Ernst von Weizsäcker

Ernst von Weizsäcker joined the Bren School as Dean in January 2006. As an early proponent of the notion that interdisciplinary work would open new fields of interest, Previously, he has had a rich and varied background.

He spent nearly a decade as founding President of the Wuppertal Institute for Climate, Environment, and Energy in the North Rhine/Westphalian Science Center in Germany. He is a member of the Club of Rome, a global think tank devoted to improving society, and he served on the World Commission on the Social Dimensions of Globalization. Prior to coming to the Bren School, Von Weizsäcker was a member of the Bundestag, the German parliament, where he was appointed Chairman of the Environmental Committee. He was also a Professor of Interdisciplinary Biology at Essen University before becoming President of the new University of Kassel in 1975.

Von Weizsäcker has authored several influential books on the environment, including Ecological Tax Reform: A Policy Proposal for Sustainable Development (co-authored by Jochen Jesinghaus); "Earth Politics," in which the author suggests that sustainable economic development requires that "prices must tell the ecological truth"; and "Factor Four: Doubling Wealth, Halving Resource Use" (with Amory. B. Lovins and L. Hunter Lovins), which deals with resource productivity, or energy efficiency (economic output per unit of resource input), a major focus of Von Weizsäcker's work in the years since he helped found the Wuppertal Institute.

Von Weizsäcker's many honors and awards include the prestigious Takeda World Environment Award; the Duke of Edinburgh Gold Medal, presented by World Wildlife Fund International; and the Italian De Natura Prize. He is a graduate of Hamburg University, where he studied chemistry and physics, and earned his Ph.D. at Freiburg University, writing his dissertation on honeybee vision.