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Ralph John Cicerone (May 2, 1943 – November 5, 2016) was an American atmospheric scientist and administrator. From 1998 to 2005, he was the chancellor of the University of California, Irvine. From 2005 to 2016, he was the president of the National Academy of Sciences (NAS). He was a "renowned authority" on climate change and atmospheric chemistry, and issued an early warning about the grave potential risks of climate change.
Early life and education
Cicerone was born in New Castle, Pennsylvania, on May 2, 1943, to Salvatore and Louise (Palus) Cicerone. His father, an insurance salesman, was the son of Italian immigrants.
Cicerone was the first in his family to attend college.
Career
Cicerone joined the University of Michigan as a research scientist, later holding faculty positions in electrical and computer engineering from 1971 to 1978. Ralph Cicerone held the position of Chancellor of UC Irvine until 2005, when he left to be President of the National Academy of Sciences. He retired as NAS President in June 2016.
In 2001, while chancellor of UCI, Cicerone led an academy panel, commissioned by George W. Bush, tasked with reporting to him on climate change. The panel concluded unequivocally that "greenhouse gases are accumulating in Earth's atmosphere as a result of human activities, causing surface air temperatures and subsurface ocean temperatures to rise." a Foreign Member of the Royal Society, Academia Sinica, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the American Philosophical Society, the Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei, the Russian Academy of Sciences, the Korean Academy of Science and Technology. The American Geophysical Union awarded him its James B. Macelwane Award in 1979 for outstanding contributions to geophysics by a young scientists and later in 2002 its Roger Revelle Medal for outstanding research contributions to the understanding of Earth's atmospheric processes, biogeochemical cycles, and other key elements of the climate system.
Cicerone revived the baseball program at UC Irvine in 2002, while he was its chancellor. The baseball field at UC Irvine's Anteater Ballpark was named after Cicerone in 2009.
Ralph Cicerone and his wife Carol Cicerone endowed a graduate fellowship at UCI in 2009. and had a daughter and two grandchildren.
He was an avid baseball fan