Robert Howarth
Professor of Ecology and Environmental Biology, Cornell University

Robert W. Howarth was born in Boston and grew up in Durham, NH. He graduated magna cum laude from Amherst College in 1974 with a BA in biology, and earned a Ph.D. in biological oceanography in 1979 in a joint program run by MIT and the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution. From 1979 to 1985, he was a staff scientist at the Marine Biological Laboratory in Woods Hole, MA, before joining the faculty at Cornell University. He was tenured in 1985 and promoted to full professor in 1989. Since 1992, he has been the David R. Atkinson Professor of Ecology & Environmental Biology at Cornell. While on leave from Cornell during 2000-2002, he served as the director of the Oceans Program at Environmental Defense and was a consultant to the Pew Oceans Commission on coastal nutrient pollution. Howarth also continues to hold an appointment as an adjunct scientist at the Marine Biological Lab in Woods Hole.

Howarth is a biogeochemist and aquatic ecosystem scientist. His current research focuses on the factors that regulate nitrogen fixation, the causes and consequences of eutrophication in coastal marine ecosystems, and controls on the fluxes of nitrogen and phosphorus from large watersheds and regions to coastal oceans (particularly the interacting influences of land-use, climate change, and societal nitrogen use). He founded the journal Biogeochemistry in 1983 and served as Editor-in-Chief from 1983 until the fall of 2004; he continues as Founding Editor. He co-chaired the International SCOPE Nitrogen Project from 1993 to 2002, and chaired the US National Academy of Science’s Committee on Causes and Management of Coastal Eutrophication from 1998 to 2002. He currently serves on the Executive Committee of the International Nitrogen Initiative and is Director of the North American Nitrogen Center (http://www.eeb.cornell.edu/biogeo/nanc/nanc.htm). He is also co-lead author for the Millenium Assessment’s chapter on nutrient pollution.

Howarth is married to his long-time close colleague, Dr. Roxanne Marino. They have one daughter, born in 1996. They own a 100 acre farm near Cornell in upstate New York, and spend their summers in Woods Hole.