Katharine Hayhoe is remembered in natural history for work that changed what the next generation was able to take for granted.
Katharine Hayhoe was born at Toronto in 1972. Her recorded nationality is Canada. She was educated at University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign and University of Toronto.
Modern research is collective and heavily instrumented; individual credit is harder to assign, and the significant results usually carry many names.
She held appointments at Texas Tech University and The Nature Conservancy, where the work centred on atmospheric sciences, climate change and climatology.
Natural history is what science looked like before it split into specialisms, and it produced observers of formidable range.
Working from Canada shaped what was possible. Access to instruments, collections, journals and colleagues has always been geographic, and the history of science is partly a history of that inequality.
Her work was formally recognised with the Climate Communication Prize, Ambassador Award and honorary doctor of the Colgate University.
Read now, the significance is less in any single result than in the fact that the results held. Natural history is cumulative, and a contribution counts if the next generation could stand on it.
Her recorded remarks are gathered further down this page.
Katharine Hayhoe is still working, and the final assessment of her contribution has not been made - the ordinary condition of a living scientist.
Achievements
- Held posts at Texas Tech University and The Nature Conservancy
- Educated at University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign and University of Toronto
- Fields of research: atmospheric sciences, climate change, climatology and natural science
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