Two on faculty elected to Philosophical Society

They are among 41 scholars to be elected this year to the society, which was founded by Benjamin Franklin in 1743 and is the oldest learned society in the United States. The society currently has 779 elected members, including 24 University faculty members. Since 1901, more than 200 members have received the Nobel Prize.

Kadanoff, the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Distinguished Service Professor in Physics and Mathematics, has been lauded for his work on phase transitions and on chaotic behavior in fluids. He received the Buckley Prize from the American Physical Society in 1977, the Wolf Prize in physics in 1980, the Elliot Cresson Medal from the Franklin Institute in 1986, and the Boltzmann Medal from the International Union of Physics and Applied Physics in 1989.

He studied at Harvard, receiving his A.B. in 1957, his M.A. in 1958 and his Ph.D. in 1960 at age 23. He taught at Brown and the University of Illinois before joining the Chicago faculty in 1978.

Kadanoff is a fellow of the American Physical Society, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the American Association for the Advancement of Science. He is a member of the National Academy of Sciences. He was awarded the Quantrell Award for Excellence in Undergraduate Teaching in 1990. From 1981 to 1984 and again from 1994 to 1997, he was Director of the University's Materials Research Science & Engineering Center.

Lucas, the John Dewey Distinguished Service Professor in Economics, is a key figure in the development of the theory of rational expectations. His work has shown that because people make rational decisions about their economic welfare, their actions can alter the expected results of government economic policies. In 1995, he received the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences.

Among his books are Rational Expectations and Econometric Practice (1981), which he co-edited with Thomas Sargent, the David A. Rockefeller Professor in Economics; Studies in Business-Cycle Theory (1981); Models of Business Cycles (1985); and Recursive Methods in Economic Dynamics, which he published in 1989 with Edward Prescott and Nancy Stokey, the Frederick Henry Price Professor in Economics.

Lucas received his A.B. in history in 1959 and his Ph.D. in economics in 1964, both from the University. He taught at Carnegie Mellon University before joining the Chicago faculty in 1975.

He was Chairman of Economics from 1986 to 1988 and is the current Chairman of the Undergraduate Program in Economics. He has been vice president of the American Economic Association since 1987. Lucas is a member of the National Academy of Sciences and a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the Econometric Society. He is the editor of the Journal of Political Economy.