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.

2011 Spring General Meeting
Arlin M. Adams

The American Philosophical Society awarded the 2011 Benjamin Franklin Medal for Distinguished Public Service to Arlin M. Adams. The citation inscribed on the framed certificate that accompanies the Franklin Medal reads “in recognition of contributions to public life reflecting the best skills a lawyer can possess: leader of the bar, distinguished judge, public policy advocate, settler of disputes, generous donor of time and talent. At the American Philosophical Society, a former president and much more. Pioneer of Head Start and other public welfare programs that have improved the lives of countless children. World War II veteran. Native son of Philadelphia who has given back to his city and state throughout a 64-year legal career. A model of fairness and negotiator extraordinaire, who brings adversaries to the table and persuades them to talk because they trust him.”  The award was presented by Linda Greenhouse, Joseph Goldstein Lecturer in Law at Yale Law School.

Arlin M. Adams has had a long and distinguished career of service in law and government, as well as to the American Philosophical Society.  A senior partner at Schnader, Harrison, Segal & Lewis since 1947, Adams took leave in 1963 to serve as the Secretary of Public Welfare for the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania under Governor Scranton for three years.  Many of his accomplishments for the Commonwealth became models for programs at the federal level.  He started the program that later became known as Head Start nationwide, made birth control available to people on welfare, adopted functional education programs for people on welfare, and started music and art programs for mentally handicapped children and adults.  In 1969 President Nixon appointed Adams to serve as Judge for the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit, where he served with great distinction for 17 years and was held in the highest esteem for his impartiality.  In 1990 he was appointed Independent Counsel for the investigation of the Department of Housing and Urban Development for profiteering and influence peddling inside HUD during the Reagan administration.  In 1996 he served as Trustee in the bankruptcy of the New Era Foundation, the largest bankruptcy of a non-profit organization to date.

Judge Adams was elected to the American Philosophical Society in 1979 and has served the Society in many capacities – the Class Committee, Bylaws Committee, Phillips Prize Selection Committee, 250th Anniversary Celebration Committee, Secretary, Vice President, President, and then continuing on the Finance Committee, Executive Committee, and Council.  Among his many contributions, as president Judge Adams was responsible for a concerted and organized effort to add women, minorities, under-represented fields, and international members to strengthen the membership of the Society by providing a structure to support this effort in the Society’s bylaws.

In 1906, the United States Congress authorized a commemorative medal to mark the two hundredth anniversary of the birth of Benjamin Franklin.  The medal was designed by Augustus and Louis St. Gaudens.  In 1987, the Society starting awarding the Benjamin Franklin Medal for Distinguished Public Service to honor exceptional contributions to the general welfare.

The selection committee for the Franklin Medal award consists of the Society’s president, executive officer, the three vice presidents, and the three Council members from Class 5: Baruch S. Blumberg, Mary Patterson McPherson, Clyde F. Barker, Harriet Zuckerman, John O’Malley, Joel E. Cohen, Linda Greenhouse, and Conrad K. Harper.

Spring General Meeting
Nancy J. Nersessian

The American Philosophical Society awarded the inaugural Patrick Suppes Prize in Philosophy to Dr. Nancy J. Nersessian in recognition of her book Creating Scientific Concepts. The award was presented by Patrick Suppes, Lucie Stern Professor of Philosophy Emeritus at Stanford University.

In 2005 Patrick Suppes, a member of this Society since 1991, 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.

Nancy Nersessian is the Regents’ Professor and Professor of Cognitive Science at Georgia Institute of Technology.  She received her Ph.D. in Philosophy from Case Western Reserve University. Her research focuses on creativity, innovation, and conceptual change in science.  To this end, she works to bring together methodologies and conceptual frameworks from cognitive science, philosophy of science, and history of science, exploring both the cognitive and cultural mechanisms that lead up to scientific innovation.

In her first book, Faraday to Einstein: Constructing Meaning in Scientific Theories (1984), she emphasized the need for a better way to talk about the meaning of scientific concepts, but did not take the step of introducing systematic ideas from cognitive science and developmental psychology to go deeper into the nature of conceptual change.  This she has done in her 2008 book, Creating Scientific Concepts.  Her analysis in this book of the complicated process Maxwell went through in finally moving away from a mechanical conception of electromagnetic phenomena to the discovery of his fundamental electromagnetic equations is probably the best work of this kind to be found in the recent literature.  Dr. Nersessian’s work in this field draws from an incredible array of sources, from concepts and analyses in cognitive science to the extensive body of literature on scientific practices available in the social science field, and from her own theoretical analysis of problems to empirical data including historical documents and interviews with scholars.

The selection of the recipient was made by Pat Suppes in consultation with Jordi Cat, professor of philosophy of science at Indiana University; Thomas Ryckman, professor of philosophy of science at Stanford University; Michael Friedman, professor of philosophy of science at Stanford University; Helen Longino, a well-known philosopher of science and current chairman of the department at Stanford; George Smith, professor of philosophy at Tufts University; and Nancy Cartwright, professor of philosophy at the London School of Economics.

Spring General Meeting
William L. Harper

The American Philosophical Society is pleased to announce the recipient of the 2014 Patrick Suppes Prize in Philosophy of Science is William L. Harper in recognition of his book Isaac Newton's Scientific Method: Turning Data into Evidence about Gravity and Cosmology published in 2012 by Oxford University Press. William L. Harper is Professor Emeritus at the University of Western Ontario, where he has taught since 1970. From 2002 to 2005 he served as President of the Canadian Society for History and Philosophy of Science. The prize was awarded to Professor Harper at the American Philosophical Society’s annual Spring Meeting in Philadelphia on April 25, 2014.

The unique and important contribution to the study of Newton’s work by Harper is the emphasis on the rich interaction between theory and data used by Newton. Harper emphasizes that Newton’s gravitational theory did not simply lead to more accurate predictions than those of Kepler, Ptolemy, and others. In the hands of Newton, what came to the fore was a continual interaction between new data and new theoretical estimation of parameters based on the new data. This method led to an increasingly accurate theory of the motion of the solar system. The thoroughness of Newton’s work has perhaps never been so philosophically appreciated as in Harper’s book. It is a triumph of quantitative analysis moving back and forth from theory to data. It is hard to think of another example in the philosophy of science that matches the wealth of detail and results given by Harper, and is certainly the case that modern mathematical statistical methods have never before been so thoroughly applied to Newton’s celestial mechanics and the data supporting it.

The Patrick Suppes Prize honors accomplishments in three very different and deeply significant scholarly fields, with the prize rotating each year between philosophy of science, psychology, and history of science. The Patrick Suppes Prize in Philosophy of Science is awarded for an outstanding book in philosophy of science appearing within the preceding six years.

Chaired by Patrick Suppes, the selection committee members were all senior philosophers of science: Jeffrey Barrett, University of California, Irvine; Nancy Cartwright, Durham University; John Dupre, University of Exeter; Arthur Fine, University of Washington; Maria Carla Galavotti, University of Bologna; Stephan Hartmann, Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München; Helen Longino, Stanford University; Elliott Sober, University of Wisconsin; Bas vas Fraassen, Princeton University; and Michael Weisberg, University of Pennsylvania.

Spring General Meeting
Cass R. Sunstein

The 2007 recipient of the American Philosophical Society's Henry M. Phillips Prize in Jurisprudence is awarded to Cass R. Sunstein. The prize citation reads, "In recognition of his intellectual leadership in Constitutional Law and Political Science, including in particular his profound research and writing demonstrating the complex interplay between jurisprudential constructs and the day by day resolution of legal conflicts." In a recent illustrative article, he demonstrates how judges who embraced the judicial philosophy known as legal realism applied that philosophy in their review of day by day rule making by administrative agencies under the so-called Chevron doctrine.

Cass R. Sunstein is the Karl N. Lllewellyn Distinguished Professor of Jurisprudence at the University of Chicago Law School and in the Department of Political Science at the University of Chicago. He is a graduate of Harvard College and its Law School, magna cum laude. He is the author of more than 25 books and of an impressively large number of articles and essays. His books include After the Rights Revolution: Reconceiving the Regulatory State (1990), Constitutional Law, with Geoffrey Stone, Louis M. Seidman, and Mark Tushnet (1995), The Partial Constitution (1993), Democracy and the Problem of Free Speech (1993), Legal Reasoning and Political Conflict (1996), Free Markets and Social Justice (1997), Administrative Law and Regulatory Policy, with Justice Stephen Breyer, Professor Richard Stewart and Matthew Spitzer (1998), One Case At A Time (1999), Designing Democracy: What Constitutions Do (2001), Republic.com (2001), Risk and Reason (2002), The Cost-Benefit State (2002), Punitive Damages: How Juries Decide (2002), Why Societies Need Dissent (2003), The Second Bill of Rights (2004), and Laws of Fear: Beyond the Precautionary Principle (2005).

The Henry M. Phillips Prize recognizes outstanding lifetime contributions to the field of jurisprudence and the important publications which illustrate that accomplishment. It was established in 1888 by a gift from his sister to be used as an award to honor "real merit on the science and philosophy of jurisprudence."

The selection committee consisted of chairman Ellen Ash Peters, Judge Trial Referee and former Chief Justice of the Connecticut Supreme Court; Guido Calabresi, Circuit Judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit and former Dean of Yale University Law School; William T. Coleman, Jr., Senior Partner & The Senior Counselor at O'Melveny & Myers; Herma Hill Kay, Barbara Nachtrieb Armstrong Professor of Law at the University of California, Berkeley, School of Law; and Louis H. Pollak, Judge of the United States District Court, Eastern District of Pennsylvania.

Spring General Meeting
Martha Craven Nussbaum

The American Philosophical Society awarded the 2009 Henry M. Phillips Prize in Jurisprudence to Martha Craven Nussbaum. The citation read “in recognition of her intellectual leadership in philosophy, law and religion, including in particular her development and application of a "capabilities approach" to justice in a variety of contexts including women's rights in developing countries and worldwide, rights of the disabled and the impaired, and rights of animal species.” The award was presented by Ellen Ash Peters, Judge Trial Referee of the Connecticut Appellate Court and Former Chief Justice of the Connecticut Supreme Court, and a member of the Henry M. Phillips Prize selection committee.

The Henry M. Phillips Prize recognizes outstanding lifetime contributions to the field of jurisprudence and the important publications which illustrate that accomplishment. It was established in 1888 by a gift from his sister to be used as an award to honor "real merit on the science and philosophy of jurisprudence."

Martha Nussbaum is the Ernst Freund Distinguished Service Professor of Law and Ethics in the Law School, the Philosophy Department, and the Divinity School at the University of Chicago. She received her Ph.D. at Harvard University, and has taught at Harvard, Brown, and Oxford Universities. In the past thirty years, Professor Nussbaum has published fourteen books – four have won national prizes – and edited thirteen others. She has explored such diverse themes as the vulnerability of human development (The Fragility of Goodness, 1986); the breadth of the concept of social justice (Sex and Social Justice, 1999); the proposition that development goals must take account of human capabilities (Women and Human Development, 2000), and most recently, the distinctively American tradition of religious equality ( Liberty of Conscience, 2008). Although she shows no signs of slowing down – she currently holds contracts for at least three other books – she has established herself as one of the most influential and distinguished scholars of her generation.

The selection committee consisted of Herma Hill Kay (chairman), Barbara Nachtrieb Armstrong Professor of Law and Former Dean of the School of Law at the University of California, Berkeley; William T. Coleman, Jr., Senior Partner & The Senior Counselor at O'Melveny & Myers; Ellen Ash Peters, Judge Trial Referee of the Connecticut Appellate Court and former Chief Justice of the Connecticut Supreme Court; and Louis Pollak, Judge, U.S. District Court, Eastern District of Pennsylvania.