Donor Names Walkway Outside NAS Building to Honor Parents
Donor Story | Stephen Quake
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July 15, 2022 — As you walk up the stairs from Constitution Avenue to the NAS Building, you will notice a new plaque on the uppermost section of the walkway. Dr. Stephen Quake, an NAS, NAE, and NAM member, named this walkway section outside the NAS Building in honor of his parents, Ronald and Edith. "My parents were both first-generation college students and always emphasized the importance of school and higher education – which ultimately inspired me to pursue a career in science as a university professor."
Earlier this year, The National Academy of Sciences received a $250,000 gift from Dr. Stephen Quake to establish the Stephen R. Quake Fund. This fund will be used to support the mission of the NAS. "Supporting the NAS was an easy decision for me. The NAS stands for knowledge and the value of science, values which are embedded in our family."
Dr. Quake is one of only 25 individuals currently a member of all three Academies. He has received numerous awards for his inventions of measurement tools in biology. He was inducted into the National Academy of Medicine in 2012 and the National Academy of Sciences and National Academy of Engineering in 2013. Dr. Quake is currently the Lee Otterson Professor of Bioengineering and Professor of Applied Physics at Stanford University, the President of the Chan Zuckerberg Biohub Network, and the new Head of Science at the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative. He received a B.S. in Physics and M.S. in Mathematics from Stanford University in 1991 and a doctorate in Theoretical Physics from the University of Oxford in 1994, where he was a Marshall Scholar.
