Dr. Gerald “Jerry” R. North is a Distinguished Professor (Emeritus), Texas A&M University.

Dr. North graduated from the University of Tennessee in 1960 with a BS degree in Physics and Ph.D. in Physics from the University of Wisconsin–Madison in 1966. From 1966-1968, he worked at the University of Pennsylvania as a postdoc and later obtained a tenure track position at the University of Missouri-St. Louis leading to the rank of full professor (1968-1978). From 1974–75, he was a Senior Visiting Scientist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research. He moved to NASA Goddard Space Flight Center in 1978, where he was lead proposer with Tom Wilheit and Otto Thiele for the Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission. He joined Texas A&M University in 1986 as University Distinguished Professor of Meteorology and Oceanography. He is the inaugural Holder of the Harold J. Haynes Endowed Chair in Geosciences at Texas A&M University (2003-2008), and Head of the Department of Atmospheric Sciences (1995-2003).

Dr. North's research interests include solving mathematical and statistical problems in climate science. From 2005 to 2006, he chaired the United States National Research Council committee investigating surface temperature reconstructions for the last 2,000 years, set up at the request of Representative Sherwood Boehlert, chairman of the U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Science. Their report, published in July 2006, is known as the North Report. He is the 2008 recipient of the Jule Charney Award of the American Meteorological Society and gave the Robert E. Horton Lecture in Hydrology for 2018, “For pioneering contributions to understanding the statistical nature of precipitation and to measuring precipitation from space.” North’s new book: The Rise of Climate Science, a Memoir by Gerald R. North will be published by Texas A&M Press in early 2019.