John F. McDonnell, a member of The Boeing Company's board of directors and retired chairman of the McDonnell Douglas Corporation, was inducted Saturday into the American Academy of Arts and Sciences at the academy's headquarters in Cambridge, Mass. He is one of 178 new Fellows and 24 new Foreign Honorary Members elected this year to the academy.
Founded in 1780 by John Adams, James Bowdoin and John Hancock, the academy is the nation's oldest learned society. George Washington, Benjamin Franklin, Daniel Webster, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Albert Einstein and Winston Churchill are among the academy's past Fellows and Foreign Honorary Members.
"I am deeply honored to have been chosen to join such an illustrious and influential organization, and I look forward with great enthusiasm to contributing what I can to the organization's programs," McDonnell said on joining the academy.
The academy sponsors interdisciplinary studies of international security, social policy, education and the humanities, drawing on the wide range of academic and intellectual disciplines of its more than 4,500 members, including more than 150 Nobel laureates and 50 Pulitzer Prize winners.
"We are very excited to add 202 outstanding men and women to the academy's membership roster," said Leslie C. Berlowitz, the academy's executive officer. "This year's distinguished group represents world-renowned leaders in scholarship, business, the arts and public affairs. I'm confident they will continue the academy's long tradition of nurturing and cherishing knowledge in service of society," Berlowitz said.
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