Daniel Kammen | |
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Born | Daniel Merson Kammen |
Education | Cornell University (BA) Harvard University (MA, PhD) |
Scientific career | |
Institutions | University of California, Berkeley |
Website | Official website |
Daniel Merson Kammen (b. 1962) [1] is an American scientist, renewable energy expert, and former government figure. Since July 1, 2025, he has been a Bloomberg Distinguished Professor at the Johns Hopkins University [2] . Before joining Hopkins, he fully retired from the University of California, Berkeley where he was the Distinguished Professor of Energy in the Energy and Resources Group [3] .
Kammen is noted as a coordinating lead author for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which won the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize for their report, Climate Change 2007 , assessing man-made global warming. [4] In 1998, Kammen was elected a permanent fellow of the African Academy of Sciences, and in 2007 received the Distinguished Citizen Award from the Commonwealth Club of California. [4] Kammen was elected a member of the National Academy of Sciences in 2025. [5]
Originally from Ithaca, New York, Kammen is the son of Pulitzer Prize-winning historian and Cornell University professor Michael Kammen. [6] He received his bachelor's degree in physics from Cornell University (1984) and his master's degree (1986) and PhD (1988) in physics from Harvard University. [7] As a postdoctoral researcher at Caltech, Kammen began to transition to energy research, with a focus on the role of energy in developing economies. [8]
On September 15, 2007, Kammen was appointed chief technical specialist for renewable energy and energy efficiency at the World Bank. [9]
In 2016, he was selected as a U.S. Science Envoy by the United States State Department. [10] He resigned from this position in 2017, citing what he believed to be President Trump's failure to denounce white supremacists and neo-Nazis. [11] His August 23, 2017, resignation letter went viral, as netizens noticed that the first letter of each paragraph spelled out I-M-P-E-A-C-H. [12]
Kammen has been mentioned as a potential Secretary of Energy in a Joe Biden administration. [13]