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Two University professors have been elected to membership in the National
Academy of Sciences (NAS), one of the highest honors that can be accorded an
American scientist or engineer.
Maurice S. Brookhart, Kenan professor of chemistry, and Frederick P. Brooks
Jr., Kenan professor of computer science, were among the 72 new members
accepted by NAS at the organization's annual meeting in Washington, D.C. May 1.
That brings to 10 the number of Carolina faculty who are NAS members.
Brooks
Brooks, a pioneer in the field of virtual reality and computer graphics,
had a distinguished career at IBM before joining the faculty and founding the
computer science department in 1964. At IBM, he led the development of the
revolutionary System/360 compatible family of computers and its Operating
System/360 software, which provided the lowercase alphabet and enabled word
processing. He was also an architect of the IBM Stretch and Harvest
high-performance computers. He shared one of the inaugural National Medals of
Technology, presented by President Ronald Reagan, and in 1999, he won the
Association of Computing Machinery's Alan M. Turing Award, the highest award in
computing.
At Carolina, Brooks has specialized in real-time, three-dimension computer
graphics or "virtual environments." He pioneered the use of force-feedback
display, with which humans can manipulate and feel a virtual environment, to
supplement visual graphics. He has a Ph.D. in computer science from Harvard
University.
Brookhart
Brookhart has been a member of the Carolina faculty since 1969. His
research spans mechanistic, synthetic and structural organometallic chemistry
and has led to the development of catalysts for making polymers and plastics.
He has served as associate editor of the journal Organometallics
(1990-1996). He received the 1992 American Chemical Society Award in
Organometallic Chemistry and a 1994 ACS Cope Scholar Award. He has a Ph.D. in
physical organic chemistry from the University of California in Los Angeles.
The National Academy of Sciences is a private organization of scientists and
engineers dedicated to the furtherance of science and its use for the general
welfare. It was established in 1863 by a congressional act of incorporation,
signed by President Abraham Lincoln, that calls on the Academy to act as an
official adviser to the federal government, upon request, in any matter of
science or technology.
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