University of Rochester faculty in economics, anthropology, and physics will join the National Academy of Sciences, the nation's most select group of thinkers.
Ronald W. Jones, Xerox Professor of Economics; René Millon, professor emeritus of anthropology; and Leonard Mandel, Lee A. DuBridge Professor Emeritus of Physics and Optics who died earlier this year, were named at the academy's national meeting in Washington, D.C., last week. Election to membership in the academy is considered one of the highest honors given a U.S. scientist or engineer.
Jones, who is chairman of the Department of Economics, is an international trade theorist. He has developed major theoretical frameworks, including the extension of the Ricardian Trade Model to many goods and countries, and provided definitive treatment of the effects of protection on international capital movements.
In recent years, Jones has studied globalization, concentrating on simple scenarios in which globalization entails not only greater trade levels, but world markets in which some factors and inputs into the production process can be exchanged. In 1997, he delivered the Ohlin Memorial Lectures in Stockholm, Sweden, which were published last year as Globalization and the Theory of Input Trade.
He joined the University in 1958 and, along with economist Lionel W. McKenzie, is credited with building economics into a highly ranked department for undergraduate and graduate students. A member of the American Economic Association and a fellow of the Econometric Society and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, Jones has published more than 100 articles and has written several books, including International Trade: Essays in Theory. He is co-author of World Trade and Payments and co-editor of The Handbook for International Economics.
For René Millon, his life's work has been spent mapping and excavating at Teotihuacán, Mexico. From 1964 to 1970, he led a team of Mexican, American and Canadian researchers who produced the first complete building-by-building map of the 2,000-year-old city northeast of Mexico City. Known for its Pyramids of the Moon and the Sun, Teotihuacán was the largest and most influential city of the pre-Columbian New World, and now the most visited archaeological site in Mexico.
"I started going there in 1950 and I haven't finish yet," said Millon, professor emeritus of anthropology since 1986. Funding from the National Science Foundation supported the fieldwork for the mapping and subsequent excavations, and then the analysis of the ancient urban center.
Millon came to the University in 1961. Since 1986, he has worked as a consultant at Teotihuacán to the excavations of colleagues. In September, he plans to return to the Pyramid of the Moon with the support of the Japanese equivalent of NSF.
Mandel, one of the world's leading physicists, was among the founders of a burgeoning branch of physics known as quantum optics-the study of the physics of light at its most fundamental level. Known internationally for his groundbreaking experiments on the nature of light, Mandel was the first to actually observe certain remarkable phenomena predicted by quantum theory.
Until his death on Feb. 8, Mandel's career spanned an era when the influence of quantum theory, which describes the behavior of matter at the subatomic level, expanded to touch upon every area of physics. He was at the forefront, putting quantum theory through its paces and demonstrating in the laboratory some of the bizarre outcomes predicted by quantum mechanics.
Mandel joined the faculty at Rochester in 1964. During his career, he was recognized with nearly all the top honors an optical physicist can accrue, including the Frederic Ives Medal and Max Born Award of the Optical Society of America, the Italian National Research Council's Marconi Medal, and the Thomas Young Medal from the British Institute of Physics. He also was a fellow of the American Physical Society, the Optical Society of America, and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
The three faculty are among 72 new members and 15 foreign associates from 10 countries elected in recognition of their distinguished and continuing achievements in original research. Mandel was the only member chosen posthumously.
Other University of Rochester members of the academy are: Esther M. Conwell, senior scientist, Department of Chemistry; Richard F. Fenno, Jr., Distinguished University Professor and Kenan Professor of Political Science; Marshall D. Gates, C. F. Houghton Professor Emeritus, Department of Chemistry; John R. Huizenga, Tracy H. Harris Professor Emeritus of Chemistry and Physics; Lionel W. McKenzie, Wilson Professor Emeritus of Economics; and Fred Sherman, professor of biochemistry and biophysics, School of Medicine and Dentistry.
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 that calls on the academy to be an official advisor to the federal government, upon request, in any matter of science or technology.