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For further information, contact the MBL Communications Office at (508) 289-7423 or e-mail us at comm@mbl.edu
For Immediate Release: April 28, 2008
Contact: Gina Hebert, 508-289-7725, ghebert@mbl.edu
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John E. Hobbie, other MBL Scientists Elected to American Academy of Arts and Sciences
MBL, WOODS HOLE, MA—The American Academy of Arts and Sciences, one of the nation’s most prestigious honorary societies, today announced its 2008 Class of Fellows, including John E. Hobbie, Distinguished Scientist and Senior Research Scholar at Marine Biological Laboratory’s (MBL) Ecosystems Center. Also among this year’s fellows are four MBL alumni and ten MBL course faculty, including Timothy J. Mitchison of Harvard Medical School, co-director of the MBL’s Physiology course; and Michael Dickinson of California Institute of Technology, present instructor and former co-director of the MBL’s Neural Systems & Behavior course.
The MBL scientists are on an illustrious list of 212 scholars, scientists, artists, and civic, corporate and philanthropic leaders elected to the Academy this year, including Craig Mello of the University of Massachusetts Medical School, 2006 recipient of the Nobel Prize for discovery of RNA interference; computer company founders Michael Dell (Dell Computer), and Charles M. Geschke and John E. Warnock (Adobe Systems, Inc.); two-time cabinet secretary and former White House Chief of Staff James A. Baker III; astronomer Adam Riess, who contributed to the discovery of dark energy in the universe; Academy Award-winning filmmakers Ethan and Joel Cohen and Milos Forman; Darwin biographer Janet Browne; soprano Dawn Upshaw; Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist Edwards P. Jones; and blues guitarist B.B. King.
The new class will be inducted at a ceremony on October 11, at the Academy’s headquarters in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
John Hobbie, an aquatic ecologist, joined the MBL’s Ecosystems Center in 1976. His research centers on discovering the activities of microbes in nature. Methods that Hobbie has helped develop are widely used in lakes, estuaries, and oceans to count the numbers of bacteria and measure their roles in recycling organic matter and nutrients. Recently, he moved into soils research, where new techniques he developed with his son, Erik Hobbie, are providing rates of nitrogen transfer from mushrooms into shrubs and trees.
Another interest, the ecology of Arctic ecosystems, began when Hobbie and his wife spent a year in a small cabin in the mountains of Alaska in the winter of 1960 while he carried out his Ph.D. thesis research on an Arctic lake. In 1975, Hobbie began research at Toolik Lake, Alaska, an effort that has grown under his direction into the MBL’s Arctic Long-Term Ecological Research Site, funded by the National Science Foundation. Scientists at the Toolik Field Station, which is operated by the University of Alaska Fairbanks, are documenting the effects of temperature increase in Northern Alaska and using their data to predict ecological changes for larger Arctic regions over the next centuries.
Hobbie, a longtime resident of Falmouth, was director of the MBL Ecosystems Center from 1984 to 1989 and co-director from 1989 to 2006. He received a B.A. from Dartmouth College, an M.A. from the University of California, Berkeley, and a Ph.D. from Indiana University. Prior to joining the MBL, Hobbie was a professor at North Carolina State University. Hobbie received the 2008 Alfred C. Redfield Award for Distinguished Lifetime Achievement from the American Society of Limnology and Oceanography. He and his wife, Olivann, a teacher at Falmouth Academy, have three grown sons.
Timothy J. Mitchison, the Sabbagh Professor of Systems Biology at Harvard Medical School, has been a visiting investigator at the MBL since 1999. In 2004 he became co-director of the MBL Physiology course, a world-renown, graduate-level summer course in cell biology research and theory. Mitchison’s research interests are in cell division and cell movement, in particular the structure, function, and dynamics of the cell’s cytoskeleton. His recent research focuses on the use of small molecules to study cell division, particularly in cancer cells. Mitchison was a founding member of Harvard’s Department of Systems Biology and is well recognized for his 1984 discovery with Marc Kirschner of “dynamic instability” of microtubules, the key structural component of the cytoskeleton. Mitchison was elected a fellow of the Royal Society in 1997.
Michael Dickinson, the Zarem Professor of Bioengineering at California Institute of Technology, co-directed the MBL Neural Systems & Behavior course from 2005 to2007 and currently serves as an instructor in the course. Dickinson, who was awarded a MacArthur “genius” Fellowship in 2001, is a world expert in the aerodynamics of insect flight. He is known for his imaginative experimental constructions, including RoboFly, a model of a fruit fly 100 times larger than the insect, and Fly-o-Rama, a virtual reality flight arena. Dickinson’s laboratory is dedicated to developing an integrated, interdisciplinary, multi-level approach to the study of animal physiology and behavior, using their work with insect flight as a starting point.
Founded in 1780 by John Adams, James Bowdoin, John Hancock and other scholar-patriots, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences has elected as members the finest minds and most influential leaders from each generation, including George Washington and Benjamin Franklin in the eighteenth century, Daniel Webster and Ralph Waldo Emerson in the nineteenth, and Albert Einstein and Winston Churchill in the twentieth. The current membership includes some 200 Nobel laureates and more than 60 Pulitzer Prize winners. A full list of the newly elected Fellows and their affiliations can be found at: http://www.amacad.org/news/new2008.aspx
“The Academy honors excellence by electing to membership remarkable men and women who have made preeminent contributions to their fields, and to the world,” said Academy President Emilio Bizzi. “We are pleased to welcome into the Academy these new members to help advance our founders’ goal of ‘cherishing knowledge and shaping the future.’”
An independent policy research center, the Academy undertakes studies of complex and emerging problems. Its diverse membership of scholars and practitioners from many disciplines and professions gives the Academy a unique capacity to conduct a wide range of interdisciplinary, long-term policy research. Current studies focus on science, technology and global security; social policy and American institutions; the humanities and culture; and education.
The MBL is a leading international, independent, nonprofit institution dedicated to discovery and to improving the human condition through creative research and education in the biological, biomedical and environmental sciences. Founded in 1888 as the Marine Biological Laboratory, the MBL is the oldest private marine laboratory in the Western Hemisphere. For more information, visit www.MBL.edu.
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