Alex Hall, an associate professor of Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences at UCLA, was born in Colorado and grew up outside Chicago. “I think it’s one of the most beautiful cities in the world,” he said, though he has a fondness too for his adopted hometown and his school. “I really love UCLA. It has a very democratic spirit because it’s a public institution, but it also has very high standards. I like that combination.” Read more about Hall below.
Q. What is your favorite word?
A. Yes.
Q. What inspires you?
A. The prospect of living in a future better than the present we live in now. I think that’s what motivates me to go to work every day.
Q. What is your favorite way to procrastinate?
A. Definitely reading the newspaper online. If I’m on my computer and getting a bit frustrated with the work I’m doing, I’ll go to the New York Times website and read the news and imagine I’m bettering myself, when in fact I’m delaying confronting something.
Q. How would you describe yourself in five words or fewer?
A. Driven and optimistic.
Q. If you could live in any time – past, present, or future – when would it be?
A. Ancient Greece, because I think it would be interesting to see a lot of the ideas we bat around today in a simpler and purer laboratory.
Q. What is your greatest extravagance?
A. I can always open my wallet for a good meal. I’m conservative with my finances, but if there’s one respect in which there is too much cash going out, it’s food.
Q. If you could take only one more journey, where would you go?
A. India. It’s the cradle of one of the great civilzations on the planet.
Q. What profession would you like to practice in your next life?
A. Landscape architecture or composing music would be pretty fascinating. I love thinking about the origins of the human species, so maybe studying that branch of anthropology. I have a lot of fantasies. I have a few lives planned out.
Q. What is your fondest childhood memory?
A. The one that comes to mind is a time when my mother baked several dozen chocolate chip cookies and left them out in the kitchen. Mom and dad went downstairs to watch TV in the basement, and I remember sneaking out and getting these cookies and getting away with it. it was the first time in my life I did something without someone else’s knowledge, and I knew I was deceiving someone. I felt this sense of freedom I’d never felt before. But I don’t steal!
Q. What is your most prized material possession?
A. I have an electric piano that I play a lot. I would feel pretty bad if something happened to it.
Q. What teacher or professor changed your life?
A. My advisor when I was a grad student. He’s probably the grandfather of the whole field of climate change and climate change modeling. He’s this short Japanese guy with white hair that flies all over. He was an incredibly enthusiastic and passionate person, and also a very brilliant scientist with amazing intuition into the way the world works.
Q. Who is the one person living or dead you would most like to meet for dinner?
A. There are a lot of people who are probably pretty interesting, but wouldn’t make very good dinner companions. But Ben Franklin – he was an interesting and accomplished person who also knew how to have a conversation.
To read about Hall’s panel on climate change in Los Angeles, click here.
*Photo by Aaron Salcido.