Cornell mathematics professor Richard T. Durrett, an expert in probability, joins Cornell Andrew D. White Professor-at-Large Oliver Sacks, the neurologist and author, as an elected fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
The two are among the 177 fellows and 30 foreign honorary members elected to join the academy's class of 2002. Founded in 1780, the academy honors distinguished scientists, scholars and leaders in public affairs, business, administration and the arts. The two new fellows will be inducted during academy ceremonies to be held at its headquarters in Cambridge, Mass., Oct. 5.
Durrett, a member of Cornell's Department of Mathematics faculty, is a specialist in probability theory. Most of his work involves applications of probability to ecology and genetics and has included collaborations with a number of Cornell faculty members in the biological sciences. Along with several other faculty members in a variety of disciplines, he recently became a joint member of the new Department of Biological Statistics and Computational Biology (formerly Biometrics) in the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences.
He has been on the editorial board of a number of journals and the main editor of the journal Annals of Applied Probability. He is director of the National Science Foundation-funded program, VIGRE (for Vertically Integrated Research and Education), in the Cornell math department. The program involves postdoctoral and graduate students, undergraduates and local high school students in a wide variety of research and teaching activities.
Durrett obtained his B.S. and M.S. degrees in mathematics at Emory University and his Ph.D. in operations research at Stanford University. He was an assistant, associate then full professor of mathematics at the University of California-Los Angeles from 1976 to 1985, and he joined the Cornell faculty as a full professor in 1985.
At Cornell, Sacks is one of 20 distinguished individuals from the sciences, humanities and arts who hold six-year appointments as A.D. White Professors-at-Large, visiting the campus for one or two weeks at a time to meet with faculty and students and deliver public lectures. Sacks is clinical professor of neurology at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York City, adjunct professor of neurology at the New York University School of Medicine and a consultant neurologist to the Little Sisters of the Poor and at Beth Abraham Hospital.
Sacks is the author of Awakenings (1973), a book that inspired the Harold Pinter play, A Kind of Alaska, and the Oscar-nominated Hollywood movie "Awakenings." He gained international acclaim for the 1985 collection of neurological case histories, The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat, and is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters.
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