Daniel Yergin
Carnot Prize Recipient
2015
Daniel Yergin was the recipient of the 2015 Carnot Prize and is vice chairman of the research firm IHS and a world-recognized authority on global energy policy and markets. His most recent book, The Quest: Energy, Security and the Remaking of the Modern World (2011), concludes with the story of Sadi Carnot. The Quest has been hailed as “a masterly piece of work” by The Economist and The New York Times said it is “necessary reading for chief executive officers, conservationists, lawmakers, generals, spies, tech geeks, thriller writers.” Yergin won the Pulitzer Prize for his book, The Prize: The Epic Quest for Oil, Money and Power (1991), which has been translated into 19 languages. Both The Prize and another book, Commanding Heights: The Battle for the World Economy (2002), were made into PBS/BBC television series.
Yergin earned his B.A. from Yale University and his Ph.D. from Cambridge University in England, where he was a Marshall Scholar. Prior to founding Cambridge Energy Research Associates, which was acquired by IHS in 2004, he taught at the Harvard Business School and the Harvard Kennedy School of government. He is a member of several organizations, including the National Petroleum Council and the U.S. Secretary of Energy’s Advisory Board. He is a trustee of the Brookings Institution and a director of the Council on Foreign Relations and the New America Foundation. He is also on the advisory board of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Energy Initiative and the Yale University Climate and Energy Institute. In 2014, he received a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Prime Minister of India and the James Schlesinger Medal for Energy Security from the U.S. Department of Energy.