William Happer

Happer was born in Vellore, British India, the son of William Happer, a Scottish medical officer in the Indian Army, and Gladys Morgan Happer, a medical missionary for the Lutheran Church of North Carolina. Happer spent the years of World War II with his mother in Oak Ridge, Tennessee. After the war and a return to India, his family emigrated to North Carolina. He studied physics at the University of North Carolina, graduating in 1960. He earned his doctorate at Princeton University in 1964. ==Career==

Happer's academic career began at Columbia University, where he eventually became a full professor and director of the Columbia Radiation Laboratory. Happer was chairman of the steering committee for JASON, from 1987 to 1990, In 1991, he joined the United States Department of Energy as director of energy research. Happer has served as a trustee of the MITRE Corporation, the Richard Lounsbery Foundation, and the Marshall Institute, Happer is a co-founder and board member of an advocacy group called the CO2 Coalition, established in 2015. He has described the group as aiming to "educate the public that increased atmospheric levels of CO2 will benefit the world". The group has been funded by donations of over $100,000 from the Sarah Scaife Foundation and the Mercer Family Foundation of Robert Mercer and Rebekah Mercer, as well as $50,000 each from the Searle Freedom Trust, the Thomas W. Smith Foundation, the Lynde & Harry Bradley Foundation, and the Achelis and Bodman Foundation. ==Views==

Climate change position Happer disagrees with the scientific consensus on climate change, stating that "Some small fraction of the 1 °C warming during the past two centuries must have been due to increasing CO2, which is indeed a greenhouse gas", but argues that "most of the warming has probably been due to natural causes". Climate Science Watch published a point-by-point rebuttal to one of Happer’s articles. A petition that he coauthored to change the official position of the American Physical Society to a version that raised doubts about global warming was overwhelmingly rejected by the APS Council. Happer has no formal training as a climate scientist, In December 2015, Happer was targeted in a sting operation by the environmental activist group Greenpeace. Posing as consultants for a Middle Eastern oil and gas company, they asked Happer to write a report touting the benefits of rising carbon emissions. Happer declined a fee for his work, calling it a "labor of love", but said that they could donate to the "objective evidence" climate-change organization CO2 Coalition, which suggested that he contact the Donors Trust to keep the source of the funds secret as requested by the Greenpeace sting operation. Hiding the sources of funding in this way is lawful under U.S. law. Happer further acknowledged that his report would probably not pass peer-review with a scientific journal. In an interview, Happer responded to the sting operation: "I was only interested in helping the 'client' to publicize my long-held views, not to peddle whatever message the 'client' had in mind ... I have never taken a dime for any of my activities to educate the public that more CO2 will benefit the world." Political In 2017 following the election of Donald Trump into office, Happer met with Trump to discuss potentially becoming the Science Advisor to the President, and said that he would take the job if it was offered. Happer described Trump as "very attentive" and that the president's concerns "were that of a technically literate person". They discussed the president's uncle John Trump, whom Happer had known. Hannah Devlin of The Guardian wrote that Happer "supports a controversial crackdown on the freedom of federal agency scientists to speak out about their findings, arguing that mixed messages... have led to people disregarding all public health information." He resigned from the Council in September 2019, reportedly because his plan to review climate science did not receive sufficient support from the White House. It was shelved as some members of the administration, including Kelvin Droegemeier, believed it could harm Trump in his 2020 re-election campaign. ==Honors==

Happer is a fellow of the American Physical Society. Happer was elected as a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1995 and a member of the National Academy of Sciences in 1996. He received a Sloan Research Fellowship in 1967, the Herbert P. Broida Prize in 1997, the Davisson-Germer Prize and the Thomas Alva Edison Patent Award in 2000. Currently, he is a Professor Emeritus. ==Selected publications==