Venkatachalam Ramaswamy

Early life and education Born in India, Venkatachalam Ramaswamy went to school in a Methodist mission high school, where he received a strong science education. Although his program focused on theoretical physics, he became interested in practical applications. For the final year of his Master's program, he did independent research, writing a dissertation on the effects of nonspherical raindrops on microwave transmission signals and telecommunications.

In 1977, Ramaswamy came to the U.S. The award was given jointly to the IPCC and to Albert Arnold Gore Jr., "for their efforts to build up and disseminate greater knowledge about man-made climate change, and to lay the foundations for the measures that are needed to counteract such change."

Ramaswamy is a three-time recipient of the WMO Norbert-Gerbier MUMM International Award from the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) which he received as a co-author of papers published in 2013, 2003, and 1998.

He is an elected fellow of the American Geophysical Union as of 2008, and has been a member of the American Geophysical Union since 1983.

He became an elected fellow of the American Meteorological Society as of 2005 or 2006. He was recognized by the AMS as the Walter Orr Roberts Lecturer in Interdisciplinary Sciences for 2016. In 1994, he was awarded the Henry G. Houghton Award of the American Meteorological Society.

As of 2005, he received the United States Presidential Rank Award for Meritorious Senior Professional. He has also received both the Gold Medal (2002, 2007) and the Silver Medal (2005) of the Department of Commerce. He is recognized as an NOAA Distinguished Author (1992, 1993, 1996, 2000, 2002, 2008) and has received the NOAA Administrator Award (2014)

He has been recognized with a number of international professorships and lectureships, including the Professor K. R. Ramanathan Distinguished Professorship, Ahmedabad, India (2004); and the Sir Gilbert Walker Distinguished Professorship, Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi, India (2013-2016)

He was named a Fellow of the American Physical Society in 2021.