Two Duke Faculty Elected to the American Academy of Arts & Sciences

Duke professors William Darity, Jr. of the Sanford School of Public Policy and Jonathan Mattingly of the Trinity College of Arts & Sciences are among 250 newly elected members of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
Duke professors William Darity, Jr. of the Sanford School of Public Policy and Jonathan Mattingly of the Trinity College of Arts & Sciences are among 250 newly elected members of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

DURHAM, N.C. – Two Duke faculty are among nearly 250 leaders from academia, the arts, industry, policy, research and science elected to the American Academy of Arts & Sciences, one of the oldest learned societies in the United States.

William Darity, Jr. is the Samuel DuBois Cook Professor of Public Policy, African and African American Studies, and Economics and the director of the Samuel DuBois Cook Center on Social Equity at Duke. His research focuses on inequality by race, class and ethnicity, stratification economics, schooling and the racial achievement gap. He also studies North-South theories of trade and development, skin shade and labor market outcomes, the economics of reparations, the Atlantic slave trade and the Industrial Revolution, the history of economics, and the social psychological effects of exposure to unemployment.

Jonathan Mattingly is the Kimberly J. Jenkins Distinguished University Professor of New Technologies in the mathematics department at Duke. His work centers on models of phenomena where randomness plays a significant role, such as air turbulence or Monte Carlo algorithms for Bayesian sampling. He has also worked on biological problems related to cellular metabolism, infectious diseases, and coevolution. Generally, his work mixes theoretical, computational, and modeling aspects. Since 2013 he has also been working to understand and quantify gerrymandering, leading him to testify in a number of court cases involving congressional and legislative maps drawn after the last two censuses.

“These new members’ accomplishments speak volumes about the human capacity for discovery, creativity, leadership and persistence. They are a stellar testament to the power of knowledge to broaden our horizons and deepen our understanding,” said Academy President and former Dean of Trinity College of Arts & Sciences at Duke, Laurie Patton.

Since its founding in 1780, the academy has elected leading thinkers from each generation, including Benjamin Franklin and Alexander Hamilton in the 18th century, Ralph Waldo Emerson and Charles Darwin in the 19th century, and Albert Einstein and Margaret Mead in the 20th century. Duke President Vincent Price was elected in 2020. The current membership includes more than 250 Nobel laureates and more than 60 Pulitzer Prize winners.

Induction ceremonies for new members will take place in Cambridge, Mass., in October 2025.

See the Academy's full list of new members at www.amacad.org