Trailblazing UVA environmental scientist James N. Galloway elected to American Academy of Arts & Sciences
Professor emeritus James N. Galloway, whose groundbreaking research on the human impacts on the global nitrogen cycle made him one of the world’s leading environmental scientists, has been elected to the American Academy of Arts & Sciences.
The prestigious honorary society and research center, whose founding dates to the American Revolution, introduced its new class of 252 members ranging across academia, the arts, journalism, philanthropy, policy, research and science on April 22.
Election to the Academy is considered one of the highest academic honors that a faculty member can attain.
“I am honored — and surprised —by my election to membership in the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. I am pleased with the recognition of the work of my colleagues and myself on the issues surrounding the human alteration of the global N cycle,” said Galloway, the Department of Environmental Sciences’ emeritus Sidman P. Poole Professor.
Edward H. Egelman, professor of biochemistry and molecular genetics at UVA’s School of Medicine, was also elected to the Academy.
Founded by John Adams and John Hancock, the Academy honors excellence across disciplines to examine new ideas, address issues of importance, and work together “to advance the interest, honor, dignity, and happiness of a free, independent, and virtuous people.”
Other luminaries elected over the centuries include Benjamin Franklin and Alexander Hamilton in the 18th century, Maria Mitchell and Charles Darwin in the 19th, Albert Einstein, Robert Frost, Margaret Mead and Martin Luther King, Jr., in the 20th, and Madeleine Albright, Anna Deveare Smith, Salman Rushdie and José Andrés this century.
Galloway and Egelman were joined in this year’s class by such leading figures as anthropologist John L. Jackson neurobiologist Doris Tsao, computer scientist and entrepreneur Shwetak Patel art critic and curator Nicole Fleetwood, novelists Barbara Kingsolver and Colson Whitehead, and actors Jodie Foster and Rita Moreno.
This is not the first prestigious academy recognition for Galloway, who joined UVA’s faculty in 1976. He was elected to the National Academy of Sciences, one of the highest honors for a scientist, in 2020 in recognition of his pioneering studies of acid rain in the 1970s and his continued work on human-generated reactive nitrogen in the environment. For more than 30 years, Galloway played an influential role in the study of acid rain’s effects on native brook trout in Virginia and the southern Appalachia.
In his most recent work, Galloway and his team of researchers examined how to maximize the use of nitrogen for food production and other beneficial purposes while minimizing its negative impacts on people and ecosystems. As explained by Galloway and his research colleagues, reactive nitrogen compounds don’t disappear. Some may emerge as smog-forming compounds, then are deposited in forest soils and groundwater as nitric acid before moving to the coast, where they create algae blooms and dead zones. The cycle continues with nitrogen’s return to the atmosphere in the form of nitrous oxide, a greenhouse gas.
He received the Tyler Prize for Environmental Achievement in 2008 for developing the concept of a “nitrogen cascade” to describe the cumulative impact of human-generated reactive nitrogen in the environment. That pioneering work led Galloway, with the assistance of then-graduate student Allison Leach, to persuade UVA’s Board of Visitors in 2013 to approve a plan to reduce the emissions of reactive nitrogen from campus activities 25 percent by 2025. (The goal was later revised by UVA to a 30 percent reduction by 2030).
Fast forward four years, and UVA went from being the first university in the world to calculate its “nitrogen footprint” to organizing a network of 20 higher education institutions in the United States and abroad. This network was designed to measure and attempt to reduce their output of reactive nitrogen that creates smog, acidifies water sources and weakens the upper-atmospheric ozone layer.
UVA’s work with seven other institutions to launch the Nitrogen Footprint Tool Network went on to establish nitrogen footprint models for more than 600 colleges and universities, in conjunction with a carbon footprint tool developed at the University of New Hampshire. It also began working with researchers internationally to create models for 10 countries, including Australia, Brazil, Canada, Denmark, Germany, Japan, The Netherlands, Tanzania and Ukraine.
“I am doubly pleased that this recognition by the American Academy of Arts & Sciences is not solely from a biogeochemical perspective, but also the human and social dimensions that are involved,” Galloway said. “This honor would not have happened without the support along the way that I have received from my family, my students, my colleagues, the Office for Sustainability, the Department of Environmental Sciences and the University overall,” Galloway said. “For this, I am extremely grateful.”