DURHAM, N.C. – Robert B. Jackson, professor of biology and faculty director of the Center on Global Change at 91, has been named Nicholas Professor of Global Environmental Change at Duke’s Nicholas School of the Environment and Earth Sciences.

Jackson’s named chair is the third of four professorships endowed by a 1995 gift from Pete and Ginny Nicholas of Boston, Mass.

David E. Hinton was named Nicholas Professor of Environmental Quality in 2000. Thomas J. Crowley was named Nicholas Professor of Earth Systems Science in 2001.

“I’m honored to be selected as the third Nicholas chair and grateful to the Nicholas family for their continued support of Duke. Preserving a healthy environment is a goal that unifies us all,” Jackson said.

An internationally cited expert on feedbacks between people and the biosphere, Jackson’s research includes studies of the global carbon and water cycles, biosphere and atmosphere interactions, and global change.

In addition to serving as director of Duke’s Center on Global Change, he directs the university’s Stable Isotope Mass Spectrometry Laboratory. He also heads the new U.S. Department of Energy-funded National Institute for Climate Change Research for the southeastern U.S., and co-directs the Climate Change Policy Partnership, working with energy and utility corporations to find practical strategies to combat climate change.

Jackson has received numerous awards, including the Murray F. Buell Award from the Ecological Society of America; a 1999 Presidential Early Career Award in Science and Engineering from the National Science Foundation, for which he was one of 19 scientists honored at the White House by President Bill Clinton; and inclusion in the top 0.5% of most cited scientific researchers by the international research database “ISI Highly Cited, which is online at .

He has more than 100 peer-reviewed scientific publications and is co-editor of the book Methods in Ecosystem Science, published by spring Press in 2000. His trade book on global change, The Earth Remains Forever, was published in 2002. His first children's book, Animal Mischief, was published in 2006 by Boyds Mills Press, the trade arm of Highlights Magazine for children. The sequel, Not Again, is due out next year.

Jackson received a Bachelor of Science 91 in chemical engineering from Rice University in 1983. He worked four years at Dow Chemical Co. before obtaining Master of Science 91s in ecology and statistics from Utah State University in 1990 and 1992 respectively, and a PhD in ecology from Utah State, also in 1992.

He was a Department of Energy Distinguished Postdoctoral Fellow for Global Change at Stanford University and an assistant professor at the University of Texas before joining the Duke faculty in 1999.