Christakis, Mayer elected to National Academy of Sciences
Nicholas Christakis and James Mayer
Two Yale faculty members have been elected to the prestigious National Academy of Sciences in recognition of their distinguished and continuing achievements in original research.
Sociologist and physician Nicholas Christakis and chemist James Mayer are among 120 new members elected to the academy, which was established by President Abraham Lincoln in 1863 and charged with providing independent, objective advice to the nation on matters related to science and technology. Election to the academy is considered one of the highest honors that can be bestowed on a U.S. scientist or engineer.
Twenty-four international members were also elected this year. International members are non-voting members of the academy.
The new members bring the total number of active members to 2,617 and the total number of international members to 537.
Nicholas Christakis, Sterling Professor of Social and Natural Science in the Faculty of Arts and Sciences, who has been a member of the Yale faculty since 2013, is a leading expert in the study of social networks and biosocial science. His research focuses mainly on the social, mathematical, and biological rules governing how social networks form and the biological implications of how they operate to influence thoughts, behaviors, and feelings. During the COVID-19 pandemic, he conducted pioneering research on the connection between social networks and contagion. Christakis is director of the Human Nature Lab at Yale and the author of four books and more than 200 articles. He has been elected to the Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of Sciences and is a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He also has affiliations with Yale School of Medicine and the Yale School of Engineering & Applied Science.
James Mayer, the Charlotte Fitch Roberts Professor of Chemistry in the Faculty of Arts and Sciences, who has been a member of the Yale faculty since 2014, is a major contributor to the study of chemical reactivity. Using an array of techniques and approaches, his research aims to develop a fundamental understanding of reactions that involve the transfer of protons and electrons in systems including transition metal complexes, organic molecules, electrocatalysts, and colloidal nanocrystals. Mayer is the recipient of a Sloan Research Fellowship and is a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the American Chemical Society, and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He has been awarded numerous named lectureships and won the 2018 Chemical Society Award in Inorganic Chemistry, among other honors.
