Prof. Bjorn Stevens, Managing Director of MPI-M: "Klaus Hasselmann made foundational contributions to understanding and detecting the fingerprint of global warming in response to rising greenhouse gasses. As a result, his own fingerprint can be found on almost every assessment as to the causes of global warming, including each and every report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. It brings great honor to him, and to the science at large to see his contributions recognized in this way, and it gives us, his colleagues, students, and admirers, even more pleasure as we continue our efforts, to better understand the vulnerability of the climate system to warming.”
Klaus Hasselmann was born in Hamburg. After studying physics and mathematics in Hamburg, Klaus Hasselmann received his PhD from the University of Göttingen in 1957. He taught at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography (1961 - 1964) and at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Laboratory (1970 - 1972), both USA, and at the Institute of Geophysics of the Universität Hamburg (1973 - 1974). In 1975 he was founding director of the MPI-M and led it until his retirement in 1999.
In the course of his career, Klaus Hasselmann has received several awards for his outstanding research, including the Environmental Prize of the German Federal Foundation for the Environment in 1998. In 2002, he was awarded the Vilhelm Bjerknes Medal of the European Geosciences Union; in 2009, he received the highly endowed BBVA Foundation Frontiers of Knowledge Award from the Spanish BBVA Foundation in the category of climate science. Since 2014, he has been an honorary member of the Royal Meteorological Society. The crowning achievement of his scientific career is the Nobel Prize in Physics of 2021. In the wake of the Nobel Prize, he received further honors such as an entry in the Golden Book of his hometown of Hamburg and the honorary membership of the Patriotic Society in Hamburg.
More information:
Klaus Hasselmann and the Nobel Prize in Physics 2021
Contact
Dr. Annette Kirk
Max Planck Institute for Meteorology
Communication
E-mail: annette.kirk@mpimet.mpg.de