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SIPA Faculty
James D. Hays
211 Core Lab, Lamont-Doherty Earth Obs., Palisades, NY
Professor of Earth and Environmental Sciences
Phone: 914-365-8403
jimhays@ldeo.columbia.edu
Biography:
James Hays is a professor of Earth and environmental sciences at Columbia University.
His current research focuses on the history of climate change over the past three million years and the evolutionary history recorded by microfossils. Notably, Hays's research in cooperation with J. Imbrie and N. J. Shackelton's, has proved that the timing of major ice ages is controlled by variations in Earth's orbit around the sun.
Hays is the author of "Faunal Extinction and Reversals of the Earth's Magnetic Field," in the Geological Society of America Bulletin (1971); "Variations in the Earth's Orbit: Pacemaker of the Ice Ages," in Science (1976); and coauthor of "Lithospheric Plate Motion, Sea Level Changes and Climatic and Ecological Consequences," in Nature (1973).
Hays has also founded and served as the original leader of the CLIM.A.P. project.
Hays holds a BA from Harvard University, an MS from Ohio State University, and a PhD from Columbia University.