Professor David Steinmetz Joins Academy of Arts & Sciences
April 25, 2006
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Steinmetz |
This year’s group of 175 new fellows includes former Presidents George H.W. Bush and William Jefferson Clinton; Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts; Nobel Prize-winning biochemist and Rockefeller University President Sir Paul Nurse; and the chairman and vice chairman of the 9/11 commission, Thomas Kean and Lee Hamilton.
Fellows and foreign honorary members are nominated and elected to the academy by current members. A broad-based membership, including scholars and practitioners from mathematics, physics, biological sciences, social sciences, humanities and the arts, public affairs and business, enables the academy to conduct a wide range of interdisciplinary studies and public policy research.
“I am delighted that David Steinmetz’s extraordinary intellectual accomplishments have been recognized by the American Academy of Arts and Sciences,” said divinity school Dean L. Gregory Jones. “His scholarship in the history of Christianity, particularly on the history of biblical interpretation and the Reformation, has had a tremendous impact in higher education.”
Steinmetz, who came to Duke in 1971, is a specialist in the history of Christianity in the later Middle Ages and Reformation. In recent years he has concentrated on the history of biblical scholarship and learning in Europe from 1350 to 1600. He has been a visiting professor at Harvard University and at the University of Notre Dame as well as a Guggenheim Fellow at Cambridge University and a National Endowment for the Humanities Fellow at the Herzog August Bibliotek in Germany .
Steinmetz serves as the general editor of the series “Oxford Studies in Historical Theology,” and he recently edited a book titled “The Cambridge Companion to Reformation Theology.” He is a United Methodist minister in the North Carolina Annual Conference and a past president of the American Society of Church History. That society presented him with an award for career achievement in January.
Steinmetz said his election to the academy took him by surprise.
“No one has ever been elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences who was not surprised and profoundly grateful,” he said. “I am certainly no exception to that rule. It is a wonderful honor to be invited to join this distinguished company.”
The academy will welcome this year’s new class at its annual induction ceremony on Oct. 7, at the academy’s headquarters in Cambridge, Mass.
Founded in 1780 by John Adams, James Bowdoin, John Hancock and other scholar-patriots, the academy has elected such influential figures as George Washington, Ben Franklin, Daniel Webster, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Albert Einstein and Winston Churchill. The current membership includes more than 170 Nobel laureates and 50 Pulitzer Prize winners.
An independent policy research center, the academy undertakes studies of complex and emerging problems. Current research focuses on science and global security; social policy; the humanities and culture; and education.
Details about the academy and a complete list of this year’s fellows are available at the American Academy of Arts & Sciences.