John Holdren

John P Holdren is the Teresa and John Heinz Research Professor of Environmental Policy at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government, Faculty Co-Chair of the Science, Technology, and Public Policy program in the School’s Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, founding Co-Chair of the Center’s Energy Technology Innovation Project, and co-founder of its Managing the Atom project.

He is also Emeritus Professor in Harvard’s Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences, Emeritus Affiliated Professor in Environmental Science and Engineering in its School of Engineering and Applied Science, President Emeritus of the Woods Hole Research Center (now the Woodwell Climate Research Center), and Emeritus Professor of Energy and Resources at the University of California, Berkeley, where he co-founded and co-led the campus-wide, interdisciplinary, graduate program in Energy and Resources (the Energy and Resources Group) from 1973 to 1996.

He was President Obama’s Science Advisor and the Senate-confirmed Director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy through both Obama terms (becoming the longest-serving Science Advisor to the President in the history of the position). His responsibilities in the White House included advising the President on the science and technology aspects of all the issues before him, chairing the National Science and Technology Council and the interagency Arctic Executive Steering Committee; co-chairing the President’s Council of Advisors of Science and Technology (PCAST), the National Ocean Council, and the Council on Climate-Change Preparedness and Resilience; and overseeing ministerial-level US collaborations on science and technology with Brazil, China, India, Japan, Russia, and South Korea. He was one of the principal architects of the administration’s policies on both energy and climate change.

Trained at MIT and Stanford in aerospace engineering, space science, and theoretical plasma physics, Dr. Holdren is a member of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences, U.S. National Academy of Engineering, the American Philosophical Society, and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, as well as a Foreign Member of the UK’s Royal Society and the Indian National Academy of Engineering.

He chaired for many years the Executive Committee of the Pugwash Conferences on Science and World Affairs and, on its behalf, gave the acceptance speech for its Nobel Peace Prize in 1995. His other honors include one of the first MacArthur Foundation Prize Fellowships (“genius awards”) 1981-86, the Volvo International Environment Prize (1993), the Tyler Prize for Environmental Achievement (2000), the John Heinz Prize in Public Policy (2001), the Daniel Patrick Moynihan Prize of the American Academy of Political and Social Science (2018, the only natural scientist ever to receive this award), the Arthur M. Bueche Award of the National Academy of Engineering (2021, for “extraordinary impact on the engineering profession”), and the Public Welfare Medal of the National Academy of Sciences (2022, that Academy’s highest honor).