Ohio State University: The seal of The Ohio State University on the Oval

The American Academy of Arts and Sciences announced the election of its new members for 2021, which includes two faculty members from The Ohio State University College of Arts and Sciences: Fritz Graf, Distinguished University Professor in the Department of Classics, and Stewart Shapiro, the Steve R. and Sarah E. O’Donnell Professor of Philosophy.

“Being elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences is one of the highest honors that a scholar can receive from their peers,” said Gretchen Ritter, executive dean and vice provost of the College of Arts and Sciences. “This is a mark of distinction for Fritz and Stewart and for the impact of humanities scholarship at Ohio State.”

Fritz Graf
Graf, also the director of epigraphy for the Center for Epigraphical and Palaeographical Studies, is a world-renowned expert in the areas of Greek epigraphy, philology and literature, ancient religions and mythologies, and Greco-Roman antiquity. The impact of his scholarship has reverberated across the fields of classical philology and ancient history.

Graf’s written works have been translated into several languages and include Greek Mythology: An Introduction; Apollo; and Ritual Texts for the Afterlife: The Bacchic Gold Tablets. His latest book, Roman Festivals in the Greek East, studies the development of ancient festival culture in the Greek East of the Roman Empire, shedding light on the fundamental religious changes that occurred.

In 2018, Graf was awarded an honorary degree from the University of Fribourg in Switzerland, which recognized a “scholarly career that transcends the conventional borders of epochs and disciplines.” Graf has been on the Ohio State faculty since 2002 and served on the Senate Committee on Library and Technology, chaired the Department of Greek and Latin (now the Department of Classics), and was a board member of The Ohio State University Press. He earned his MA and PhD from the University of Zurich.

Stewart Shapiro
Shapiro is a leading figure in the philosophy of mathematics whose areas of expertise lie at the intersection of philosophical logic, philosophy of language and vagueness. His research explores the structuralist philosophy of mathematics, the historical development of logic and relationships between modality and ontology in mathematics.

Shapiro’s publications include Vagueness in Context; Thinking About Mathematics: The Philosophy of Mathematics; Philosophy of Mathematics: Structure and Ontology; and Foundations Without Foundationalism: A Case for Second-Order Logic. His most recent work, Varieties of Logic, challenges the philosophy that logic is absolutely general and explores various dynamics of pluralism and relativism.

Shapiro earned his MA in mathematics and PhD in philosophy from the State University of New York at Buffalo, where in 2018 he was honored as a distinguished alumnus of its Department of Philosophy.

Graf and Shapiro join 250 other scholars, scientists and artists inducted this year into the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Other notable additions include media entrepreneur and philanthropist Oprah Winfrey, neurosurgeon and medical correspondent Sanjay Gupta of CNN, journalist Mario Hinojosa of Futuro Media Group and NPR, and atmospheric scientist Anne Thompson of NASA and the Goddard Space Flight Center.

“We are honoring the excellence of these individuals, celebrating what they have achieved so far, and imagining what they will continue to accomplish,” said David Oxtoby, president of the American Academy. “The past year has been replete with evidence of how things can get worse; this is an opportunity to illuminate the importance of art, ideas, knowledge and leadership that can make a better world.”