UO Law professor, president emeritus joins most accomplished scholars and practitioners worldwide
EUGENE, Ore. -- (Oct. 11, 2013) -- The American Academy of Arts & Sciences, one of the nation's oldest, and most prestigious, learned societies and independent policy research centers, has named University of Oregon law professor and president emeritus Dave Frohnmayer to its board of directors.
The academy's membership of 4,600 fellows and 600 foreign honorary members includes many of the most accomplished scholars and practitioners worldwide. Members contribute to academy publications and studies of science and technology policy, education, energy and global security, social policy and American institutions and the humanities.
"I am honored to share the responsibility to be a steward of the great legacy of this distinguished academy, and its heritage of cherishing knowledge," Frohnmayer said of this achievement. "I continue to be impressed by the distinction of the academy's membership and significant projects that it undertakes for the common good."
Frohnmayer was appointed president of the University of Oregon, the state's Association of American Universities flagship institution, on July 1, 1994. He retired from the post on June 30, 2009.
Frohnmayer formerly served as the School of Law dean from 1992 until he was named president of the university in 1994 , as Oregon's attorney general, as a member of the Oregon House of Representatives, and as a law professor and legal counsel to the president of the UO. As attorney general, he argued and won six of seven cases before the United States Supreme Court, the most cases and best record of any contemporary state attorney general.
Frohnmayer's appointment to the AAAS board will be made official during a ceremony on Oct. 12 at the academy's headquarters in Cambridge, Mass.
In Sept. 2013 he was named to the executive committee for The Lincoln Project, an initiative of the AAAS.
He will join UO archaeologist Jon Erlandson, who was named to the AAAS 2013 class earlier this year.
At the ceremony, Frohnmayer and Erlandson will be among such notables as Bruce A. Beutler, recipient of the 2011 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine; Lasker Award winner Jeffrey M. Friedman; psychologist Robert A. Bjork, who has made fundamental contributions to the science of learning and memory; anthropologist Kathryn Ann Woolard, who works on obsolescent languages and linguistic ideology; director and actor Robert De Niro; actress Sally Field; Pulitzer Prize-winning poets Annie Dillard and U.S. Poet Laureate Natasha Trethewey; musicians Pete Seeger and Bruce Springsteen; Presidential Medal of Freedom winner John Glenn; and former U.S. Sen. Richard Lugar.
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 Albert Einstein and Winston Churchill in the twentieth. The current membership includes more than 250 Nobel laureates and more than 60 Pulitzer Prize winners.
About Oregon Law
For more than 125 years, the University of Oregon School of Law has served the state, the nation and the world through a constantly renewed commitment to excellence in scholarship, classroom teaching and public service. Oregon Law is an American Bar Association accredited law school and the only public law school in the state of Oregon.
About the University of Oregon
The University of Oregon is among the 108 institutions chosen from 4,633 U.S. universities for top-tier designation of "Very High Research Activity" in the 2010 Carnegie Classification of Institutions of Higher Education. The UO also is one of two Pacific Northwest members of the Association of American Universities.
MEDIA CONTACTS: Ali Wayner, communications manager at Oregon Law, 541-346-7355 (office), 740-274-9838 (cell),
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