Science, Environment and Development Group

Home | The Group | Collaborations | Events | Documents | Links | Sponsors | Stay Informed | Search | Contact | Private

Back to main page for Knowledge for Development Research Seminar

Thursday, 13 November 2003
Energy Technology Innovation for Sustainable Development
John Holdren, Teresa and John Heinz Professor of Environmental Policy, Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University
11:45 am - 2:00 pm, Perkins Room (E-415), 4th Floor, Eliot Building, KSG (Map)
Lunch will be served

Biography:

John P. Holdren is the Teresa and John Heinz Professor of Environmental Policy and Director of the Program on Science, Technology, and Public Policy in the John F. Kennedy School of Government, and Professor of Environmental Science and Public Policy in the Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences, at Harvard University. He is also a member of the Board of Tutors for Harvard's undergraduate major in Environmental Science and Public Policy; Distinguished Visiting Scientist and Vice Chair of the Board of Trustees at the Woods Hole Research Center; and Professor Emeritus of Energy and Resources at the University of California, Berkeley (where he was co-founder in 1973 of the campus-wide, interdisciplinary, graduate-degree program in Energy and Resources in which he served variously as Vice Chair, Chair, and Chair of Graduate Advisors until 1996).

He is Chair of the Committee on International Security and Arms Control of the National Academy of Sciences, a member of the Board of Directors of the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, and was a member from 1994 to 2001 of President Clinton's Committee of Advisors on Science and Technology (PCAST). He chaired PCAST panels on protection of nuclear-bomb-materials (1995), the U.S. fusion-energy R&D program (1995), U.S. energy R&D strategy (1997), and international cooperation on energy (1999); and in 1996-7 he co-chaired with E.Velikhov the U.S.-Russian Independent Scientific Commission on Plutonium Disposition (reporting to Presidents Clinton and Yeltsin). He also chairs National Academy panels on the spent-fuel standard for plutonium disposition, on technical issues related to the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, and on US-India energy cooperation, and US-Russia cooperation on nuclear nonproliferation and counter-terrorism.

He is the author of about 300 articles and reports on plasma physics, fusion energy technology, energy and resource options in industrial and developing countries, global environmental problems, impacts of population growth, and international security and arms control, and he has co-authored and co-edited fourteen books on these topics - including Energy (1971), Human Ecology (1973), Ecoscience (1977), Energy in Transition (1980), Earth and the Human Future (1986), Strategic Defences and the Future of the Arms Race (1987), Building Global Security Through Cooperation (1990), Management and Disposition of Excess Weapons Plutonium (2 vols., 1994 & 1995), and The Future of U.S. Nuclear Weapons Policy (1997).

Holdren earned bachelors and masters degrees from M.I.T. in aeronautics and astronautics (1965 and 1966) and the Ph.D. from Stanford University in aeronautics/astronautics and theoretical plasma physics (1970). Before going to UC Berkeley in 1973, he worked on missile technology at the Lockheed Corporation, as a plasma physicist at the Lawrence Livermore Laboratory, and as a Senior Research Fellow in the Environmental Quality Laboratory and the Division of Humanities and Social Sciences at the California Institute of Technology.

He is a member of the National Academy of Sciences and the National Academy of Engineering, and a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the American Physical Society, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and the California Academy of Sciences. In 1981 he received one of the first MacArthur Foundation Prize Fellowships; in 1993 he shared the Volvo Environment Prize with Paul Ehrlich; and in 1994 he received the Forum Award of the American Physical Society ("for promoting public understanding of the relation of physics to society"). In December 1995 he delivered the Nobel Peace Prize acceptance lecture on behalf of the Pugwash Conferences on Science and World Affairs, which he served as Chair of the Executive Committee from 1987 to 1997. He received the 1999 Kaul Foundation Award for Excellence in Science and Environmental Policy, the 2000 Tyler Prize for Environmental Achievement, and the 2001 Heinz Prize in Public Policy.

Dr. Holdren was born in Sewickley, Pennsylvania, and grew up in San Mateo, California. He is married to Dr. Cheryl E. Holdren, a biologist. John and Cheryl live in Falmouth and Cambridge. They have two children and four grandchildren.

Home | The Group | Collaborations | Events | Documents | Links | Sponsors | Stay Informed | Search | Contact | Private