Anthony Janetos, professor and chair of the Earth and Environment Department at Boston University, died Aug. 6, 2019, of pancreatic cancer. He was 64.
Janetos graduated from Harvard in 1976 and earned a Ph.D. in biology in 1980 from Princeton. He worked for many years with the EPA and NASA. He examined the impact of humans on the natural world through air pollution, starting at the EPA and its acid-rain program.
This led to work on climate change, landscape dynamics, and remote sensing, which included eight years as a manager and team leader with NASA, founding its land-cover and land-use change program. During the next 15 years, he was an international leader in climate-change science, science policy, and global environmental assessments. He advised the U.N. and others and was the director of the Joint Global Change Research Institute of the University of Maryland.
In 2013, Janetos became the director of Boston University’s Pardee Center for the Study of the Longer-Range Future and professor in the College of Arts and Sciences. University President Bob Brown wrote that “in only a few short years with us, he had an enormous impact.”
Janetos is survived by his wife, Valerie; and two children.
Graduate memorials are prepared by the APGA.