On Thursday, March 27, the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) announced the 2024 class of AAAS Fellows including Lee Gettler, the Rev. John A. O’Brien College Professor of Anthropology in the College of Arts and Letters at the University of Notre Dame.

The 2024 class comprises 471 scientists, engineers and innovators across two dozen disciplines including anthropology, astronomy, biological sciences, chemistry, engineering and physics. AAAS is one of the world’s largest general scientific societies, and to be elected as a fellow is a lifetime honor.

“Professor Lee Gettler’s election to the American Association for the Advancement of Science is a well-deserved recognition of his superb scholarship and continued dedication to advancing our understanding of fatherhood, family dynamics and human development,” said John T. McGreevy, the Charles and Jill Fischer Provost. “We are proud to congratulate him as an alumnus and a member of Notre Dame’s distinguished faculty.”

Gettler was recognized for his distinguished contributions to the fields of biological anthropology and human biology, particularly in the areas of male physiology and the evolution of human fathering.

His research, which has been funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the Jacobs Foundation among others, has focused on how men’s hormone physiology responds to major life transitions, such as marriage and fatherhood, and how men’s hormones relate to their behavior as parents and partners. Gettler draws on this work to frame questions about fathers’ roles in the evolutionary past. He has expanded his research to include studying variation in family life, parents’ health and child physiology.

AAAS launched its lifetime fellowship recognition in 1874, about 25 years after the association was founded. This first cohort included Rev. Joseph Celestine Basile Carrier, C.S.C., who in 1865 became the first director of the newly established College of Science at the University of Notre Dame.

More on Gettler’s research:

There’s no ‘one size fits all’ when it comes to addressing men’s health issues globally

Family guy: Notre Dame anthropologist Lee Gettler broadens perspectives on fatherhood, raising healthy children

Multi-decade research links fathers’ testosterone production to their adolescent experiences with their own fathers

New study first to define link between testosterone and fathers’ social roles outside the family

Gettler is chair of the Department of Anthropology, director of Notre Dame’s Hormones, Health and Human Behavior Lab, and a faculty affiliate of the Eck Institute for Global Health and the William J. Shaw Center for Children and Families.

Contact: Tracy DeStazio, associate director of media relations, 574-631-9958 or tdestazi@nd.edu

Originally published by Jessica Sieff at news.nd.edu on March 27, 2025.