William Happer is a physicist who has specialised in the study of optics and spectroscopy.[1] He is the Cyrus Fogg Brackett Professor of Physics at Princeton University.[1]
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He studied physics at the University of North Carolina, graduating in 1960, and then gained his doctorate at Princeton in 1964.[1]
His academic career started at Columbia University where he became a full professor and director of the Columbia Radiation Laboratory.[1] In 1980, he left to go to Princeton, where he was later the Class of 1909 Professor of Physics.[1] In 1991, he joined the United States Department of Energy, where he was the director of its research budget of $3 billion.[1] In 1993, he returned to his position at Princeton, where he became the chair of the research board in 1995.[1]
In addition to these full-time positions, he has had numerous other assignments: chairman of the steering committee for JASON; trustee of the MITRE Corporation, the Richard Lounsbery Foundation and the Marshall Institute,[1] of which he is also Chairman, since 2006.[2] He co-founded Magnetic Imaging Technologies Inc. in 1994.[1]
In February 2009 Happer testified before Congress, "I believe that the increase of CO2 is not a cause for alarm and will be good for mankind", for among other reasons because of its beneficial effects on plant growth.[3]
Happer was listed as a signer of the petition of the Oregon Institute of Science and Medicine, no later than 2000,[4] and CATO Institute's 2009 letter.[5] With Fred Singer, Harold Lewis, Robert Austin, Larry Gould, and Roger Cohen, Happer led[6] the 2009 petition [7] to the American Physical Society to change its position statement on climate change. The petition was signed by a few hundred of the 47,000 members and was rejected.[8]
The Daily Princetonian quoted Happer:[9]
Physics professor William Happer GS ’64 has some tough words for scientists who believe that carbon dioxide is causing global warming.
“This is George Orwell. This is the ‘Germans are the master race. The Jews are the scum of the earth.’ It’s that kind of propaganda,” Happer, the Cyrus Fogg Brackett Professor of Physics, said in an interview. “Carbon dioxide is not a pollutant. Every time you exhale, you exhale air that has 4 percent carbon dioxide. To say that that’s a pollutant just boggles my mind. What used to be science has turned into a cult.”...
“All the evidence I see is that the current warming of the climate is just like past warmings. In fact, it’s not as much as past warmings yet, and it probably has little to do with carbon dioxide, just like past warmings had little to do with carbon dioxide,” Happer explained.
He is a fellow of the American Physical Society and the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and a member of the National Academy of Sciences. He received a Alfred P. Sloan fellowship in 1966, an Alexander von Humboldt award in 1976, the Herbert P.Broida Prize in 1997, the Davisson-Germer prize and the Thomas Alva Edison patent award in 2000.[1] In 2003 he was named the Cyrus Fogg Brackett Professor of Physics at Princeton University.[10]