NAS Honors 15 For Contributions To Science

Seven life scientists are among the 15 honorees for this year's National Academy of Sciences award ceremony set for today at the NAS's 135th annual meeting in Washington, D.C. The meeting also includes the induction of academy members elected last year (E.R. Silverman, The Scientist, 11[9]:1, April 28, 1997). The academy is presenting its highest honor, the Public Welfare Medal, to David A. Hamburg, president emeritus of the Carnegie Corp. of New York. Hamburg, 72, is being recognized "for his effective leadership of the Carnegie Corp., which brings science and technology to bear on the paramount issues of our time; for his dedication to improving the quality of life of our nation's youth; and for his efforts to prevent violent conflict." The award, a bronze medal and an illuminated scroll, recognizes "distinguished contributions in the application of science to the public welfare." Early in his career, Hamburg studied the biology and psychology of human stress responses as well as the evolution of aggressive behavior. Hamburg's research into coping under highly stressful conditions proved to be all too valuable when, in 1975, while a professor of biology at Stanford University, he faced a crisis that would forever change the path of his career. Four of his students, while studying primate behavior at the Gombe Station in Tanzania, were kidnapped by rebels from Zaire and held for ransom. Hamburg immediately flew to Gombe and spent 10 weeks negotiating their release. "That episode really changed my life," says Hamburg. "I was so immersed in the worst problems in the world during that time--disease, abject poverty, and so forth--that I began to think more and more about how science and technology could be used for addressing great social problems." Soon after the incident, Hamburg became president of the Institute of Medicine (IOM), the health policy arm of NAS, where he developed initiatives on health and behavior, health promotion, and disease prevention. While president of the Carnegie Corp. from 1983 to 1997, Hamburg promoted human resource development and democratization in Africa, the former Soviet Union, Eastern Europe, and the United States. In 1996 he was recognized for his efforts with the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the U.S.'s highest civilian honor. Hamburg is currently working on the worldwide dissemination of a Carnegie Corp. report called "Preventing Deadly Conflict." Hugh O. McDevitt, Burt and Marion Avery Professor of Microbiology, Immunology, and Medicine at Stanford University School of Medicine, will receive the Jessie Stevenson Kovalenko Medal, a prize of $25,000 given every three years for contributions to the medical sciences. McDevitt, 67, was chosen "for his landmark discovery and identification of genes that control immune responsiveness, and his subsequent elucidation of mechanisms of antigen recognition and induction of the immune response." His research team demonstrated that the ability to mount an antibody response is linked to the genes that encode the major transplantation antigens, antigens known to be activated in response to transplanted tissues (H. McDevitt et al., Journal of Experimental Medicine, 128[1]:1-11, 1968). In the 30 years of research that followed, these genes, part of the major histocompatibility complex (MHC), were mapped, sequenced, cloned, and associated with particular autoimmune diseases. McDevitt's lab is currently investigating how MHC molecules make people susceptible to diseases such as juvenile diabetes. "It's an extraordinary privilege or piece of luck to be working in the scientific field at a time when it's exploding the way it is," comments a grateful McDevitt. "I don't mean just immunology or just the MHC system, but all of biology." Philip A. Beachy, an associate investigator with the Howard Hughes Medical Institute and an associate professor at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, will receive the NAS Award in Molecular Biology. A bronze medal and $20,000 prize are presented annually for recent notable discoveries in molecular biology by a young scientist. Beachy, 39, was chosen "for his studies of a developmental morphogen, its processing and structure, and its covalent attachment to cholesterol." These morphogens, hedgehog proteins, are required for the developmental patterning of many multicellular organisms. Through a series of papers, Beachy helped elucidate how cholesterol modifies and directs the hedgehog proteins in the course of embryonic development. As Beachy reported in a 1996 paper (J.A. Porter et al., Science, 274:255-9, 1996), the attachment of a hydrophobic (water-repelling) cholesterol molecule to the hedgehog protein prevents it from diffusing as freely or as far from its site of synthesis. Cholesterol alters the distribution of the morphogen in tissues and, in so doing, influences the developmental patterns produced. Beachy, although pleased with the award, is quick to acknowledge the crucial work of all in the lab who were involved in his research. "This isn't my work, this is our work," he maintains. "There are a number of people who made really key contributions." This year's NAS Award in the Chemical Sciences, a prize of $10,000 for innovative research, goes to Allen J. Bard, who holds the Hackerman/Welch Regents' Chair in Chemistry at the University of Texas, Austin. Bard, 64, is being recognized "for his fundamental developments in mechanistic electrochemistry, electrochemiluminescence, semiconductor photoelectrochemistry, and scanning electrochemical microscopy." "I was very gratified, but surprised," says Bard. "Our work really is, to an extent, outside the mainstream of traditional chemistry." Bard is referring, in part, to his development of a revolutionary scanning electrochemical microscope. Recently released commercially, the microscope, unlike scanning-probe and atomic-force microscopes, can be used to examine surface chemistry and biological systems. Bard and his colleagues recently demonstrated the instrument's unique ability to trap single molecules to allow for the study of their electrochemistry. The NAS Award in the Neurosciences goes to Vernon B. Mountcastle, a professor emeritus at the Krieger Mind-Brain Institute of Johns Hopkins University. The prize of $15,000 is awarded every three years in recognition of extraordinary contributions to progress in neuroscience. Mountcastle was chosen "for his discovery of the columnar organization of the mammalian cerebral cortex and for original studies relating behavior to function of single cells in higher cortical areas." For the last 15 years, he has focused his research on the higher order aspects of cognitive function in the parietal lobe. Although the award is for a lifetime of achievement, it recognizes Mountcastle's discovery of the columnar organization of the neocortex in particular. A review of this research, first published in a series of six papers 30 years ago, recently appeared (V.B. Mountcastle, Brain, 120[Pt. 4]:701-22, 1997). Now retired, Mountcastle, 80, has kept himself busy writing books. The Troland Research Awards are $35,000 grants given annually to each of two recipients to support their research in the field of experimental psychology. This year's recipients are Virginia M. Richards, an associate professor of psychology at University of Pennsylvania, and Jeffrey D. Schall, an associate professor of psychology at Vanderbilt University. Richards was chosen "for her contributions to auditory perception, especially to the understanding of the envelope and energy cues that contribute to detecting signals in noise." Schall was recognized "for his contributions to our understanding of neural mechanisms of visual selective attention, the control of voluntary movements, and response time." Richards, 41, uses computer models to study how humans hear signals that are imbedded in noise. Schall, 38, records the response of neurons to particular tasks so that he can investigate the neural basis of how the brain selects targets for eye movements. In his studies of reaction time, Schall found that although the threshold at which the neurons in the brain trigger movement remains constant, the time it takes for cells to reach that threshold is variable (D. Hanes et al., Science, 274:427-30, 1996). As he puts it, "The brain is built to procrastinate." "I knew from interactions with colleagues . . . that these are questions that the field as a whole is working on and is interested in," says Schall. "But I didn't imagine that this kind of award would come from it. That the research has become incorporated into people's thinking--that's really the key thing." The Alexander Hollaender Award in Biophysics--a prize of $15,000 awarded every three years for outstanding contributions in biophysics--goes to Wayne A. Hendrickson, a Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigator and a professor in the department of biochemistry and molecular biophysics at Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons. Hendrickson was chosen "for his contributions to macromolecular crystallography, in the development of robust methods of phasing and refinement, and in determination of complex and biologically important structures." The award will be presented for the first time this year. James R. Holton, chairman of the atmospheric sciences department at the University of Washington in Seattle, is the winner of the NAS Award for Scientific Reviewing, a prize of $5,000 for excellence in scientific reviewing within the past 10 years. The award is sponsored by the Philadelphia-based Institute for Scientific Information and Annual Reviews Inc., of Palo Alto, Calif. Holton, 59, was chosen "for his landmark reviews that have become the primary cornerstones of the current understanding of dynamical meteorology of the Earth's stratosphere for both researchers and students. "His reviews, a series of papers culminating in a long review article (J.R. Holton, Reviews of Geophysics, 33,34:403-39, 1995), have become standard in the area of troposphere-stratosphere exchange--the exchange of mass and chemical constituents between the lower and the upper atmospheres. A gratified Holton attributes his good fortune, in part, to his colleagues. "You're never going to get an award unless someone nominates you for it," he acknowledges. The James Craig Watson Medal, a medal and a prize of $15,000 awarded every three years for contributions to astronomy, goes to both Carolyn S. Shoemaker of the Lowell Observatory in Flagstaff, Ariz., and the late Eugene M. Shoemaker, a renowned geologist and astronomer. The husband-wife team was chosen "for their painstaking research, which led to the discovery of over 800 asteroids and 32 comets, including their codiscovery [along with colleague David Levy] of Comet Shoemaker-Levy, the first comet observed colliding with a planet." Walter C. Pitman III is receiving the Alexander Agassiz Medal, a prize of $6,000 awarded every three years for original contributions in oceanography. A senior research scientist at Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory of Columbia University in Palisades, N.Y., Pitman was chosen "for his fundamental contribution to the plate tectonic revolution through insightful analysis of marine magnetic anomalies and for his studies of the causes and effects of sea level changes." The NAS Award in Applied Mathematics and Numerical Analysis, a prize of $10,000 awarded every three years for outstanding work by a candidate whose research has been carried out in an institution in North America, goes to Paul R. Garabedian, a professor of mathematics at New York University. Garabedian was chosen "for his spectacular contributions to computational fluid dynamics." Arthur W. Lupia, a professor of political science at the University of California, San Diego, is the winner of the NAS Award for Initiatives in Research, presented in different fields annually. The $15,000 prize, focusing this year on social and political sciences, is intended to recognize innovative young scientists and encourage research beneficial to the public. The G.K. Warren Prize, an award of $6,000 given every four years for distinguished accomplishment in geology, goes to Thomas Dunne, a professor at the School of Environmental Science and Management at the University of California, Santa Barbara. *

NAS Honors 15 For Contributions To Science

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