James Fleming
User Profile
James Rodger Fleming is a historian of science and technology and Professor of Science, Technology and Society at Colby College, Maine. His teaching bridges the sciences and the humanities, and his research interests involve the history of the geophysical sciences, especially meteorology and climate change. He currently holds the Roger Revelle Fellowship in Global Environmental Stewardship from the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) and is a Public Policy Scholar at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars where he is working on "A history of weather and climate control."
Professor Fleming earned a B.S. in astronomy from Pennsylvania State University, an M.S. in atmospheric science from Colorado State University, and an M.A. and Ph.D. in history from Princeton University. In 2003 Professor Fleming was elected a Fellow of the AAAS "for pioneering studies on the history of meteorology and climate change and for the advancement of historical work within meteorological societies." He also was awarded the Ritter Memorial Fellowship at Scripps Institution of Oceanography. In 2005-06 he held the Charles A. Lindberg Chair in Aerospace History at the National Air and Space Museum, Smithsonian Institution.
Professor Fleming is the founder and first president of the International Commission on History of Meteorology and the editor-in-chief of its journal, History of Meteorology. His books include Meteorology in America, 1800-1870 (Johns Hopkins, 1990), Historical Perspectives on Climate Change (Oxford, 1998), and two new titles: The Callendar Effect (American Meteorological Society, 2007), and Intimate Universality: Local and Global Themes in the History of Weather and Climate (Science History Publications/USA, 2006).
He normally resides in China, Maine (not Mainland China!) with his wife, Miyoko, and, occasionally, with their college-age sons Jamitto (Princeton '07) and Jason (Vermont '07). He enjoys fishing, good jazz, good BBQ, and seeing students flourish. "Nothing is really work unless you would rather be doing something else."
