Richard S. Lindzen (b. February 8, 1940 in Webster, Massachusetts) attended the Bronx High School of Science and Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute.  He received his A.B. (1960), S.M. (1961) and Ph.D. (1964) degrees from Harvard University.  The first degree was in physics; the last two were in applied mathematics.  His thesis on the interactions of ozone chemistry, radiative transfer, and dynamics in the middle atmosphere brought him into the atmospheric sciences where he continues to work and teach.  He was a postdoctoral fellow at both the Universities of Washington (1964-65) and Oslo (1965-66).  He was a research scientist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research (1966-68).  He taught at the University of Chicago (1968-1972) before moving to Harvard University where he held the Burden Chair in dynamic meteorology and served as director of the Center for Earth and Planetary Physics.  Since 1983, he has been the Alfred P. Sloan Professor of Meteorology at M.I.T.  He is a member of the National Academy of Sciences, and the Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters, and a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the American Geophysical Union, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and the American Meteorological Society.  He is a recipient of the Macelwane medal of the American Geophysical Union, and of the Meisinger and Charney Awards of the American Meteorological Society.  He was the 1997 A.M.S. Haurwitz Lecturer.  He has been a Japanese Society for the Promotion of Science Fellow at Kyushu University, the Vikram Amblal Sarabhai Professor at the Physical Research Laboratory, Ahmedabad, India, a  Lady Davis Visiting Professorship at The  Hebrew  University, a Sackler Visiting Professor at Tel Aviv University, the Landsdowne Lecturer at the University of Victoria and a National University Lecturer at the University of Hokkaido.  He is the coauthor (with the late Sidney Chapman) of a monograph, Atmospheric Tides, the author of Dynamics in Atmospheric Physics, a coeditor (with Edward Lorenz and George Platzman) of The Atmosphere - A Challenge: The Scientific Work of Jule Gregory Charney, and the author or coauthor of over 200 papers in the scientific literature.  He was also a lead author of the IPCC Third Assessment Report, and has served on numerous panels of the National Research Council, the Council of the American Meteorological Society and the Corporation of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution.  Most recently (2006), he received the Leo Prize of the Walin Foundation in Sweden.

Professor Lindzen's scientific interests include the dynamics of the earth=s climate and its atmosphere=s general circulation, the middle atmosphere, and planetary atmospheres.  He has contributed to the theory of hydrodynamic instabilities and waves.  His work has provided explanations of a variety of atmospheric phenomena including atmospheric tides, the quasi-biennial oscillation of the tropical stratosphere, the super-rotation of the atmosphere of Venus, and the generation of upper atmospheric turbulence by breaking internal gravity waves.  His current research is on the climate sensitivity of the earth to radiative forcing, on the factors which determine the equator-to-pole temperature differences, and on the nature and role of atmospheric convection.