Robert Harry Socolow (born December 27, 1937; surname pronunciation sŏc‘-ŏ-lō) is an American environmental scientist, theoretical physicist and professor emeritus of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering at Princeton University.
[2] The American Physical Society stated that Socolow had a leadership role in establishing energy and environmental problems as interdisciplinary research fields for physicists consistent with the highest scientific standards.
His father, A. Walter Socolow, was a founder of the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College of Pennsylvania and served as president of the Board of Jewish Education of Greater New York and also the Society for the Advancement of Judaism.
His doctoral thesis was on "Electromagnetic Self-Energies and Weak Decays in Unitary Symmetry" which was research conducted with Harvard professor Sidney Coleman.
[8] Between 1964 and 1966 he was National Science Foundation Postdoctoral Fellow in Physics, at the University of California at Berkeley and the European Center for Nuclear Research (CERN) in Geneva, Switzerland.
Later, in 1961 when Socolow was in graduate school, he worked at the Pugwash Conferences on Science and World Affairs at which time he realized that scientific rigor is useful in developing public policy.
[10] While at Yale, Socolow and other faculty members organized a "Day of Reflection" to discuss the role of scientists in the military and the Vietnam War, as part of the peace movement of the era.
Goldberger encouraged Socolow to participate in a summer case study program sponsored by the National Academy of Sciences at Stanford University on management of the environment.
With fellow participant and Yale colleague John Harte, Socolow evaluated the environmental impact of the proposed Big Cypress Jetport in the Florida Everglades.
As a result of this experience, Socolow redirected his scientific investigations and career endeavors to matters related to environmentalism, energy efficiency and sustainable development.
[5] Partly through the influence of Marvin Goldberger, in 1971 Socolow moved to Princeton University, with the rank of Associate Professor, serving in the Department of Aerospace and Mechanical Sciences, with the responsibility of organizing its newly created Center for Environmental Studies.
[5] Socolow worked with physicist Frank N. von Hippel and others on approaches to electricity generation through nuclear fission while rendering inaccessible the plutonium isotopes that could be used for fabrication of weapons.
[15] Beginning in 2000, Socolow collaborated with Princeton colleagues Robert H. Williams and Stephen W. Pacala to establish the carbon mitigation initiative (CMI).
The goal of CMI was to address the problem of anthropogenic climate change through more effective management and reduction of atmospheric carbon dioxide emissions.
Socolow and Pacal divided the stabilization triangle into triangular “wedges,” each of which describes a specific amount of carbon dioxide emissions mitigation based on the application of a particular currently existing technology.
"[16] The book An Inconvenient Truth by former United States Vice President Al Gore referred to Socolow and Pacala[a] and their work on climate stabilization wedges, emphasizing that the needed technology is already available to halt rise in atmospheric carbon dioxide levels.
Tilman and Socolow's scientific publication on the subject stated that biofuels should not compete with food crops or cause land-clearing and that they should offer overall greenhouse gas emissions as indicated by life cycle analysis.
Destiny studies became an on-going endeavor at Princeton University and was the subject of a 2019 symposium conducted in honor of Socolow's retirement from full professorship.
[23][24][25] Around the same time, Socolow articulated practical approaches to climate change mitigation based on an analysis of demand, supply and the relationship to international politics, as well as the role of populations growth.
Socolow first articulated the concept of the personal carbon footprint in a 2006 journal article of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences co-authored by his colleague Pacala.
[8] Time (magazine) in 2007 recognized Socolow and Pacala's concept of climate stabilization wedges as a means of addressing some of Earth's most difficult problems.
[2] Socolow served on the Deutsche Bank Climate Change Advisory Board from 2008 to 2017 and on the U.S. Department of Energy Task Force on Carbon Dioxide Utilization.