$$News and Reports$$

Apr. 22, 2018

 

Prof. Ora Entin-Wohlman

Ben-Gurion University of the Negev’s Prof. Ora Entin-Wohlman has been elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Entin-Wohlman is a member of the Department of Physics. As part of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences’ commitment to recognizing and celebrating excellence, 213 individuals in a wide range of disciplines and professions have been elected as members of the Class of 2018. Founded in 1780, the Academy honors exceptional scholars, leaders, artists, and innovators and engages them in sharing knowledge and addressing challenges facing the world. 

BGU President Prof. Rivka Carmi warmly congratulated Prof. Entin-Wohlman for “this impressive honor, which denotes international appreciation and recognition of your outstanding groundbreaking achievements. In this, the 70th year of the State of Israel, it is not just an honor for you and the University but for the entire nation.”

She joins her departmental colleague, Prof. Amnon Aharony, who is also a member. Amos Oz and the late Aharon Appelfeld round out the list of BGU members.

Entin-Wohlman’s research interests include: Mesoscopic physics, Nanotechnology, Spintronics, Quantum information, Superconductivity, and Magnetism. She is a member of the Norwegian academy of sciences and letters and of the European academy, and she is a fellow of the American Physical Society and of the British Institute of Physics. She received the Landau prize in Israel and the Humboldt prize in Germany. She is currently professor emeritus at both BGU and Tel Aviv Universities.

The new members of the Academy were elected in 25 categories and are affiliated with 125 institutions.

“Membership in the Academy is not only an honor, but also an opportunity and a responsibility,” said Jonathan Fanton, President of the American Academy. “Members can be inspired and engaged by connecting with one another and through Academy projects dedicated to the common good. The intellect, creativity, and commitment of the 2018 Class will enrich the work of the Academy and the world in which we live.”

The 2018 Class includes author Ta-Nehisi Coates; artist and scholar David C. Driskell; Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts Chair Katherine G. Farley; philosopher Robert Gooding-Williams; actor Tom Hanks; Netflix, Inc. CEO W. Reed Hastings, Jr.; Librarian of Congress Carla D. Hayden; Lockheed Martin Corporation CEO Marillyn A. Hewson; historian Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham; computational linguist Julia B. Hirschberg; economist Hilary Hoynes; Buddhist scholar Matthew T. Kapstein; Indigenous studies scholar K. Tsianina Lomawaima; novelist Viet Thanh Nguyen; 44th President of the United States Barack H. Obama; NASA climatologist Claire L. Parkinson; physicist

David J. Pine; philanthropist and entrepreneur Laurene Powell Jobs; Supreme Court Justice Sonia M. Sotomayor; sculptor and installation artist Jessica Stockholder; gene editing developer Feng Zhang; and pediatric neurologist Huda Y. Zoghbi.

In addition to Entin-Wohlman, the 36 international honorary members from 20 countries include British astrophysicist Jocelyn Bell Burnell; Ethiopian Tedros A. Ghebreyesus, the Director General of the World Health Organization based in Switzerland; Finnish ecologist Johanna Mappes; biodiversity scholar Pablo Marquet from Chile; President and CEO of the International Rescue Committee David W. Miliband, who is a former Foreign Secretary of the United Kingdom; Kazuo Miyamoto, an archaeologist in Japan; and Esther D. Mwaikambo, a maternal and child health expert leading the Tanzania Academy of Sciences.

The new class will be inducted at a ceremony in October 2018 in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and join the Academy members who came before them, including Benjamin Franklin (1781) and Alexander Hamilton (elected 1791) in the eighteenth century; Ralph Waldo Emerson, (1864), Maria Mitchell (1848), and Charles Darwin (1874) in the nineteenth; and Albert Einstein (1924), Robert Frost (1931), Margaret Mead (1948), Milton Friedman (1959), and Martin Luther King, Jr. (1966) in the twentieth.

The 238th class list of new members is available here >>