V. (Ram) Ramanathan, Ph.D., is the Victor C. Alderson Professor of Applied Ocean Sciences and Atmospheric Sciences at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography (SIO) at the University of California San Diego.

An atmospheric scientist, Ramanathan focuses his research on global climate dynamics, the greenhouse effect, aerosols, clouds, and the earth radiation budget. He has contributed more than 150 publications to journals and books.

Ramanathan is the Director of the Scripps/UCSD Center for Atmospheric Sciences and the co-chief scientist of the Asian Brown Cloud Project and the Indian Ocean Experiment (INDOEX), which led to the discovery of the South Asian brown haze and it radiative forcing. Ramanathan is widely recognized for his work in understanding the effects of trace gases, clouds and aerosols in the atmosphere. He was the first to demonstrate in 1975 that CFCs are major greenhouse gases. In the early 1980s, he led a study that concluded that numerous trace gases are significant contributors to global warming. In the late 1980s, he led a NASA study that demonstrated that clouds have a net global cooling effect on the planet. He is working now on developing unmanned aircraft observing systems for atmospheric and climate studies.

Ramanathan has received numerous honors, including the Buys Ballot Medal of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Sciences, given once a decade; the VOLVO environmental prize for pioneering work related to the greenhouse effect; and the Rossby Medal, the highest award given by the American Meteorological Society. He is a member of the National Academy of Sciences, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and Academea Europea (foreign member).

Ramanathan earned his bachelor's degree in 1965 from the Annamalai University in India, and his M.Sc. in 1970 from the Indian Institute of Science. He earned his Ph.D. in Planetary Atmospheres in 1974 from the State University of New York at Stony Brook.