The William Dean Howells Medal is awarded by the American Academy of Arts and Letters. Established in 1925 and named for William Dean Howells, it is given once every five years, generally in recognition of the most distinguished American novel published during that period, although some awards have been made to novelists for their general body of work. The recipient of the award is chosen, by a committee drawn from the membership of the Academy, from among those candidates nominated by a member of the Academy.
Year | Author | Book |
---|---|---|
1925 | Mary E. Wilkins Freeman | |
1930 | Willa Cather | Death Comes for the Archbishop |
1935 | Pearl S. Buck | The Good Earth |
1940 | Ellen Glasgow | |
1945 | Booth Tarkington | |
1950 | William Faulkner | |
1955 | Eudora Welty | The Ponder Heart |
1960 | James Gould Cozzens | By Love Possessed |
1965 | John Cheever | The Wapshot Scandal |
1970 | William Styron | The Confessions of Nat Turner |
1975 | Thomas Pynchon (declined) | Gravity's Rainbow |
1980 | William Maxwell | So Long, See You Tomorrow |
1985 | No award | |
1990 | E. L. Doctorow | Billy Bathgate |
1995 | John Updike | Rabbit at Rest |
2000 | Don DeLillo | Underworld |
2005 | Shirley Hazzard | The Great Fire |
2010 | Peter Matthiessen | Shadow Country |
2015 | William H. Gass | Middle C |
2020 | Richard Powers | The Overstory |
Richard Powers is an American novelist whose works explore the effects of modern science and technology. His novel The Echo Maker won the 2006 National Book Award for Fiction. He has also won many other awards over the course of his career, including a MacArthur Fellowship. As of 2021, Powers has published thirteen novels and has taught at the University of Illinois and Stanford University. He won the 2019 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction for The Overstory.
Edgar Lawrence Doctorow was an American novelist, editor, and professor, best known for his works of historical fiction.
Eli Yablonovitch is an American physicist and engineer who, along with Sajeev John founded the field of photonic crystals in 1987. He and his team were the first to create a 3-dimensional structure that exhibited a full photonic bandgap, which has been named Yablonovite. In addition to pioneering photonic crystals, he was the first to recognize that a strained quantum-well laser has a significantly reduced threshold current compared to its unstrained counterpart. This is now employed in the majority of semiconductor lasers fabricated throughout the world. His seminal paper reporting inhibited spontaneous emission in photonic crystals is among the most highly cited papers in physics and engineering.
Maarten Schmidt is a Dutch-American astronomer who measured the distances of quasars.
The American Academy of Arts and Letters is a 300-member honor society whose goal is to "foster, assist, and sustain excellence" in American literature, music, and art. Its fixed number membership is elected for lifetime appointments. Its headquarters is in the Washington Heights neighborhood of Manhattan in New York City. It shares Audubon Terrace, a Beaux Arts/American Renaissance complex on Broadway between West 155th and 156th Streets, with the Hispanic Society of America and Boricua College.
William Keepers Maxwell Jr. was an American editor, novelist, short story writer, essayist, children's author, and memoirist. He served as a fiction editor at The New Yorker from 1936 to 1975. An editor devoted to his writers, Maxwell became a mentor and confidant to many authors.
William White Howells was a professor of anthropology at Harvard University.
Daniel Kleppner, born 1932, is the Lester Wolfe Professor Emeritus of Physics at MIT and co-director of the MIT-Harvard Center for Ultracold Atoms. His areas of science include Atomic, Molecular, and Optical Physics, and his research interests include Experimental Atomic Physics, Laser Spectroscopy, and High Precision Measurements. He is the winner of the 2005 Wolf Prize in Physics, the 2007 Frederic Ives Medal, and the 2014 Benjamin Franklin Medal. Prof. Kleppner has also been awarded the National Medal of Science (2006). He was elected the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1986, the French Academy of Sciences in 2004, and the American Philosophical Society in 2007. Together with Robert J. Kolenkow, he authored a popular introductory mechanics textbook for advanced students. Kleppner graduated from Williams College with a B.A. in 1953, Cambridge University with a B.A. in 1955, and Harvard University with a Ph.D. in 1959.
John Dombrowski Roberts was an American chemist. He made contributions to the integration of physical chemistry, spectroscopy, and organic chemistry for the understanding of chemical reaction rates. Another characteristic of Roberts' work was the early use of NMR, focusing on the concept of spin coupling.
John Mead Howells,, was an American architect.
Two American Academy of Arts and Letters Gold Medals are awarded each year by the academy for distinguished achievement. The two awards are taken in rotation from these categories:
Tod Williams Billie Tsien Architects are a husband-and-wife architectural firm founded in 1986, based in New York. Williams and Tsien began working together in 1977. Their studio focuses on work for institutions including museums, schools, and nonprofit organizations.
The UCLA College of Letters and Science is the arts and sciences college of the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). It encompasses the Life and Physical Sciences, Humanities, Social Sciences, Honors Program and other programs for both undergraduate and graduate students. It is often called UCLA College or the College, which is not ambiguous because the College is the only educational unit at UCLA to be currently denominated as a "college." All other educational units at UCLA are currently labeled as schools or institutes.
Daniel Aaron was an American writer and academic who helped found the Library of America.
Katepalli Raju Sreenivasan is an aerospace scientist, fluid dynamicist and applied physicist whose research includes physics and applied mathematics. He studies turbulence, nonlinear and statistical physics, astrophysical fluid mechanics, and cryogenic helium. He was the dean of engineering and executive vice provost for science and technology of New York University. Sreenivasan is also the Eugene Kleiner Professor for Innovation in Mechanical Engineering at New York University Tandon School of Engineering, and a professor of physics and mathematics professor at the New York University Graduate School of Arts and Science and Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences.
Judy Pfaff is an American artist known mainly for installation art and sculptures, though she also produces paintings and prints. Pfaff has received numerous awards for her work, including a John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation Fellowship in 2004 and grants from the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation (1983) and the National Endowment for the Arts. Major exhibitions of her work have been held at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, the Denver Art Museum and Saint Louis Art Museum. In 2013 she was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Video interviews can be found on Art 21, Miles McEnery Gallery, MoMa, Mount Holyoke College Art Museum and other sources.
So Long, See You Tomorrow is a novel by American author William Maxwell. It was first published in The New Yorker magazine in October 1979 in two parts. It was published as a book the following year by Alfred A. Knopf.
Geraldine Lee Richmond is an American chemist and physical chemist who is serving as the Under Secretary of Energy for Science in the US Department of Energy. Richmond was confirmed to her DOE role by the United States Senate on November 5, 2021. Richmond is the Presidential Chair in Science and Professor of Chemistry at the University of Oregon (UO). She conducts fundamental research to understand the chemistry and physics of complex surfaces and interfaces. These understandings are most relevant to energy production, atmospheric chemistry and remediation of the environment. Throughout her career she has worked to increase the number and success of women scientists in the U.S. and in many developing countries in Africa, Asia and South America. Richmond has served as president of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and she received the 2013 National Medal of Science.
Diana Harrison Wall is the Founding Director of the School of Global Environmental Sustainability, a Distinguished Biology Professor, and Senior Research Scientist at the Natural Resource Ecology Laboratory at Colorado State University. She is an environmental scientist and a soil ecologist and her research has focussed on the Antarctic McMurdo Dry Valleys. Wall investigates ecosystem processes, soil biodiversity and ecosystem services and she is interested in how these are impacted by global change. The Wall Valley was named after her in recognition of her research in the McMurdo Dry Valleys. Wall is a globally recognised leader and speaker on life in Antarctica and climate change.