Professor James Hansen
Director of the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies and Adjunct Professor at Columbia University’s Earth Institute
James Hansen is director of the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies, New York and Adjunct Professor at Columbia University’s Earth Institute. Trained in physics and astronomy in Dr James Van Allen’s space science program at the University of Iowa, Hansen is best known for his Congressional testimony on climate change in the 1980s that helped raise broad awareness of global warming. He has been an active researcher in planetary atmospheres and climate science for nearly 40 years, with the last 30 years focused on climate research, publishing more than 100 scholarly articles on the latter topic.
Elected to the U.S. National Academy of Sciences in 1995, Dr Hansen has received numerous awards, including the WWF Conservation Medal from the Duke of Edinburgh, the American Geophysical Union’s Roger Revelle Medal, and the Heinz Environment Award. In addition to numerous testimonies given to the United States Senate and House of Representatives, Dr Hansen has also twice made presentations to President George W. Bush Administration’s cabinet level Climate and Energy Task Force, chaired by Vice President Richard Cheney.
While Dr Hansen’s work has evolved from space science to climate science, it has constantly sought to make the results of that work widely available to the public. Time Magazine designated Dr. Hansen as one of the world’s 100 most influential people in 2006, a tribute to his continuing efforts to serve the public through his scientific work.
We caught up with Professor Hansen during his visit to the US Studies Centre.
