David W. Keith is a professor in the Department of the Geophysical Sciences at the University of Chicago. He joined the University of Chicago in April 2023. Keith previously served as the Gordon McKay Professor of Applied Physics for Harvard University's Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS) and professor of public policy for the Harvard Kennedy School at Harvard University. Early contributions include development of the first atom interferometer (considered a major breakthrough in atomic physics) and a Fourier-transform spectrometer used by NASA to measure atmospheric temperature and radiation transfer from space. A specialist on energy technology, climate science, and related public policy, and a pioneer in carbon capture and storage, Keith is a founder and board member of Carbon Engineering.
Keith's research spans multiple fields, including climate-related technology assessment and policy analysis, technology development, atmospheric sciences, and physics. He strongly advocates for research into geoengineering approaches for addressing climate change, including both carbon cycle engineering and solar radiation management approaches He emphasizes that their scientific, environmental, geopolitical, social, psychological and ethical implications all need to be carefully examined and understood, before there can be a meaningful consideration of their possible use.
Personal life
Keith was born in Wisconsin, where his father, a British-born field biologist and Canadian Wildlife Service civil servant named Anthony Keith. attended grad school. His mother, Deborah Gorham, was a history professor at Carleton University. Keith grew up in Great Britain and in Ottawa, Ontario. His stepmother was a biologist, like his father. Keith is a citizen of Canada, the United States, and the United Kingdom.
He enjoyed reading and birdwatching with his father and later took up cross-country skiing, rock climbing and winter camping. Keith's interest in physics was strengthened by spending several summers working in the National Research Council laser lab of experimental physicist Paul Corkum, beginning around the end of high school. In 1986 Keith graduated with a B.S. in physics from the University of Toronto.
He developed a love of the Arctic when he spent part of a gap year between undergraduate and graduate studies as a wildlife biologist's research assistant on Devon Island in Nunavut. Since then he has canoed on the Yellowknife River, hiked Holman Island and crossed rough sea ice from Iglulik to Arctic Bay on skis.
Academic career
In 1991, Keith earned his doctorate from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in the field of Experimental Physics. As a doctoral student at MIT, Keith was supervised by David E. Pritchard. Keith was a leader in the research group that created the first working atom interferometer, considered a major breakthrough in atomic physics. This work was the basis for his Ph.D. thesis, An Interferometer for Atoms (1991). After achieving this success, Keith chose to leave atomic physics, in part because one of the most obvious applications for atom interferometry was in building highly accurate gyroscopes for submarines carrying ballistic missiles.
Keith was a post-doctoral fellow at Carnegie Mellon University from 1991-1992, working with Granger Morgan to better understand uncertainty and expert judgments relating to climate change. Keith became an adjunct assistant professor there in 1992, though working primarily elsewhere. He received a National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) Global Change Fellowship for 1992–1994, which he used to work on climate modeling at the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) in Boulder, Colorado.
Keith spent the final year of his NOAA postdoc as a research scientist in the Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences at Harvard University where he remained from 1993 to 1999. He worked with atmospheric chemist James G. Anderson. Keith was the lead scientist in developing a Fourier-transform spectrometer with high radiometric accuracy which was used by NASA's high-altitude ER-2 research aircraft and by the Arrhenius satellite. Keith's sensors supported the measurement of atmospheric temperature and radiation transfer from space.
As of 1999, Keith became an assistant professor at the Department of Engineering and Public Policy at Carnegie Mellon University. By 2000, Keith and Ph.D. student James Rhodes were developing a framework for what would be called bioenergy with carbon capture and storage (BECCS). From the beginning, Keith has pointed out both advantages and concerns about possible approaches to climate mitigation.