Durham, N.C. - Duke University Professor Arlie O. Petters will be inducted Feb. 13 into "A Portrait Collection of The National Academies of African-Americans in Science, Engineering, and Medicine."

Each year, the National Academy of Sciences' committee on African-American History adds photographs of notable black researchers to the collection. This year portraits of Petters and neurosurgeon Alexa Canady, M.D., will be added to the collection at a ceremony Monday, Feb. 13, from 10:30 a.m. to 1:30 p.m. at the National Academies building, 2100 C Street, NW. Program details are available here.

Petters, with appointments in mathematics and physics, has pioneered applications of gravitational lensing in physics, predicting effects that probe the nature of spacetime around black holes and developing tests for theories of gravity such as Einstein's general relativity.

Petters' award will be recognized at Duke during the Samuel DuBois Cook Society Colloquium on "The Underrepresented Majority in Math, Science and Engineering." The event, free and open to the public, is on Wednesday, Feb. 22, 1-5 p.m. at Griffith Film Theater in the Bryan Center.