Profile of F. Stuart Chapin III

As one of the most serious issues facing the world, climate change grabs headlines daily. Warming temperatures could change the face of Earth radically in this century. Models and experiments have shown that polar regions will be hit first and hardest, and ecologist F. Stuart “Terry” Chapin III, elected to the National Academy of Sciences in 2004, has watched first hand as these changes arrive in Alaska and is working on ways to mitigate and adapt to climate change's effects. A professor of ecology in the Institute of Arctic Biology at the University of Alaska Fairbanks (Fairbanks, AK), Chapin was the first Alaskan elected to the National Academy of Sciences. His initial research concentrated on the adaptation of plants to changing environmental conditions and has evolved to investigating the dynamics of socioecological systems under changing conditions. Among the honors Chapin has received are the Kempe Award for Distinguished Ecologist in 1996 and the Usabelli Award for the top researcher in all fields from the University of Alaska in 2000. In his Inaugural Article in this issue of PNAS (1), Chapin and colleagues from the fields of environmental science, geography, and political science present a series of recommendations to help residents of Interior Alaska deal with climate change. Chapin began his undergraduate studies as an economics major at Swarthmore College (Swarthmore, PA) in 1962. But an introductory biology elective class and many hours spent outdoors while growing up convinced him to switch his major to biology. After graduating in 1966 with a bachelor's degree in biology, Chapin spent 2 years in the Peace Corps, stationed in Bogota, Colombia. He then entered graduate school at Stanford University (Stanford, CA) and earned a Ph.D. in biological sciences in 1973, with National Academy of Sciences member Hal Mooney as his advisor. F. Stuart Chapin …