Award Ceremony
John Frederick Lewis Award
Executive Officer Mary Patterson McPherson (center) with Victoria and Harvey Bricker
Victoria R. Bricker and Harvey M. Bricker
Executive Officer Mary Patterson McPherson (center) with Victoria and Harvey Bricker
The American Philosophical Society awarded the 2011 John Frederick Lewis Award to Victoria and Harvey Bricker for their book Astronomy in the Maya Codices. The award was presented by Glen Bowersock, chair of the Lewis Award Committee and Professor Emeritus of Ancient History, Institute for Advanced Study.
Harvey and Victoria Bricker are Emeritus Professors of Anthropology at Tulane University and Courtesy Professors of Anthropology and Research Associates of the Florida Museum of Natural History at the University of Florida. Harvey M. Bricker is an archaeologist who received Ph.D. in anthropology from Harvard University. His early research was in French Palaeolithic archaeology. He was associated for many years with the excavation and analysis of a prehistoric rockshelter at Les Eyzies, in the Périgord region of southwestern France, and he directed the excavations of a late Neanderthal site in the French foothills of the Pyrénées. Since the early 1980s he has collaborated with Victoria Bricker in a program of research on Maya archaeoastronomy. In 1987 he was named “Chevalier dans l’Ordre des Palmes Académiques” by the government of France “pour services rendus à la culture française.” Victoria R. Bricker is a cultural anthropologist who received her Ph.D. in anthropology from Harvard University. Her fieldwork in Mexico includes several years with the Tzotzil-Maya Indians of highland Chiapas, investigating their ritual humor and researching Colonial and Postcolonial revitalization movements in Chiapas, Yucatan, and highland Guatemala. Since 1971 she has carried out research on the Maya language of Yucatan, including ethnobotanical research for a Maya-English dictionary. In 1978 she began to study the language of Maya hiero-glyphs, later focusing on astronomy in the Precolumbian Maya codices. She was elected to membership in the American Philosophical Society in 2002.
Much of what we know of the Maya comes from the codices, which remain housed in archives in various parts of the world. Only in recent decades have the Maya hieroglyphs been deciphered, opening the door to new discoveries about this indigenous American civilization. Astronomy in the Maya Codices offers the most comprehensive treatment of Maya astronomy to date, integrating new insights and information from the fields of astronomy, archaeology, ethnography, and iconography. Making full use of the now understood correlation between the Maya and Western calendars, the authors have pulled together three decades of their own scholarly research, placing the contents of the codices in historic time with unprecedented specificity. At the same time, they offer a history of the research by other scholars as this field of study has grown over the past century and a half. With hundreds of illustrations from the codices throughout the book, this volume is designed to serve as a freestanding resource, offering context for references to Venus, Mercury, and Mars; solar and lunar eclipses; and certain stars, constellations, and the Milky Way. This far-reaching study of the codices confirms that, independent of the Old World traditions that gave rise to modern Western astronomy, the Precolumbian Maya achieved a sophisticated knowledge of astronomy based on observations recorded over centuries and passed down through generations.
In 1935 the Society established the John Frederick Lewis Award with funds donated by his widow. The award recognizes the best book or monograph published by the Society in a given year. The selection committee consisted of Glen W. Bowersock (chair), Professor Emeritus of Ancient History, Institute for Advanced Study; Helen F. North, Centennial Professor of Classics Emerita, Swarthmore College; and Noel M. Swerdlow, Professor Emeritus of Astronomy and Astrophysics and of History, University of Chicago.
Judson Daland Prize for Outstanding Achievement in Clinical Investigation
APS Executive Officer Mary Patterson McPherson and APS President Clyde F. Barker with Dr. Svati Shah
Svati Shah
APS Executive Officer Mary Patterson McPherson and APS President Clyde F. Barker with Dr. Svati Shah
The 2011 recipient of the American Philosophical Society’s Judson Daland Prize for Outstanding Achievement in Patient-oriented Clinical Investigation is Svati Shah, M.D., M.H.S., in recognition of her work on novel metabolomic biomarkers for cardiovascular events. Dr. Shah is an assistant professor and Medical Director of the Adult Cardiovascular Genetics Clinic at Duke University. She is also a member of the faculty at the Duke Center for Human Genetics, Duke Clinical Research Institute, and Sarah W. Stedman Nutrition and Metabolism Center. The award was presented by the Chair of the Selection Committee and President of the American Philosophical Society, Clyde F. Barker, Donald Guthrie Professor at the University of Pennsylvania.
Svati Shah’s clinical research focuses on the molecular epidemiology of cardiovascular disease (CVD). She has used novel translational technologies to make important discoveries of biomarkers for improved CVD risk prediction. She is also focusing her efforts on the implications and application of these discoveries to patient care.
Profiling of small-molecule metabolites holds promise for giving a more complete picture of human systems biology. “Unbiased” metabolomic profiling has been used to predict coronary artery disease (CAD), but the non-quantitative nature reduces clinical utility. Further, the genetic basis of these profiles is not established. Shah hypothesized that targeted, quantitative metabolomic profiles are heritable; identify patients with CAD and predict subsequent cardiovascular events.
Her research observed that simple metabolomic profiles, in particular branched-chain amino acids and their byproducts, are highly heritable and strongly differentiate patients with CAD and MI, providing improved risk discrimination beyond standard clinical factors. Metabolite signatures composed of dicarboxylacylcarnitines are independently predictive of subsequent cardiovascular events. These results implicate branched-chain amino acid catabolism and other mitochondrial processes in cardiovascular disease pathogenesis, and could have significant clinical implications for cardiovascular risk prediction, diagnosis, and identification of genetic factors underlying the heritability of cardiovascular disease.
The prize is named for Dr. Judson Daland, born in 1860, a prominent Philadelphia physician and outstanding figure in medical research who left the bulk of his estate to the Society to support research in clinical medicine. The prize recognizes outstanding achievement in clinical investigation, particularly patient-oriented research.
The selection committee consisted of Clyde F. Barker (chair), Donald Guthrie Professor of Surgery, University of Pennsylvania; John N. Loeb, Professor Emeritus of Medicine, Columbia University; Arno Motulsky, Professor Emeritus of Medicine and Genome Sciences, University of Washington; and Thomas E. Starzl, Professor of Surgery, University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine.
