Lake Tahoe scholar joins DRI

Nevada’s Desert Research Institute (DRI), a scientific arm of the state’s higher education system, scored a coup last week by getting Charles Goldman as an adjunct professor in water sciences.

Goldman, who studies freshwater lakes, has devoted much of his career over the past half century to study of Lake Tahoe and is regarded as the preeminent scientific authority on the lake. The University of California at Davis began studying Lake Tahoe when he joined the campus in 1959. He has focused much of his efforts on the issue of the lake’s clarity.

Goldman is the founder of the Tahoe Research Group at UC Davis and also sits on the board of directors of the Tahoe-Baikal Institute, which studies the common environmental problems of Lake Tahoe and Siberia’s Lake Baikal.

In 2003, DRI and the Tahoe Research Group formed a partnership in the Tahoe Center for Environmental Sciences housed at Sierra Nevada College in Incline Village.

Goldman is coauthor of Limnology and editor of two other books, Environmental Quality and Water Development and Primary Productivity in Aquatic Environments. In 2004, he received a lifetime achievement award from the American Society of Limnology and Oceanography. In 1998, he was awarded the Albert Einstein World Prize in Science.