Naomi Oreskes is Full Professor of History and Director of the Program in Science Studies at the University of California, San Diego. Having started her professional career as a field geologist, she now focuses her research on the historical development of scientific knowledge, methods, and practices in the earth and environmental sciences.

Oreskes is a 1994 recipient of the National Science Foundation's Young Investigator Award, and she has served as a consultant to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the U.S. Nuclear Waste Technical Review Board on the use and evaluation of computer models Since receiving her B.Sc. in mining geology from the Royal School of Mines Imperial College, University of London, and her Ph.D. from Stanford University, Oreskes has taught at Stanford, Dartmouth, Harvard and New York University.

In 2004, Oreskes delivered the George Sarton Memorial Lecture at the American Association for the Advancement of Science on the topic "Consensus in Science: How Do We Know We're Not Wrong?" That lecture then formed the basis for a widely cited essay, "The Scientific Consensus on Climate Change" (Science 306: 1686), and also for op-ed pieces in the Washington Post and San Francisco Chronicle.

Oreskes's work on climate science has been noted in The New Yorker, USA Today, and the Voice of America: Nightline Africa, and her work is cited by the Royal Society in its "A guide to facts and fictions about climate change."

Professor Oreskes's most recent book is Plate Tectonics: An Insider's History of the Modern Theory of the Earth (with Homer Le Grand, Westview Press, 2001), which was cited by Library Journal as one of the best science and technology books of 2002, and by Choice as an outstanding academic title of 2003. Her other publications include The Rejection of Continental Drift: Theory and Method in American Earth Science (Oxford University Press, 1999); "Verification, validation, and confirmation of numerical models in the earth sciences" (Science 263: 641-646, 1994); and "Objectivity or Heroism: On the Invisibility of Women in Science" (Osiris 11: 87-133, 1996).

She is a Fellow of the Geological Society of America and a member of the American Geophysical Union, the Geological Society of London, the Society of Economic Geologists, the History of Earth Sciences Society, the History of Science Society, and the International Commission for the History of Geology.

She is currently completing "Science on a Mission: American Oceanography in the Cold War and Beyond," to be published by the University of Chicago Press in 2006.