Koonin is professor of Theoretical Physics at the California Institute of Technology and has taken a leave of absence from his appointment to assume the position of chief scientist for BP, based in London. He was born in Brooklyn, New York and educated at the California Institute of Technology, receiving a B.S. in physics in 1972, and at MIT, where he received his Ph.D. in theoretical physics in 1975. He then joined the Caltech faculty in 1975, became full professor in 1981, serving as chairman of the faculty from 1989-1991. Professor Koonin served as provost of the Institute from 1995-2004. Early in his career, he was a research fellow at the Niels Bohr Institute from 1976-77 and an Alfred P. Sloan Foundation Fellow from 1977-79. In 1975-76, he received the Caltech Associated Students Teaching Award, and the Humboldt Senior Scientist Award in 1985. In 1999, he received the E.O. Lawrence Award in Physics from the Department of Energy. Koonin is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and has served on a number of advisory committees for the National Science Foundation, the Department of Energy, and the Department of Defense and its various national laboratories. He is a fellow of the American Physical Society, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. His research interests include theoretical nuclear, many-body, and computational physics, nuclear astrophysics, and global environmental science.