HKS Professor John P. Holdren Awarded National Academy of Sciences’ Highest Honor

The National Academy of Sciences awarded Harvard Kennedy School professor John P. Holdren the Public Welfare Medal, its highest honor, on Wednesday.

Holdren first joined the Kennedy School as a professor in 1996 but left in 2009 to serve as former President Barack Obama’s Science Advisor. He held the position for almost the entirety of the Obama administration, making him the role’s longest occupant since World War II. Afterward, he returned to HKS in 2017.

The National Academy of Sciences said in a press release it was presenting the medal to Holdren as an acknowledgment of “his many years of work on behalf of science.” The Academy presents the award annually “to honor extraordinary use of science for the public good.”

Holdren said he was “absolutely delighted” to receive the award.

“Obviously, it’s great to have this kind of recognition,” he said. “It’s an award that a number of people I admire and greatly respect have received in the past, so my gratitude getting the award is amplified by the people who got it before me.”

“I don’t know if I deserve it, but I’ll take it,” he added.

Marcia K. McNutt, president of the National Academy of Sciences, wrote in a press release that Holdren was an “outstanding and effective” civil servant.

“John Holdren has more than fulfilled the call to ‘restore science to its rightful place,’ as he was charged to do by President Obama,” McNutt said. “He has helped shape sound national policy on everything from climate change to international nuclear arms control, and his efforts to ensure the strength of our scientific enterprise will reverberate for generations to come.”

In a press release, HKS Dean Douglas W. Elmendorf wrote Holdren was a model for how to effectively unite academia and civil service.

“He has been more than a beloved teacher,” Elmendorf said. “He has shown what it can mean when science is translated into policies and practice that serve all of us.”

Holdren was a professor at the University of California, Berkeley, when HKS persuaded him to swap coasts in 1996. Joseph S. Nye Jr., who was Dean of the Kennedy School at that time, praised Holdren for the impact he has since had on the institution.

“John has been a wonderful colleague who has enriched our lives at the Kennedy School at the same time that he has made the world a better place,” Nye said.

Though Holdren, who is now 77 years old, retired from teaching in June 2021, he intends to keep working as a researcher, focusing on several topics in his academic wheelhouse.

“I continue to be the principal investigator or co-principal investigator on six different grants,” he said. “On the issues that I care about, I'm not thinking of retiring from the fray. I'm going to continue to be active in working on these problems.”

—Staff writer Miles J. Herszenhorn can be reached at miles.herszenhorn@thecrimson.com. Follow him on Twitter @MHerszenhorn.