Thursday evening, the US Senate confirmed the nomination of former Harvard physicist John Holdren as President Obama’s science advisor and director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy. Jane Lubchenco, the former Oregon State marine biologist was also confirmed to the top post at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
Both Holdren and Lubchenco are former presidents of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and have advocated for strong government intervention to address the man-made causes of climate change. Both will leave current positions in academia to take on their science leadership roles in Washington, DC.
John Holdren was a Harvard University professor of environmental science and public policy sciences as well as professor of environmental policy at the Kennedy School of Government’s Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs. He was also director of the Woods Hole Research Center, an ecological think tank in Cape Cod, Massachusetts. Holdren headed the Pugwash Conferences on Science and World Affairs, an international group of eminent, Nobel-winning scientists in 1995, and he won a MacArthur Foundation genius award in 1981 for his arms control work. After receiving a PhD in physics from Stanford University in 1970, Holdren taught at UC Berkeley, focusing on global environmental change, energy technologies and policies, nuclear proliferation, and science policy. From 1994 to 2001, Holdren served on president Clinton’s Committee of Advisors on Science and Technology, where he led studies on preventing theft of nuclear materials, on fusion energy, and on US innovation. President Obama described Holdren upon his nomination as “one of the most passionate and persistent voices of our time about the growing threat of climate change.”
Jane Lubchenco was professor of Marine Biology and Zoology at Oregon State University. Lubchenco received her PhD from Harvard University in 1975 and has since served as president of the AAAS, the International Council for Science, and the Ecological Society of America. She is a member of the National Academy of Sciences, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the American Philosophical Society, the Royal Society, and the Academy of Sciences for the Developing World. Lubchenco is a recipient of the MacArthur and the Pew Fellowships, eight honorary degrees, and various other awards including the Heinz Award in the Environment, the Nierenberg Prize for Science in the Public Interest, and the AAAS Award for Public Understanding of Science and Technology. In 2004, she became the first scientist ever to receive the Environmental Law Institute Award. As the Administrator of NOAA, Lubchenco will have considerable influence on US climate research. She was a strong critic of former president Bush’s environmental policies.
