Biologist James S. Clark Elected to American Academy of Arts and Sciences

Friday, April 29, 2005/DURHAM, N.C. – James S. Clark, H.L. Blomquist Professor of Biology at the Nicholas School of the Environment and Earth Sciences at Duke University, has been elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

Clark, an expert on how global changes affects forests and grasslands, was one of 196 scientists, scholars, artists, statesmen and entrepreneurs elected as Fellows this year.

The Academy of Arts and Sciences is an independent policy research center that conducts interdisciplinary studies on science and international security, social policy, education and the humanities. Founded in 1780 by John Adams, James Bowdoin, John Hancock and other scholar-patriots, it has elected as Fellows the finest minds and most influential leaders of each succeeding generation. Its current membership includes more than 150 Nobel Laureates and 50 Pulitzer Prize winners. Past Fellows have included George Washington, Ben Franklin, Daniel Webster, Ralph Waldo Emerson and Albert Einstein.

Last year, Stuart L. Pimm, Doris Duke Professor of Conservation Ecology at the Nicholas School, was elected a Fellow.

Two other Duke professors joined Clark on this year’s list of inductees. They are Herbert Edelsbrunner, Arts and Sciences Professor of Computer Science and Mathematics, and Thomas Petes, chair of Genetics and Microbiology at Duke University Medical Center.

Clark is widely cited for his research on biodiversity, global change ecology, global climate change, earth surface processes and terrestrial ecosystems. Recent studies of his refute the widely held theory that trees can “relocate” quickly in response to sudden climate change. Other recent studies have suggested that droughts like the Great Dust Bowl of the 1930s may have occurred more frequently and lasted longer in prehistoric times.

Clark has authored more than 100 peer-reviewed articles and is the recipient of numerous research awards, including the Ecological Society of America’s William Skinner Cooper Award in 1988 and its George Mercer Award in 1991.

For excellence in teaching and research, he was one of 15 scientists recognized by President Bill Clinton with the National Science Foundation’s five-year Presidential Faculty Fellow Award in 1994.

In 1998, he was named an Aldo Leopold Leadership Fellow, on behalf of the Ecological Society of America.

For more information, contact Tim Lucas in the Nicholas School’s Office of Communications at (919) 613-8084 or tdlucas@duke.edu.