Eleven Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI) scientists are among 197 new fellows and 16 foreign honorary members elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

Membership in the American Academy honors individuals who have made prominent contributions to society and to their disciplines, which include mathematics, physics, biological sciences, social sciences, humanities and the arts, public affairs and business. The Academy’s broad-based membership gives it a unique capacity to conduct a wide range of interdisciplinary studies and public policy research.

This year’s new fellows and foreign honorary members include scholars, scientists, writers, artists, and civic, corporate, and philanthropic leaders from 11 countries. The Academy will welcome this year’s new class at its annual induction ceremony on October 10, 2015, at its headquarters in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Since its founding in 1780, the Academy has elected leading “thinkers and doers” from each generation, including George Washington and Benjamin Franklin in the eighteenth century, Daniel Webster and Ralph Waldo Emerson in the nineteenth, and Margaret Mead and Martin Luther King, Jr. in the twentieth. The current membership includes more than 250 Nobel laureates and more than 60 Pulitzer Prize winners.

The newly elected members are: