Gary A. Anderson, the Hesburgh Professor of Catholic Thought at the University of Notre Dame, has been awarded a 2024 Barry Prize for Distinguished Intellectual Achievement from the American Academy of Sciences and Letters. The academy conferred the prize Wednesday (Oct. 23) in a ceremony at the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C.

Three other Notre Dame faculty were also invested as members of the academy: Paolo Carozza, a professor of law and concurrent professor of political science; Richard Garnett, the Paul J. Schierl/Fort Howard Corporation Professor of Law and a concurrent professor of political science; and Christian Smith, the William R. Kenan Jr. Professor of Sociology.

In becoming academy members, the honorees join prestigious fellow members including Salman Rushdie, Jay Bhattacharya, Jonathan Haidt, Steven Koonin, Henry Louis Gates Jr., Steven Pinker, Niall Ferguson, Nicholas Christakis, Akhil Reed Amar and two Nobel laureate scientists — chemist Arieh Warshel and biochemist Jennifer Doudna.

The Barry Prize for Distinguished Intellectual Achievement, open to scholars across diverse fields and disciplines, honors “those whose work has made outstanding contributions to humanity’s knowledge, appreciation, and cultivation of the good, the true and the beautiful.” Recipients are also inducted into the academy.

“It is a great honor, of course, to receive this sort of recognition about one’s academic work,” Anderson said. “I still find myself a bit in shock to be listed among such leaders in their respective fields. I am humbled to have been chosen.”

Anderson, who joined Notre Dame’s Department of Theology in 2003, focuses his research on the religion and literature of the Old Testament/Hebrew Bible, with special interest in the reception of the Bible in Judaism and Christianity. According to the prize citation, he was recognized for his contributions to humanity’s understanding of one of its oldest and most influential sacred traditions.

Contact: Carrie Gates, associate director of media relations, 574-993-9220 or c.gates@nd.edu

“By his thorough exploration of the theology of the Hebrew Bible and its relationships to later traditions, Gary Anderson has illuminated some of history’s most influential metaphysical and moral ideas, as well as contributing to interfaith understanding,” the citation stated. “His work explores both continuity and changes over the millennia in our understanding of such concepts as compassion for the poor, good and evil, atonement, reconciliation and our existence.”

Contact: Carrie Gates, associate director of media relations, 574-993-9220 or c.gates@nd.edu