James Hansen

About James Hansen

James E. Hansen (born March 29, 1941 in Denison, Iowa) heads the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York City, a part of the Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, Earth Sciences Division. He is currently an adjunct professor in the Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences at Columbia University, and also serves as Al Gore's science advisor. Hansen is best known for his research in the field of climatology and his testimony on climate change to congressional committees in the 1980s that helped raise broad awareness of the global warming issue. He is also noted for publishing "an alternative scenario" for global warming which states that in the past few decades the warming effect produced by increased CO2 has been largely offset by the cooling effect of aerosols also produced in burning fossil fuels, and that most of the net warming so far is due to trace greenhouse gases other than CO2. He has been a critic of both the Clinton and current Bush Administration's stances on climate change.

Hansen was trained in physics and astronomy in the space science program of Dr. James Van Allen at the University of Iowa. He obtained a B.A. in Physics and Mathematics with highest distinction in 1963, an M.S. in Astronomy in 1965 and a Ph.D. in Physics, in 1967, all three degrees from the University of Iowa. He participated in the NASA graduate traineeship from 1962 to 1966 and, at the same time, between 1965 and 1966, he was a visiting student at the Institute of Astrophysics at the University of Kyoto and in the Department of Astronomy at the University of Tokyo.

Hansen was elected to the National Academy of Sciences in 1996 and he received a $250,000 Heinz Environment Award for his research on global warming in 2001. He was listed as one of Time Magazine's 100 Most Influential People in the Time 100 (2006) list and, in 2007, he was awarded the Dan David Prize. On April 5, 2008, Dr. Hansen received the PNC Bank Common Wealth Award of Distinguished Service for his outstanding achievements in science.