and Royal Swedish of Engineering Sciences Academies, the National Science Foundation Research Award for Creativity in Research, and the ACS Inaugural Kavli Foundation Innovation in Chemistry Award and lecture.
Thomas is an anthropologist interested in subjects from political anthropology and sovereignty to the Afterlives of Imperialism. She is also core faculty in Gender, Sexuality and Women’s Studies with secondary appointments in the Graduate School of Education and the Department of Africana Studies. Her written work includes Political Life in the Wake of the Plantation: Sovereignty, Witnessing, Repair, for which she won the Gordon K. and Sybil Lewis Book Award from the Caribbean Studies Association and the Senior Book Prize from the American Ethnological Society and was runner-up for the Gregory Bateson Prize. Thomas also co-directed and co-produced two films, “Bad Friday: Rastafari After Coral Gardens” and “Four Days in May,” both of which explore issues of culture, power, violence, and post-colonialism in Jamaica. Prior to her life as an academic, Thomas was a professional dancer with the New York-based Urban Bush Women, a company committed to using art as a means of addressing issues of social justice and encouraging civic engagement.
In addition, affiliated faculty Dolores Albarracín, Alexandra Heyman Nash University Professor with appointments in the Annenberg School for Communication, the School of Nursing, and Wharton, and who holds a secondary appointment in Penn Arts & Sciences, was elected into the academy.
Founded in 1780, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences honors excellence and convenes leaders from every field of human endeavor to examine new ideas, address issues of importance to the nation and the world, and work together “to cultivate every art and science which may tend to advance the interest, honor, dignity, and happiness of a free, independent, and virtuous people.”
