Rajendra Pachauri, an Indian economist and chair of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, first got an inkling that something special was about to happen when a large group of journalists turned up outside his office but wouldn’t tell him why they were there.
A few minutes later, the Nobel Prize committee announced that the IPCC and former US vice president Al Gore would share this year’s peace prize “for their efforts to build up and disseminate greater knowledge about man-made climate change, and to lay the foundations for the measures that are needed to counteract such change.” A delighted Pachauri paid tribute to the scientific community that won the award: “The experts and scientists are the backbone of the IPCC, and they provide the knowledge, which has contributed to our success.” In an interview with Physics Today, he expanded on what the award means to the IPCC and...
