Mahadevan elected to American Academy of Arts & Sciences

L Mahadevan, Lola England de Valpine Professor of Applied Mathematics at the Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS), and Professor of Organismic and Evolutionary Biology, and of Physics (FAS), has been elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He is among 269 new members this year, including 17 Harvard faculty.

“With the election of these members, the Academy is honoring excellence, innovation, and leadership and recognizing a broad array of stellar accomplishments,” said David Oxtoby, President of the American Academy. “We hope every new member celebrates this achievement and joins our work advancing the common good.”

Mahadevan seeks to understand motion and matter at the human scale integrating the physical and biological sciences, mathematics and engineering, using experiments, theory and computation. Recent work includes elucidating the biophysical principles underlying the morphogenesis of organs and organisms, the cognitive dynamics of embodied intelligence in social insects, and the mathematical physics underlying art forms such as origami and kirigami, and musical instruments such as musical saws and steelpan drums. He is a MacArthur Fellow and a Fellow of the Royal Society of London.

Since 2017, Mahadevan and his spouse Amala have been the Faculty Deans of Mather House, where they live and learn in a community of more than 400 students and staff. 

Founded in 1780, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences is both an honorary society that recognizes and celebrates the excellence of its members and an independent research center convening leaders from across disciplines, professions, and perspectives to address significant challenges.