Two Cornellians have been elected to membership in the American Philosophical Society. Paul A. Marks, professor at the Weill Cornell Medical College and president emeritus of the Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, is a resident member in biological sciences. Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, M.A. '62, Ph.D. '67, is a resident member in humanities. He is the Avalon Foundation Professor in the Humanities at Columbia University.

Other new members elected April 27 include artist Jasper Johns and novelist Edgar Lawrence (E.L.) Doctorow. The American Philosophical Society, based in Philadelphia, is the oldest learned society in the United States, founded by Benjamin Franklin in 1743 for the purpose of "promoting useful knowledge." The society supports research, discovery and education through grants and fellowships, lectures, publications, prizes and exhibitions. Its membership has included George Washington, John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, Thomas Paine, John James Audubon, Charles Darwin, Thomas Edison, Louis Pasteur, Albert Einstein and Robert Frost. Since 1900, more than 260 members have received the Nobel Prize. For more information, see http://www.amphilsoc.org.