Yale Daily News – Johnson recently received the Wilbur Cross Medal from the Yale University Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, where he earned his Ph.D. in 1989. In this profile, he talks about his education, his paleontological discoveries, the climate crisis and his work as Sant Director of the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History.
“The rewarding thing is that I feel every day that I’m doing a job that really matters to people and to the future,” Johnson is quoted as saying. A lifelong “museum-loving kid” and now a participant in the United Nations’ Framework Convention on Climate Change, he believes that museums such as the Smithsonian play an important role in preserving the planet’s history and communicating with the public so that solutions to environmental crises might be found.
Johnson, who majored in geology and fine arts at Amherst, also spoke about his career and worldview last year in episode 10 of the College’s Bicentennial podcast.