NCSE is pleased to congratulate Ben Santer, a member of NCSE’s board of directors and a climate scientist at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, on winning the 2019 Sigma Xi William Procter Prize for Scientific Achievement, bestowed "to a scientist who has made an outstanding contribution to scientific research and has demonstrated an ability to communicate the significance of this research to scientists in other disciplines."
The prize recognizes the importance of Santer's work on natural and human "fingerprints" in observed climate records. "His early research contributed to the historic 1995 conclusion of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change: 'the balance of evidence suggests a discernible human influence on global climate.'" Also recognized were his efforts to communicate climate science to a wide range of audiences.
Santer will deliver a lecture at Sigma Xi's annual meeting and student research conference in Madison, Wisconsin, November 14-17, 2019, where he will also receive a bronze statue, a commemorative certificate, a $5000 award, and a $5000 award to aid the research of a younger colleague. Previous recipients of the Procter Prize include Margaret Mead, Lynn Margulis, Jane Goodall, Murray Gell-Mann, and E. O. Wilson.
