David Grinspoon

David Grinspoon, prize-winning author of Earth in Human Hands, is an astrobiologist and Senior Scientist at the Planetary Science Institute. His research focuses on climate evolution on Earth-like planets, potential conditions for life elsewhere in the universe, and the planetary scale impacts of human activities on Earth. Currently he is Distinguished Visiting Scholar in the College of the Environment at Wesleyan University. In 2013 he was appointed inaugural Chair of Astrobiology at the Library of Congress where he studied the human impact on Earth systems and organized a public symposium on the ¬¬¬Longevity of Human Civilization. He has lectured widely about climate change in the Solar System, and collaborated with numerous scholars from the humanities on the ethical, spiritual and political dimensions of space exploration. Grinspoon’s popular writing has appeared in Slate, Scientific American, the Washington Post, the Boston Globe, the Los Angeles Times, and the New York Times.