ANN ABOR, Mich. ? Three University of Michigan professors have been elected as members of the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) for their excellence in original scientific research, the NAS announced Tuesday.

Membership in the NAS is one of the highest honors given to a scientist or engineer in the United States. Professors David Meyer (psychology), Alan Gibbard (philosophy) and Yu Xie (sociology) will be inducted into the Academy next April during its 147th annual meeting in Washington, D.C.

The three were elected along with 69 others, bringing the number of U-M faculty elected to NAS to 23. There are currently more than 2,000 active NAS members. Among the NAS’s renowned members are Albert Einstein, Robert Oppenheimer, Thomas Edison, Orville Wright, and Alexander Graham Bell. More than 180 living academy members have won Nobel Prizes.

More about this year’s U-M winners:

? David Meyer, a nationally renowned expert on multitasking, is director of the U-M Psychology Department?s Brain Cognition and Action Laboratory. His research describes how multitasking can be counterproductive. He has also dealt with fundamental aspects of human perception and other areas including attention, learning, memory, language, movement control, reaction time, executive mental control, mathematical models, and computational models.

? Alan Gibbard, U-M?s Richard B. Brandt Distinguished University Professor of Philosophy, specializes in ethical theory. The author of ?Wise Choices, Apt Feelings: A Theory of Normative Judgment? and ?Thinking How to Live,? he also has worked in normative ethics, in the theory of social choice (which straddles philosophy, economics, and political science), and to some degree in the philosophy of language and metaphysics. His current research centers on claims that the concept of meaning is a normative concept.

? Yu Xie, U-M?s Otis Dudley Duncan Distinguished University Professor of Sociology, has focused on statistical methods, demography and social stratification, along with the sociology of science. He is also affiliated with U-M?s Department of Statistics, the Population Studies Center, the Survey Research Center of the Institute for Social Research and the Center for Chinese Studies. With ISR support, Xie has established a Survey Methodology and Quantitative Analysis Laboratory at Peking University, bringing two of Michigan’s unique strengths in social science research to his native land.

The National Academy of Sciences is a private, nonprofit honorific society of distinguished scholars engaged in scientific and engineering research, dedicated to the furthering science and technology and to their use for the general welfare. Established in 1863, the National Academy of Sciences has served to “investigate, examine, experiment, and report upon any subject of science or art” whenever called upon to do so by any department of the government.

Full list of newly elected Academy membersGibbardMeyerXie