ATLANTA (May 15, 2006)--Nancy Nersessian, professor of cognitive science at the College of Computing at Georgia Tech, has recently been elected a foreign member of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences. With this appointment, the Royal Academy recognizes Nersessian’s outstanding scientific achievements in the area of Cognitive Science and her ongoing efforts to further the development and impact of this interdisciplinary field.

Nersessian is also recognized for her penetrating cognitive-historical analysis of the transition from classical to modern physics in the late 19th and early 20th century, a period during which Dutch physicists such as Lorentz, Zeeman, Van der Waals and Kamerlingh Onnes—all of them Nobel laureates—played a formidable role.

The Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and sciences was established in 1808 and presently comprises a total of 200 active ordinary members, as well as approximately 250 emeritus members, 70 corresponding members and 140 foreign members. Among the latter, are such renowned scientists as computer scientist Fredrick Brooks (North Carolina), physiologist Colin Blakemore (Oxford), astronomer Martin Rees (Cambridge), anthropologist Claude Lévi-Strauss (Paris), psychologist George Miller (Princeton), psycholinguist Eve Clark (Stanford) and philosopher of science Bas van Fraassen (Princeton).

For more information about the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences, click here. (English translation tab is at top-right)