Jesse Ausubel

Jesse Ausubel has served since 1989 at The Rockefeller University, where he leads a program to elaborate the technical vision of a large, prosperous society with low harmful emissions that spares large amounts of land and sea for nature. As a Sloan Fellow of the National Academies, he helped organize the first United Nations World Climate Conference in 1979. He later conceived and led the first global Census of Marine Life. Recognition includes honorary doctorates from Dalhousie and St. Andrews Universities and an elected fellowship in the American Academy of Arts & Sciences. A lobster, Dinochelus ausubeli, is named in his honor, as well as a genus of Bryozoans, the Jessethoa. His lab now pioneers studies of naked DNA in seawater to assess the presence and abundance of marine species. Concurrent with his Rockefeller duties, Mr. Ausubel chairs the Richard Lounsbery Foundation. He assisted Torsten Wiesel and Alexander Bearn in establishing the Lewis Thomas Prize.