STONY BROOK, N.Y., April 26, 2006—Douglas J. Futuyma, Ph.D. was elected to the National Academy of Sciences this week, earning one of the most prestigious academic honors in the U.S. Dr. Futuyma, a highly-acclaimed professor and researcher in Stony Brook University’s renowned Department of Ecology and Evolution, becomes the 13th member of the faculty so honored.
The National Academy of Sciences (NAS) named a total of 72 new members and 18 foreign associates from 16 countries in recognition of “distinguished and continuing achievements in original research.” Those elected this week bring active membership of the NAS to 2,013. Foreign associates are non-voting members with citizenship outside the U.S.; there are now 371 foreign associates in the NAS.
“Election to the Academy is considered one of the highest honors in American science and engineering,” said Ralph Cicerone, President of the NAS.
Charles Langmuir, who received his Ph.D. in Geochemistry from Stony Brook in 1980, also was elected to the NAS. He is now a Professor of Geochemistry in the Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences at Harvard.
“We are so very proud of Doug Futuyma, Charles Langmuir and the extraordinary research achievements that have earned them this well-deserved recognition,” said Stony Brook President Shirley Strum Kenny.
Dr. Futuyma's research interests in evolution focus primarily on speciation and the evolution of ecological interactions among species. He has been a Guggenheim and a Fulbright Fellow, the President of the Society for the Study of Evolution and the President of American Society of Naturalists. He is the author of the successful textbook Evolutionary Biology.
Most of his work has centered on the population biology of herbivorous insects and the evolution of their affiliation with host plants. Research on several species centered on genotypic differences conferring adaptation to different host plants, and cast light on the evolution of host specificity. Recent work has focused on whether or not constraints on genetic variation are likely to have influenced the phylogenetic history of host associations in a group of leaf beetles, and on the pattern of speciation in this group. Futuyma's students have worked on diverse evolutionary and ecological studies of insect-plant interactions and of speciation in insects.
The National Academy of Sciences is a private organization of scientists and engineers dedicated to the furtherance of science and its use for the general welfare. It was established in 1863 by a congressional act of incorporation signed by Abraham Lincoln that calls on the Academy to act as an official adviser to the federal government, upon request, in any matter of science or technology.
