School Notes: Faculty of Arts & Sciences
January/February 2021

Honors and accolades for FAS faculty

In 2020, the international community once again took notice of transformational FAS faculty work. Louise Glück (English) won the 2020 Nobel Prize in literature; Hazel Carby (African American studies) received the British Academy’s Al Rhodan Prize for Global Understanding; Grigory Margulis (mathematics) was awarded the Abel Prize; and Greg Grandin (history), the Pulitzer Prize in nonfiction. James Scott (political science) was named a fellow of the American Philosophical Society and was awarded the Albert O. Hirschman Prize by the Social Science Research Council. Pulitzer Prize–winning historian David Blight received the Gold Medal for History from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. 

In addition, five FAS faculty have been elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and others were named fellows of prestigious bodies including the National Academy of Science and the Royal Society. Two received Carnegie Fellowships, one a Guggenheim Fellowship, and two are finalists for the National Blavatnik Award for Young Scientists, in addition to numerous other honors.

Leading conversations on global challenges

FAS faculty played a central role in the recent campus-wide Planetary Solutions symposium. At the event December 2–4, they joined colleagues from Yale’s professional schools to discuss how Yale can lead responses to environmental crises through bold and creative approaches to science and education. Among the FAS participants were Mary-Louise Timmermans, expert on arctic ice temperatures, and David Bercovici, who studies plate tectonics; plant scientists Erika Edwards ’05PhD and Michael Donoghue, freshwater ecologist David Skelly, and Walter Jetz, who studies species distribution; biomedical engineer Anjelica Gonzalez; Nobel Prize–winning economist William Nordhaus ’63; historians Paul Sabin ’92 and Sunil Amrith; engineers Judy Cha, Menachem Elimelech, and Julie Zimmerman; chemist Gary Brudvig, FAS dean Tamar Gendler ’87; FAS dean of science and SEAS Jeffrey Brock ’92; plus two special FAS colleagues, Provost Scott Strobel (molecular biophysics and biochemistry) and President Peter Salovey ’86PhD (psychology).