<p>The National Academy of Sciences has elected 72 new members. Among them are two scientists from Princeton, Bonnie Bassler and Lyman Page. Election to the National Academy of Sciences is one of the highest distinctions a researcher can receive.</p>
<p>Bonnie Bassler, professor of molecular biology, researches a phenomenon called "quorum sensing," a method that bacteria use for sensing how many other bacteria are in their vicinity. A better understanding of quorum sensing could help with the fight against diseases such as cholera, whose bacteria often grow virulent only when they have established a significant presence in their host. Bassler was awarded a 2002 MacArthur Fellowship and last year was chosen to be a young investigator by the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. </p>
<p>Lyman Page Jr., the Henry DeWolf Smyth Professor of Physics, measures variations in the cosmic microwave background -- the thermal afterglow of the big bang -- in order to understand how the universe evolved. Page is one of the original co-investigators of the Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP) satellite, a spacecraft that recently provided evidence for what happened in the universes first trillionth of a second.</p>
<p><a href="http://www4.nationalacademies.org/news.nsf/isbn/04252006?OpenDocument%5B/url%5D">http://www4.nationalacademies.org/news.nsf/isbn/04252006?OpenDocument</a>
<a href="http://www.princeton.edu/main/news/archive/S14/60/00S08/index.xml?section=announcements%5B/url%5D">http://www.princeton.edu/main/news/archive/S14/60/00S08/index.xml?section=announcements</a></p>
<p>With these two new members, Princeton now has 67 faculty members that have been elected to the National Academy of Sciences. This year the following schools had significant representation:</p>
<p>2006 New Members</p>
<p>6 Harvard
5 UC Berkeley
4 UC San Diego
3 MIT
3 Cal Tech
2 Princeton
2 U. of Chicago
(three other leading schools were represented by one each, Brown, Stanford and Yale)</p>
<p>Total Members From Leading Schools (including new members this year)</p>
<p>167 Harvard
133 UC Berkeley
121 Stanford
104 MIT
68 Cal Tech
67 Princeton
67 UC San Diego
62 Yale
42 U. of Chicago
39 Cornell
36 Columbia
34 U. of Pennsylvania
11 Brown
2 Dartmouth</p>
<p>Princetons case is interesting in that it has maintained such a high ranking without a medical school. If you remove the faculty members in the life sciences from these totals they look like this:</p>
<p>Total Members From Leading Schools (including new members this year) Omitting Those in the Life Sciences</p>
<p>98 UC Berkeley
87 Harvard
84 Stanford
72 MIT
59 Princeton
54 Cal Tech
36 UC San Diego
33 U. of Chicago
33 Yale
26 Columbia
24 Cornell
20 U. of Pennsylvania
8 Brown
1 Dartmouth</p>
<p>Removing the life science members of the National Academy reveals a different picture, with most of the leading schools grouped fairly close together.</p>