Nicholas Canny, Professor of History and Academic Director of the Moore Institute at NUI Galway has been elected to the prestigious American Philosophical Society, becoming only the third Irish member of this generation to become a member of this, the oldest learned society in North America.

Professor Canny, who is also the University's current Vice President for Research, was accorded this honour in recognition of his achievements as an original and innovative historian and of his advocacy of the importance of scholarship in the Humanities to the University and to Citizenship.

His election, among the maximum of eight international members chosen in 2007, sees him join Nobel Laureate Seamus Heaney and Thomas Mitchell, former provost of Trinity College Dublin, as fellow members of the Society.

NUI Galway President Dr Iognáid Ó Muircheartaigh, in extending his congratulations to Prof. Canny, said that this was "indeed a signal honour, recognising, as it does an outstanding scholar, whose contribution to research in the humanities is immense. On behalf of the University, I would like to pay tribute to Prof. Canny, an esteemed and long-standing member of NUI Galway s faculty, as he receives this prestigious honour from his peers."

The American Philosophical Society was founded by Benjamin Franklin in 1743 and since then has promoted useful knowledge in all branches of Science, the Arts, Social Science and the Humanities. Thomas Jefferson was one of its first Presidents, and that position is currently held by Baruch S. Blumberg, winner of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine 1976. The Society currently has an enrolment of 804 resident and 156 foreign members, of whom close to 100 are Nobel Prize winners.

The Society supports research through a program of grants, publishes scholarly books and journals and maintains a library singularly rich in material in the history of science and technology.