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Richard Lindzen

American physicist

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Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionSep 7, 2026
Entity authorityQ642488
Source-derived summary

Richard Siegmund Lindzen (born February 8, 1940) is an American atmospheric physicist known for his work in the dynamics of the middle atmosphere, atmospheric tides, and ozone photochemistry. He is the author of more than 200 scientific papers. From 1972 to 1982, he served as the Gordon McKay Professor of Dynamic Meteorology at Harvard University. In 1983, he was appointed as the Alfred P. Sloan Professor of Meteorology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he would remain until his retirement in 2013. Lindzen has disputed the scientific consensus on climate change and criticizes what he has called "climate alarmism".

Early life and education

Lindzen was born on February 8, 1940, in Webster, Massachusetts. His father, a shoemaker, had fled Nazi Germany with his mother. Lindzen moved to The Bronx soon after his birth and grew up in a Jewish household in a predominantly Catholic neighborhood.

Lindzen attended the Bronx High School of Science, where he won Regents' and National Merit Scholarships, then Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute before matriculating at Harvard University. In 1960, he graduated with a Bachelor of Arts in physics, magna cum laude, followed by a Master of Science degree in applied mathematics in 1961 and a Ph.D. in applied mathematics in 1964.

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This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “Richard Lindzen” as american physicist. Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.

Editorial reviewA concise reference frame for defining the subject, testing terminology and identifying the institution closest to the evidence. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1940, 1972, 1982, 1983—that can be checked directly. The linked authority record independently contributes the date 1940-02-08. The account is most persuasive where Richard, Lindzen and American can be independently traced.
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The subject matters to the general reference register because the source frames it as american physicist. Its deeper value depends on whether names, dates, institutions and citations support that framing.

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Named sources, stable identifiers and responsible institutions provide the strongest route from overview to verifiable evidence. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 7, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q642488. VIAF identifies the subject as 92067466. The Library of Congress control number is n86007766. 3 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1940, 1972, 1982 and 1983.

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This entry incorporates text from Richard Lindzen” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.