Jim Anderson is the Philip S. Weld Professor in the Departments of Chemistry and Chemical Biology, Earth and Planetary Sciences and the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, Harvard University. He was Chairman of the Department of Chemistry and Chemical Biology at Harvard University from 1998–2001. He was elected to the National Academy of Sciences in 1992, the American Philosophical Society in 1998, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1985, a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in 1986, and a Fellow of the American Geophysical Union in 1989. He has received the E.O. Lawrence Award in Environmental Science and Technology, the American Chemical Society’s Gustavus John Esselen Award for Chemistry in the Public Interest, the United Nations Vienna Convention Award for Protection of the Ozone Layer, Harvard University’s Ledlie Prize for Most Valuable Contribution to Science by a Member of the Faculty, and the American Chemical Society’s National Award for Creative Advances in Environmental Science and Technology. He has testified on numerous occasions before both Senate and House committees on national energy and climate issues.
The Anderson research group addresses three domains in the physical sciences: (1) chemical reactivity viewed from the microscopic perspective of electron structure, molecular orbitals and reactivities of radical-radical and radical-molecule systems; (2) chemical catalysis sustained by free radical chain reactions that dictate the macroscopic rate of chemical transformation in Earth’s stratosphere and troposphere; and (3) mechanistic links between chemistry, radiation, and dynamics that control climate.