Robert H. Socolow Papers

Robert H. Socolow is an American environmental scientist and theoretical physicist with research interests in energy conservation and environmental technologies and policies. Born in New York, New York on December 27th, 1937, Socolow earned his B.S. Degree in Physics from Harvard College (1959) and his M.A. (1961) and Ph.D. (1964) in high-energy physics from Harvard University. After receiving his Ph.D., he worked for two years as a National Science Foundation Postdoctoral Fellow at CERN (European Organization for Nuclear Research) and the University of California, Berkeley.

Socolow began working at Yale University in 1966 as an Assistant Professor in the Department of Physics. In 1971, Socolow left Yale for Princeton University, where he worked as a professor in the Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering. At Princeton, he was tasked with spearheading an interdisciplinary environmental research program. Socolow also helped found the Center for Environmental Studies (later the Center for Energy and Environmental Studies) at Princeton University, serving as the center’s director from 1979 to 1997.

While working at Princeton, Socolow, along with John Harte, co-edited the book Patient Earth (Holt, Reinhart, and Winston 1971), which was one of the first college-level textbooks in environmental studies. Socolow also led a number of energy-conservation based and environmental projects, such as studies of Jamaica Bay and the Tocks Island Project. He also led the Twin Rivers Project, which was a series of studies performed by engineers, architects, and physical scientists that explored energy conservation in residential homes through retrofitting.

Socolow is a pioneering researcher of industrial ecology, a research approach that explores how energy and materials flow through the economy and their ultimate effect on the environment. His research in industrial ecology has focused primarily on the flows of nitrogen and lead, as well as how fossil fuels flow act as a flow of carbon through the industrial process. This research led Socolow and his Princeton colleagues to develop a two-week summer study in 1992 and subsequent book, Industrial Ecology and Global Change (Cambridge University Press, 1994).

In 2000, Princeton University, with the sponsorship of BP (British Petroleum), founded the Carbon Mitigation Initiative (CMI). The CMI is a research program that focuses on carbon mitigation strategies and is Princeton’s longest collaborative partnership. Socolow served as co-director alongside Stephen W. Pacala. Their work with the CMI led both Socolow and Pacala to co-author the paper “Stabilization Wedges: Solving the Climate Problem for the Next 50 Years with Current Technologies” (Science Vol. 305, Issue 5686, 2004). Stabilization wedges help visualize how various carbon mitigation methods will slow the effects of climate change.

Socolow is a member of several professional organizations, including the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the National Research Council of the National Academies, and the American Physical Society. He has received numerous awards and honors, including the Axelson Johnson Commemorative Lecture Award in 2005 from the Royal Academy of Engineering Science of Sweden and the Leo Szilard Lectureship Award in 2003 from the American Physical Society. Socolow is also the recipient of the John Scott Award in 2023 for his leadership in research of energy efficiency and climate stabilization strategies.