News Release

Tyler Prize for environmental achievement awarded to Harvard Professor John P. Holdren

Grant and Award Announcement

University of Southern California

LOS ANGELES -- A Harvard University professor who has mobilized the international community of scientists and policymakers to take action on a wide range of global energy, environmental and security issues, will receive the 2000 Tyler Prize for Environmental Achievement.

John P. Holdren, Ph.D., 56, will receive a cash prize of $200,000 at an awards ceremony on April 14 in Los Angeles. The Tyler Prize is an international award honoring significant achievements in environmental science, energy, and medical discoveries of world-wide importance that impact upon human existence. Holdren is an authority on energy technology and policy, global environmental change, and nuclear nonproliferation. His own research -- along with the reports of national and international panels he has led -- has helped shape new understanding and new policies relating to energy strategy for sustainable development, causes and consequences of global climate change, and the protection of weapon-grade nuclear materials.

"Professor Holdren's leadership in research and policy in global energy and environmental issues has had a profound influence in shaping global environmental debate and advancing scientific contributions that affect the well-being of people and relations among nations," said Robert P. Sullivan, Ph.D., chair of the Tyler Prize Executive Committee.

As a member of President Clinton's Committee of Advisors on Science and Technology (PCAST), Holdren has led studies on U.S.-Russian cooperation to protect nuclear materials, U.S. fusion-energy research, energy research and development strategy to address the climate-change challenge, and international cooperation in energy-technology innovation.

As an educator, Holdren has introduced new modes of interdisciplinary education and inquiry to form the next generation of scientists and professionals who will need to cope with the even more complex environmental and international-relations issues in the future. He co-founded in 1973, and co-directed for 23 years, the campus-wide interdisciplinary graduate program in Energy and Resources at the University of California, Berkeley, a pioneering program whose graduates now hold leadership positions around the world. Holdren joined the Harvard faculty in 1996. He is the Teresa and John Heinz Professor of Environmental Policy and director of the Program in Science, Technology, and Public Policy at the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University. He is also a professor of environmental science and policy in the department of earth and planetary sciences at Harvard and visiting distinguished scientist at the Woods Hole Research Center.

The Tyler Prize for Environmental Achievement was established in 1973 by the late John and Alice Tyler of Los Angeles. Through their work, Tyler laureates have focused worldwide attention on environmental problems and motivated effective action toward solutions. Three previous Tyler Prize recipients have gone on to receive the Nobel Prize in Chemistry.

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The Tyler Prize is administered by the University of Southern California. For more information, visit www.usc.edu/tylerprize.


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