James Roger Prior Angel (born February 7, 1941) is a British-American astrophysicist known for his contributions to astronomy and the design and fabrication of large optics for telescopes, solar power and other applications.
[1] While at Oxford's Clarendon Laboratory he built an early computer to allow for the first direct measurement an atom's quadrupole moment.
[6] In 2006, Angel proposed assembling a space sunshade to mitigate global warming by placing trillions of 0.6-meter, 1-gram disks of refractive material into stable orbit between the Earth and the Sun (Lagrange point 1, or L1).
Together the cloud of disks would deflect 2% of solar radiation onto the Earth, enough to counteract the warming effect of a 100% increase in atmospheric carbon dioxide from pre-industrial levels.
He concluded that such a sunshield "could be developed and deployed in ≈25 years at a cost of a few trillion dollars, <0.5% of world gross domestic product (GDP) over that time.