Two CNR faculty members were elected to the National Academy of Sciences (NAS), according to a May 3 announcement Tuesday from the academy. Michael Hanemann (below, top) is a Chancellor’s Professor in the Department of Agricultural and Resource Economics. He is retiring this year. Athanasios Theologis (below, bottom) is retired adjunct professor in the Department of Plant and Microbial Biology.
Membership in the academy is one of the highest honors given to a scientist or engineer in the United States. Among the NAS’s renowned members are Albert Einstein, Robert Oppenheimer, Thomas Edison, Orville Wright and Alexander Graham Bell. More than 180 living members of the academy have won Nobel Prizes.
Members are chosen for their excellence in original scientific research and serve on panels that investigate and report to government agencies on areas of science or art. The 72 new members and 18 foreign associates from 15 countries bring total active membership in the society to 2, 113 and the total number of foreign associated to 418. The new members will be inducted into the academy next April during its 149th annual meeting in Washington, D.C.
Hanemann's research interests include non-market valuation, environmental economics and policy, water pricing and management, demand modeling for market research and policy design, the economics of irreversibility and adaptive management, and welfare economics.
During his career, Theologis made fundamental discoveries relating to the physiology of fruit ripening, the mechanism and regulation of ethylene synthesis and action, and the molecular basis of auxin action.
UC Berkeley had a total of three new electees this year, and now counts 139 NAS members and foreign associates among its faculty.
The NAS is a private, nonprofit honorific society of distinguished scholars engaged in scientific and engineering research, dedicated to furthering science and technology and to their use for the general welfare. Established in 1863, the NAS has served to “investigate, examine, experiment, and report upon any subject of science or art” whenever called upon to do so by any department of the government.
For a complete list of newly elected members, visit here.