2017 Autumn General Meeting
Olaf Sporns

The recipient selected for the 2017 Patrick Suppes Prize for a body of outstanding work in mathematical or experimental psychology or cognitive neuroscience, is Olaf Sporns “in recognition of his transformation of the understanding of the relation of brain to behavior.”  Dr. Sporns is Distinguished Professor, Provost Professor, and Robert H. Shaffer Chair in the Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences at Indiana University.

Olaf Sporns has pioneered a new and revolutionary way of thinking about brain function – based on mapping and modeling the brain as a complex network.  He is the founder of brain connectomics, an approach that focuses on the way that highly distributed networks carry out behavior and cognition.  This work has had a highly significant impact in neuroscience, where scientists now see that brain structure and function depend on distributed and dynamic networks.

Sporns’ research has been formal, mathematical and computational.  His work pioneered the application of graph theory to the analysis of brain connectivity, resulting in the very first large-scale connectivity maps of the human brain.  These maps revealed a set of highly central network hubs that link distinct functional communities, communities that carry out behavioral tasks and processes.  He has also shown how the structural connections shape the ever changing patterns of the brain’s spontaneous and evoked activity.

The NIH-funded Human Connectome Project carries forward a research agenda that was strongly influenced by the ideas Sporns formulated years earlier. He and others are now contributing to connectome projects aimed at animal models, development across the life span, and implications for mental disorders.

The Patrick Suppes Prize honors accomplishments in three deeply significant scholarly fields, with the prize rotating each year between philosophy of science, psychology or neuroscience, and history of science.  The Patrick Suppes Prize in Psychology or Neuroscience is awarded for a body of outstanding work which consists of at least three articles published within the preceding six years.  The work considered in psychology is either in mathematical or experimental psychology.  The work considered in neuroscience is in system not cellular neuroscience.

The selection committee members were Richard M. Shiffrin (chair) Distinguished Professor, Luther Dana Waterman Professor of Psychological and Brain Sciences, and Professor of Psychology and Cognitive Science, Indiana University: John G. Hildebrand, Regents Professor of Neuroscience, University of Arizona; and Jeroen G. W. Raaijmakers, Professor of Cognitive Psychology, University of Amsterdam.

2017 Autumn General Meeting
Douglas S. Massey

The recipient of the 2017 Henry Allen Moe Prize in the Humanities is Douglas S. Massey in recognition of his paper “The Mexican-U.S. Border in the American Imagination” presented to the Society at its April 2015 Meeting and published in Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society, volume 160, no. 2, June 2016.  Doug Massey is the Henry G. Bryant Professor of Sociology and Public Affairs at Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs, Princeton University.

Douglas S. Massey is a sociologist who has made the study of segregation and immigration his life’s work.  In this essay he rehearses in part his well-established arguments about the counter-intuitive relationship between undocumented immigration and border enforcement along the United States/Mexico border since the late 1970s.  Despite the fact that the flow of undocumented migrants had stabilized, the presumed threat from Latino immigration was given new force through media exaggeration, political exploitation, and even academic pronouncement.  The militarization of the border and the concomitant multiplication of the federal budget for border patrol by a factor of thirteen between 1986 and 2010, paradoxically led to an increase in the net rate of unauthorized migration, and subsequent acceleration of undocumented population growth north of the border.  Whereas earlier migration had been concentrated on border states, the new growth was spread throughout the United States.  What had been a circular flow of male workers was transformed into a rapidly growing resident population of undocumented families.

Massey’s focus is on the political, social, and emotional force of the idea of the southern border itself.  He provides a succinct history of its emergence as a symbolic demarcation in the American mind, tracing its early construction after Mexico’s independence from Spain in 1821, followed by the subsequent abolition of slavery there in 1830.  The Mexican American War, fought over both territory and slavery, led to the final establishment of the border in 1853.  Both racial and economic concerns were at stake in the following century, when moments of border enforcement alternated with periods of relative lack of attention in the United States.

More recently the symbolic power of the Mexican border has enabled fear-mongering that goes beyond immigration, to include claims that radical Islamists are being disguised as Mexican immigrants, and that the Ebola virus is being imported through the southern border.  Massey calls attention to ways in which the historical obsession with the Mexican border, now reinforced by such spurious claims, has meant that the defense of this border above all has come to stand for national security.  The enormous resources devoted to enforcement have produced a border economy that thrives on the unproven theory of the value of border enforcement as a means of deterring undocumented immigration. Massey’s essay does not propose political or social solutions to the question of immigration across the southern border, but provides an illuminating examination of how a border can come to be endowed with symbolic force in the absence of factual evidence.  His deft presentation of this powerful argument renders his essay accessible to readers from fields in the humanities outside his own specialization.

The prize was established in 1982 by a gift from the widow of Henry Allen Moe, to honor the longtime head of the Guggenheim Foundation and president of the American Philosophical Society from 1959 to 1970. It pays particular tribute to his firm commitment to the humanities and those who pursue them.  The prize is awarded annually to the author of a paper in the humanities or jurisprudence read at a meeting of the Society.  

Members of the selection committee were Elizabeth Cropper (chair), Dean, Center for Advanced Study in the  Visual Arts, National Gallery of Art; Michael McCormick, Goelet Professor of Medieval History, Harvard University; Brent Shaw, Andrew Fleming West Professor of Classics, Princeton University.  

The APS Library's digital exhibit "Through Indigenous Eyes" features a collection of video interviews with Ojibwe, Cherokee, Passamaquoddy, and Penobscot elders and knowledge keepers who visited the APS for the “Building Bridges between Archives and Indian Communities” conference in May of 2010. In these multimedia exhibits, the speakers offer insights and stories about the photographs of two anthropologists, Frank G. Speck and A. Irving Hallowell. 

This exhibit is currently being adapted to our new website. In the meantime, the interviews that make up this exhibit can be viewed on the APS Youtube channel.

The American Philosophical Society hosts a spring and fall series of informal lunch presentations on new research and emerging topics by and for APS staff, research fellows, and other scholars. From the U.S. Constitution to 18th-century French mathematicians, the topics are as varied as the research interests and collections at the APS.

Lunch and the program are from 12:00 to 1:00 p.m. in Benjamin Franklin Hall (427 Chestnut Street, Philadelphia).

APS Lunch at the Library invitations are available to Friends of the APS who contribute at the Supporting Circle and beyond ($500+). Registration is required. RSVP to Adrianna Link at [email protected].

2023 Calendar

February 1: Ed Gray, APS NEH Sabbatical Fellow, American Philosophical Society, "Benjamin Franklin's Money: A Financial Life of the First American"

February 23: Gregory Nobles, Georgia Institute of Technology, "The Education of Betsy Stockton: An Odyssey of Slavery and Freedom"

March 15: Rebecca Cypess, Mason Gross School of the Arts, Rutgers University, "Music and Friendship in Benjamin Franklin's Paris: The Brillion Manuscripts at the American Philosophical Society"

2022 Calendar

February 17: Phil Mead, Museum of the American Revolution, "Considering the 250th at the Museum of the American Revolution"

September 16: Warren Hofstra, Shenandoah University; Mohammad Obeid, Shenandoah University; Kevin Hardwich, James Madison University; and JJ Ruscella, EVP at AccessVR, "Electing the President: The Debates on the Electoral College at the Constitutional Convention of 1787 in Virtual Reality" 

2020 Calendar

January 15: Kristen Regina, Arcadia Director of the Library and Archives at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, "Evolving the Library and Archives"

February 12: Larry Tise, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, "The First American Coloring Book(s): Theodore de Bry's Illustrated America, 1590-1602"

March 11: Audra Wolfe, Philadelphia-based writer, editor, and historian, "Freedom's Laboratory: The Cold War Struggle for the Soul of Science"

CANCELED: April 1: Carlo Ginzburg, Professor Emeritus at the University of California, Los Angeles, in conversation with Patrick Spero, Librarian and Director, American Philosophical Society Library & Museum [Note: this event will be rescheduled for March 2021]

June 24: Bethany Farrell, Digital Franklin Research Fellow, American Philosophical Society, "The Art of Making Data for Every Scholar’s Pocket: Opening Benjamin Franklin’s Account Books"

October 26–28, 2017

Panel 1: Prints, Performance, and Patriots in the Garden

"The Visual Culture of Commemorative Summerhouses in the Age of Revolutions"
Kerry Dean Carso, State University of New York at New Paltz

"Charles Willson Peale, Nancy Hallam, and Shakespeare's Cymbeline on the Revolutionary Stage"
Amy M. E. Morris, Cambridge University

"The Printer and the Painter: Portraying Print Culture in an Age of Revolution"
Martha J. King, Princeton University

Panel 2: Art in the Age of Atlantic Revolutions

“Independentistas: Francis Drexel’s Trans-American Gallery of Latin American Revolutionaries”
Katherine Manthorne, City University of New York

“The Materiality of the Haitian Revolution in the Atlantic World”
Ashli White, University of Miami

“The Art of Freedom: Camille Pissarro and the Age of Emancipation”
Jon Sensbach, University of Florida

Panel 3: Iconoclasts and Vandals

“Kill the King: Revolutionary Iconoclasm in New York and London”
Wendy Bellion, University of Delaware

“Revolutionary Vandalism Assessed: Destruction and Creation in a Drawing by Hubert Robert”
Frédérique Baumgartner, Columbia University

“Vandalisme Révolutionnaire and Art Policy during the French Revolution”
Nausikaä El-Mecky, Heidelberg School of Education

Panel 4: The Revolutionary Politics of Everyday Art

“Paper Chiefs: Sayer & Bennett’s Portraits of American Revolutionaries”
Amy Torbert, Harvard Art Museums

“Printerly Protest in Revolutionary America”
Jennifer Chuong, Harvard University

“American Idols: Fashions à l’Americaine in Pre-Revolutionary France”
Kimberly Chrisman-Campbell, Independent Scholar

Panel 5: Remembering Revolution in Material Culture

“’Cruelly Murdered’: Gravestones and American Innocence, 1775-6”
Caitlin Galante-DeAngelis Hopkins, Harvard University

“Diamonds and Democracy: Winterhalter’s Royal Portraits after the Revolutions of 1848”
John Webley, Columbia University

“’Revolutionary Penelopes”: Patriotic Seamstresses in 19th-century Italian Art”
Isabella Campagnol, Istituto Marangoni, Milan

Panel 6: Performance and Public Displays of Revolution

“Parade as Persuasion: Re-Thinking New York’s Federal Procession”
Laura Auricchio, The New School

“’What Have We to Do with Rome”: The Politics of Art, Spectacle, and Peale’s Triumphal Arch”
Amy Ellison, APS

“Visualizing Permanence: Materiality and Politics in Depictions of Public Architecture during the French Revolution, 1789-1794”
Camille S. Mathieu, University of Exeter

2012 Spring General Meeting
R. Duncan Luce

The recipient selected for the 2012 Patrick Suppes Prize in Psychology is Dr. R. Duncan Luce in recognition of his distinguished and prolific research and publications in decision-making and utility theory that have continued unabated from the 1950s to the present.

R. Duncan Luce is Distinguished Research Professor of Cognitive Sciences and Research Professor of Economics at the University of California, Irvine, where he has been since 1988.  He received his Ph.D. from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1950.

Trained as a mathematician but transformed under the tutelage of many distinguished social and psychological scientists into a mathematical behavioral scientist, R. Duncan Luce has worked on a variety of measurement issues.  These include probabilistic models of choice and responses times, algebraic formulations that lead to measurement representations such as additive and non-additive conjoint measurement, the interlocks between measurement systems with applications to utility and subjective weights and to aspects of psychophysics.  His publications include 8 authored or co-authored volumes, 14 edited or co-edited volumes, and over 220 journal articles.

During the award ceremony, Patrick Suppes stated the following:

"Since the appearance in 1947 of Theory of Games and Economic Behavior by John Von Neumann and Oskar Morgenstern, the study of decision making, utility and individual choice theory has been a central topic of research in the social sciences, especially economics and psychology.  In this research community no one has had a longer and more distinguished career than Duncan Luce.  He started early with the publication of Games and Decisions in 1957, with Howard Raiffa, and then two years later, with the publication of Individual Choice Behavior.  The latter book especially established the framework for dozens of papers by Luce and his colleagues, as well as others, for several decades.

We now fast forward more than forty years to 2000, Luce continued his remarkable career of research with a new book, Utility of Gains and Losses:  Measurement-Theoretical and Experimental Approaches.  This book particularly displays his intellectual distinction in both mathematical theorizing and conducting relevant experiments to test the theory.   In the decade since the appearance of this book, Luce has produced a large body of new research.  The latest article, published in 2010, reflects the constancy and depth of his focus, as can be seen from the title "Behavioral Assumptions for a Class of Utility Theories: A Program of Experiments", that was published in the Journal of Risk and Uncertainty.  Moreover, there are five papers written in 2011, still under submission or subject to revision, on related topics."

Dr. Luce's honors include membership in the American Academy of Arts & Sciences and the National Academy of Sciences; the National Medal of Science; the American Psychological Foundation Gold Medal; the UCI Medal; the Ramsey Medal; the Norman Anderson Award; an honorary doctorate from the University of Waterloo. He has previously served on the faculties of Harvard University, the Institute for Advanced Study, and the University of Pennsylvania, all at the rank of professor or a name chair. He was elected a member of the American Philosophical Society in 1994.

Five years ago Patrick Suppes, the Lucie Stern Professor of Philosophy Emeritus at Stanford University and a member of this Society for more than twenty years now, established and funded a set of prizes to honor accomplishments in three very different and deeply significant scholarly fields that reflect the spectacular scope of his own interests.  The Patrick Suppes Prize will be awarded annually, with a cycle of three years rotating each of the three subject matter areas – a prize in Philosophy with special consideration for the Philosophy of Science, a prize in Psychology, and a prize in the History of Science.

The Patrick Suppes Prize Selection Committee consisted of Pat Suppes (chair), Willem J.M. Levelt, Former President of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences, Director Emeritus of the Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics, Special Max Planck Society Chair and Professor Emeritus of Psycholinguistics of Nijmegen University; and Richard M. Shiffrin, Distinguished Professor, Luther Dana Waterman Professor, Professor of Psychology and Cognitive Science, Indiana University.

2013 Spring General Meeting
Willem "Pim" J. M. Levelt

Willem J. M. Levelt’s A History of Psycholinguistics, The Pre-Chomskian Era is without question the most important and serious book yet written on the history of psycholinguistics prior to 1965. Levelt’s Part 2, entitled "Establishing the Discipline 1770 –1900," a detailed treatment of the many developments in the 19th century, is certainly the most important source in English for this century in which psycholinguistics, due primarily to the work of German scholars, became a scientific subject. Part 2 does not have a serious competitor in any language, certainly not in English. Part 3, entitled "Twentieth-Century Psycholinguistics Before the 'Cognitive Revolution'", has a similarly impressive and detailed history of the subject which changed so drastically in the period between 1900-1965. The treatment of Bloomfield’s work and his behaviorist heritage is especially impressive. But the account of this period is so rich and carefully done that readers will diverge in their choices of favorite theorists from Jean Piaget to Roman Jakobson. Levelt’s book is the kind of history that will be read and used for at least another half century, if not more.

Willem "Pim" J. M. Levelt is Founder and Director Emeritus of the Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics and Special Max Planck Society Chair and Emeritus Honorary Professor of Psycholinguistics at Nijmegen University, Amsterdam. His research and his strong intellectual leadership of the Max Planck Institute made it the leading center in the world for psycholinguistic research. He served as its Director 1980-2006. Levelt’s work on lexical access in speech production and related topics is outstanding. His 1989 book, Speaking, and his many research articles on all aspects of speech production have brought him recognition as one of the world’s leading psycholinguists. He has, in addition, played a broad and important role in the organization and development of Dutch social sciences. Recognition of this fact is evident in his election as President of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts & Sciences, which he served 2002-2005.

The Patrick Suppes Prize honors accomplishments in three very different and deeply significant scholarly fields, with the prize rotating each year between philosophy, psychology, and history of science. The Patrick Suppes Prize in the History of Science is awarded for an outstanding book in history of science appearing within the preceding six years. The works considered for the prize are restricted to works that emphasize detailed analysis of important systematic findings in any branch of science, ancient or modern using quantitative and mathematical methods. This is the first presentation of the history of science prize.

The selection committee for the history of science prize was Patrick Suppes, Lucie Stern Professor of Philosophy Emeritus, Stanford University; Anne Cutler, Research Professor, MARCS Institute, University of Western Sydney, Australia; Philip Johnson-Laird, Stuart Professor of Psychology Emeritus, Princeton University; and Richard Shiffrin, Distinguished Professor, Luther Dana Waterman Professor, Professor of Psychology and Cognitive Science, Indiana University.

2016 Spring General Meeting
Thomas E. Starzl

The recipient of the American Philosophical Society's 2016 Benjamin Franklin Medal for Distinguished Achievement in the Sciences is Thomas E. Starzl, Distinguished Service Professor at the University of Pittsburgh.

Tom Starzl has had an extraordinary career. He not only pioneered surgery for transplantation of the liver, he also developed a model of multivisceral transplantation (intestine, pancreas and other organs) that significantly lessens the rejection of the transplant. Perhaps his greatest discovery was in the use of the anticancer drug methotrexate and its derivative imuran to suppress rejection. At a 1963 conference organized by the National Research Council, he astounded the meeting with the news that his methods had produced an 80% one-year survival for kidney grafts when all others were achieving less than 10%. He later had even greater success with cyclosporine and other immunosuppressives. In large part due to his innovations, successful organ transplantation has now almost become commonplace. He is, by a wide margin, the most-cited scientist in medical research.

The citation for the medal is "Tom Starzl has transformed human organ transplantation from science fiction to reliable treatment of fatal diseases, virtually changing medical practice. Fifty years ago when the world had only a handful of surviving kidney transplant recipients he showed that rejection was reversible, allowing consistent success. His introduction of new immunosuppressive agents helped him to accomplish the first liver and multivisceral transplants. His studies explain liver regeneration and determine that this organ controls lipid metabolism. His discovery of persistent donor cell chimerism in successful recipients points the way to allograft tolerance without chronic immunosuppression. In recognition of his profound contributions the American Philosophical Society salutes Thomas E. Starzl by awarding him its highest honor."

Dr. Starzl earned his bachelor's degree in biology at Westminster College. At Northwestern University Medical School 1950 he received a master’s degree in anatomy in 1950 and in 1952 earned both a Ph.D. in neurophysiology and M.D. with distinction. He served on the faculty of Northwestern University from 1958 to 1961 and joined the University of Colorado School of Medicine as an associate professor in surgery in 1962. He was promoted to professor in 1964 and served as chairman of the department of surgery from 1972 to 1980. Dr. Starzl joined the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine as professor of surgery in 1981. Until 1991, he served as chief of transplantation services at Presbyterian University Hospital (now UPMC Presbyterian), Children’s Hospital of Pittsburgh and the Veterans Administration Hospital in Pittsburgh, overseeing the largest and busiest transplant program in the world. He then assumed the title of director of the University of Pittsburgh Transplantation Institute, a post that permitted his full attention to research. In 1996, the Institute was renamed in his honor. He now holds the title of director emeritus. He is the recipient of the Medawar Prize (1992), the National Medal of Science (2004), the Lasker Award for Clinical Science (2012), and the Anthony Cerami Award in Translational Medicine (2015). He was elected a member of the National Academy of Sciences in 2015. He was elected a member of the American Philosophical Society in 1999.

The Benjamin Franklin Medal was created in 1906 by the United States Congress to mark the two hundredth anniversary of the birth of Benjamin Franklin. The Benjamin Franklin Medal is the Society’s highest honor for lifetime achievement in the sciences.

The selection committee: President Clyde Barker, Executive Officer Keith Thomson, Class 1 Council members, Jerrold Meinwald, Stephen Benkovic, and Charles Slichter, and Class 2 Council members Jack Dixon, David Sabatini, and Lawrence Einhorn.