Prize Recipient


Recipient Picture

Richard A. Meserve
Covington & Burling LLP

Citation:

"For outstanding service to science and to the nation in the safe, secure, and peaceful use of nuclear power and in the proper and powerful application of science in important legal matters, and for wise counsel on policy issues involving science."

Background:

Richard A. Meserve received a B.A. from Tufts University in 1966, a J.D. from Harvard Law School in 1975, and a Ph.D. in applied physics from Stanford University in 1976 as a student of Walter A. Harrison. He is Senior Of Counsel in the Washington, DC, office of Covington & Burling LLP. He is the President Emeritus of the Carnegie Institution for Science and former Chairman of the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission. Early in his career he served as law clerk to Supreme Court Justice Harry A. Blackmun and as legal counsel to the President’s Science Adviser. Among other activities, he is the former President of the Board of Overseers of Harvard University and the former Chairman of the International Nuclear Safety Group (chartered by the International Atomic Energy Agency). He is a member of the National Academy of Engineering, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and the American Philosophical Society, a Fellow of the American Physical Society and the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and a foreign member of the Russian Academy of Sciences. He received the Order or the Rising Sun, Gold and Silver Star, from the Emperor of Japan for his assistance in the aftermath of the Fukushima Daiichi accident. He has chaired or served as a member of a wide variety of studies undertaken by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine.