CAMBRIDGE, Mass.—Vanderbilt psychologist Randolph Blake has been named to a distinguished class of scientists, politicians, authors, artists and others, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences announced April 24.
The academy named 195 new fellows for 2006. In addition to Blake, the list includes former Presidents George H.W. Bush and William Jefferson Clinton; Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts; Nobel Prize-winning biochemist and Rockefeller University President Sir Paul Nurse; the chairman and vice chairman of the 9/11 commission,Thomas Kean and Lee Hamilton; actor and director Martin Scorsese; choreographer Meredith Monk; conductor Michael Tilson Thomas; and New York Stock Exchange chairman Marshall Carter.
“This is a spectacular and well-deserved recognition for Randolph and his extraordinary achievements in teaching and research,” Nicholas Zeppos, provost and vice chancellor for academic affairs, said. “It also represents an important milestone for Vanderbilt, since the number of faculty elected to this prestigious organization often is used as a measure of faculty quality.”
Blake is Centennial Professor of Psychology, former chair of the department and a Vanderbilt Kennedy Center for Research on Human Development fellow. He is also a member of the Vanderbilt Center for Integrative and Cognitive Neuroscience and is a founding member of the Vanderbilt Vision Research Center.
Using behavioral and brain imaging techniques, Blake studies human visual perception, with an emphasis on binocular vision, motion perception and the dynamics of perceptual organization. In recent years, he has also worked on visual imagery, visual memory, synaesthesia—a phenomenon in which an individual’s senses, such as taste and vision, become confused—and the role of knowledge in visual perception.
Blake, who earned his Ph.D. from Vanderbilt in 1972, came back to the university in 1988 from Northwestern University where he spent 14 years studying human and animal vision. He held a postdoctoral fellowship at Baylor College of Medicine / University of Texas Health Sciences Center from 1972 to 1974.
Blake is a fellow of the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science, a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and a fellow of the American Psychological Association. He has held the William Evans Chair at Otago University and received the Early Career Award from the American Psychological Association and a Career Development Award from the National Institutes of Health. He also received the Earl Sutherland Prize for Achievement in Research from Vanderbilt in 2000.
Vanderbilt AAAS fellows named in past years include Chancellor Emeritus Alexander Heard, former Hortense B. Ingram Chair of Molecular Oncology Brigid Hogan, Distinguished Professor of Psychology Jon Kaas and Thomas F. Frist Professor of Medicine John Oates. The new fellows will be formally inducted on Oct. 7 in a ceremony at the society’s Cambridge, Mass., headquarters.
Fellows and foreign honorary members are nominated and elected to the academy by current members. Members include scholars and practitioners from mathematics, physics, biological sciences, social sciences, humanities and the arts, public affairs and business.
The academy was founded in 1780 by John Adams, James Bowdoin, John Hancock. Fellows have included George Washington and Ben Franklin in the 18th century, Daniel Webster and Ralph Waldo Emerson in the 19th, and Albert Einstein and Winston Churchill in the 20th. The current membership includes more than 170 Nobel laureates and 50 Pulitzer Prize winners. The academy is an independent policy research center whose current research focuses on science and global security; social policy; the humanities and culture; and education.
For a full list of 2006 fellows, visit http://www.amacad.org/. For more news from Vanderbilt, visit VUCast, Vanderbilt’s news network, at http://www.vanderbilt.edu/news.
Media contact: Melanie Moran, (615) 322-NEWS
Melanie.moran@vanderbilt.edu