August 3, 2009 - President Obama last week named 16 recipients of the 2009 Presidential Medal of Freedom, including Janet Davison Rowley, a member of the National Academy of Sciences and Institute of Medicine, and Stephen Hawking, an NAS foreign associate. The medal, which was awarded at a ceremony on Aug. 12, is the United States' highest civilian honor.

Janet Davison Rowley is the Blum Riese Distinguished Service Professor of Medicine, Molecular Genetics and Cell Biology, and Human Genetics at the University of Chicago, and is internationally renowned for her studies of chromosome abnormalities in leukemia and lymphoma. She was elected to the NAS in 1984 and to the IOM in 1985. She previously received the National Medal of Science.

Stephen Hawking, a theoretical physicist and author of the international bestseller A Brief History of Time, is the Lucasian Professor of Mathematics at Cambridge University. He is well-known for his contributions to the understanding of the nature of singularities in Einstein's general relativity, the theoretical characterization of black holes, pioneering investigations into the origin of the universe, and the discovery of the quantum radiation from black holes which was named "Hawking radiation" in his honor. He was elected a foreign associate of the NAS in 1992.