Stanford University

News Service


NEWS RELEASE

5/16/00

Kathleen O'Toole, News Service (650) 725-1939; e-mail: kathleen.otoole@stanford.edu

Block elected to American Academy of Arts and Sciences

Steven M. Block, who joined the Stanford faculty in September as a professor in the departments of Applied Physics and Biological Sciences, recently was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. A May 3 Stanford Report story on six other Stanford faculty who were elected to the academy inadvertently excluded Block because the academy listed his affiliation as Princeton.

Formerly at Princeton, Block used optical tweezers ‚ lasers that cool and trap atoms ‚ to study the action of individual motor-protein molecules. He performed pioneering studies to elucidate the movement of kinesin, a microtubule protein, and RNA polymerase, an enzyme that reads the genetic code. The studies with kinesin were the first to discern the steps in its movement and to determine the forces that single kinesin molecules can generate.

The academy, which honors intellectual achievement in a wide variety of fields, selected 154 new members and 15 foreign honorary members from 89 institutions on April 15.

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