Historic Fellows

AAAS Featured Fellow for July

Rosalind Cartwright (1922-2021)

Elected AAAS Fellow in 1978 (Section on Psychology)

This July, AAAS is honoring Dr. Rosalind Cartwright, a true titan in the field of sleep medicine and research.

Born in New York City in 1922, Rosalind, affectionately known as “Roz,” was the second youngest of four children to Henry and Stella Falk. Her mother was reportedly fascinated with the power of sleep and dreams which is likely where Dr. Cartwright’s interest in studying sleep began. In 1945, she received her Bachelor’s degree in Psychology at the University of Toronto and would continue on there to receive her Master’s the next year. Her PhD in Social Psychology would come from Cornell University in 1949. And after three years of teaching, she would go on to partner with Dr. Carl Rogers who at the time was beginning to conduct a new vein of research into client-focused psychotherapy — different from the prevailing psychoanalytic method at the time. 

Together, they wrote the book Psychotherapy and Personality Change (1954) leading to a transformation in the field of psychology in how it compared client-centered therapy to a control group with objective outcome measures. In 1962, she would then go on to start a lab at the University of Illinois College of Medicine in Chicago — shifting her studies to sleep analysis and focusing on the relationship between REM sleep and dreaming. Through a series of research studies, over nearly half a century, she would find (among other things) that “sleep is like a built-in physician and dreams an internal psychotherapist; that good sleep rests and restores our weary bodies and that good dreams temper our emotional responses to new experiences,” (found in Twenty-Four Hour Mind: The Role of Sleep and Dreaming in Our Emotional Lives by Dr. Cartwright, 2010).

Dr. Cartwright will be remembered for her extraordinary and groundbreaking work in sleep analysis and has been affectionately nicknamed as the “Queen of Dreams.” In a field dominated by men, she left her mark as a trailblazer for many women in the field, being the first woman on a NIMH study section and the first woman to receive the SRS Distinguished Scientist Award (2002).

Historic Fellows Listing

“Fellows shall be nominated ... from such of the members as are professionally engaged in science, or have by their labors aided in advancing science.”

AAAS Constitution
Adopted by the Standing Committee
12 August 1874

The American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) is proud to present a historic list of distinguished members elected to the status of Fellow from the honor’s inception to the present day. These individuals are recognized for their extraordinary achievements across disciplines, and AAAS commends their dedication and commitment. Election to Fellow is a lifetime honor.

This is a historic list, therefore each Fellow’s institution at the time of election will be noted (where the historic records do not provide an institution, we have included a geographic region), along with the disciplinary section through which they were nominated, and year of election. This is a static list and will only be modified once a year to include the most recent class of Fellows.

For a list of AAAS Fellows who have maintained active member status with the organization (and therefore may serve as a sponsor on a new Fellow nomination), please refer to the list found here.

For general information on nominating Fellows, please refer to this page.

Should you have any questions about this historic list, please email: governance@aaas.org