Dartmouth President Jim Yong Kim has been elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, a center for independent policy research that is one of the world’s most prestigious honorary societies. The academy celebrates the 230th anniversary of its founding this year.

The Cambridge, Mass.-based academy announced today that Kim is among 229 leaders in the sciences, the humanities and the arts, business, public affairs, and the nonprofit sector newly elected as Fellows or Foreign Honorary Members.

“The men and women we elect today are true pathbreakers who have made unique contributions to their fields, and to the world,” said Academy Chair Louis W. Cabot. “The Academy honors them and their work, and they, in turn, honor us.”

President Kim, M.D., Ph.D., took office as the 17th president of Dartmouth College on July 1, 2009. The first physician to serve as Dartmouth’s president, he also is an anthropologist who brings a passion for learning, innovation, and service to Dartmouth.

Kim is a co-founder of Partners in Health (PIH) and a former director of the Department of HIV/AIDS at the World Health Organization (WHO). He has dedicated himself to health and social justice work for more than two decades, helping to provide medical treatment to underserved populations worldwide. Kim embraces the charge of preparing a new generation of Dartmouth students to tackle the world’s most difficult problems.

Other newly inducted members of the Academy include U.S. Special Envoy to North Korea Stephen Bosworth, a 1961 Dartmouth graduate and chair of the Dartmouth Board of Trustees from 1996 to 1999; and U.S. Census Bureau Director Robert Groves, a member of the Class of 1970.

Previously elected Dartmouth members include President Emeritus James Wright, the late President James O. Freedman and the following faculty and alumni:Faculty members

• Robert J. Fogelin, Professor of Philosophy and the Sherman Fairchild Professor in the Humanities Emeritus
• Kenneth R. French, the Carl E. and Catherine M. Heidt Professor of Finance, Tuck School of Business
• Christian Wolff, Professor of Classics and the Strauss Professor of Music Emeritus

Alumni

• David Brion Davis ’50, Professor of History Emeritus, Yale University
• Owen M. Fiss ’59, Professor of Law, Yale University
• Lou Gerstner ’63, former IBM Chairman and CEO
• Jeffery Immelt ’78, GE President and CEO
• David M. Kreps ’72, Professor of Economics, Stanford Graduate School of Business
• C.C.Lamberg-Karlovsky ’59, Professor of Archaeology, Harvard Univerisity
• E. John Rosenwald ’52, Tuck ’53, Vice Chairman, JP Morgan
• K. Barry Sharpless ’63, Professor of Chemistry, Scripps Research Institute
• Samuel C. Silverstein ’58, Professor of Medicine, Columbia University
• Craig B. Thompson ’75 DMS ’75 Professor of Medicine and Cancer Biology, University of Pennsylvania
• James B. Thompson, Jr. ’42, Professor of Geology Emeritus, Harvard University

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Since its founding in 1780 by John Adams, James Bowdoin, John Hancock and other scholar-patriots, 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 winners of the Nobel, Pulitzer, and Shaw Prizes; MacArthur and Guggenheim fellows; and Grammy, Tony, and Oscar Award-winners.

The new class will be inducted at a ceremony on Oct. 9 at the Academy’s headquarters in Cambridge, Massachusetts.