Two women faculty members from the University of Colorado at Boulder were elected to the National Academy of Sciences last week, bringing to 19 the total number of CU-Boulder professors who have been named to the elite institution.
Physics Department Professor Margaret Murnane, also a JILA fellow, and chemistry and biochemistry department Professor Margaret Tolbert, a fellow of the Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences, or CIRES, were among 72 new members elected to the NAS in 2004.
Murnane and Tolbert join Professor Jane Menken of sociology to bring to three the number of CU-Boulder women faculty members in the National Academy of Sciences.
The NAS also elected 18 foreign associates from 13 countries in recognition of their distinguished and continuing achievements in original research.
Election to the academy is considered one of the highest honors that can be bestowed on American scientists or engineers. Those elected this year bring the total number of active academy members to 1,949. The NAS is headquartered in Washington, D.C., and was chartered by Congress during President Abraham Lincoln's tenure.
"This is tremendous news," said CU-Boulder Chancellor Richard Byyny. "It underscores the quality of our faculty and the nationwide reputation of our outstanding researchers, scholars and teachers," he said.
Murnane won a $500,000 MacArthur Fellowship in 2000, also known as a "genius grant," and was cited for her work in creating some of the shortest light pulses to date. Working with her husband and colleague Henry Kapteyn and a cadre of graduate students, Murnane has used laser light to freeze the motion of electrons, atoms and molecules on time frames of 1/100 trillionth of a second.
Professor Tolbert was honored for her atmospheric chemistry work studying polar stratospheric clouds and sulfuric acid aerosols and their implications for the Antarctic ozone hole. She previously won a prestigious national Camille Dreyfus Teacher- Scholar Award and the James B. Macelwane Award from the American Geophysical Union.
Tolbert joins six other CU-Boulder chemistry and biochemistry faculty in the National Academy of Sciences, including Professors Thomas Cech, Marvin Caruthers, Joseph Michl, Carl Lineberger and Professors Emeritus Stanley Cristol and Charles DePuy.
Other CU-Boulder members of the National Academy of Sciences include David Prescott, William Wood and Larry Gold of MCD biology, Richard McCray of the astrophysical and planetary sciences department and JILA, Carl Wieman of physics and JILA, John Hall of JILA, Professor Emeritus Gilbert White of the Institute of Behavioral Science and Menken of sociology.
In addition, Professors Richard McIntosh and Norman Pace of the molecular, cellular and developmental biology department are NAS members as well as Eric Cornell, of the National Institute of Standards and Technology and adjoint professor in the CU-Boulder physics department.
JILA is a joint program of CU-Boulder and the National Institute of Standards and Technology. CIRES is a joint institute of CU-Boulder and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.