John Perlin

I have written four highly acclaimed books on solar energy and forestry: A Golden Thread: 2500 Years of Solar Architecture and Technology; A Forest Journey: The Story of Wood and Civilization; From Space to Earth: The Story of Solar Electricity; and Let It Shine: The 6000 Year Story of Solar Energy. Harvard University Press has chosen A Forest Journey as a Harvard Classic in Science and World History and as one of the one-hundred great books published by the press. Nobel Laureate Dr. Walter Kohn invited me to join the department of physics at the University of California, Santa Barbara to collaborate on the movie The Power of the Sun, which tells the story of the evolution of the science of light and its role in the development of photovoltaics. I currently work under a NASA contract at the department of physics as a research scholar at the University of California, Santa Barbara and have lectured throughout the world on solar and forestry topics.