Robert Rosner is a theoretical physicist, on the faculty of the University of Chicago since 1987, where he is the William E. Wrather Distinguished Service Professor in the departments of Astronomy & Astrophysics and Physics, as well as in the Enrico Fermi Institute, and the Harris School of Public Policy. He served as Argonne National Laboratory’s Chief Scientist and Associate Laboratory Director for Physical, Biological and Computational Sciences (2002–2005), and was Argonne’s Laboratory Director from 2005–2009; was the founding chair of the U.S. Department of Energy’s National Laboratory Directors Council (2007–2009); and is a member of the Board of Sponsors of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists. He was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2001, and to the Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters (as a Foreign Member) in 2004; he is also a Fellow of the American Physical Society. He was elected to the Presidential Line of the American Physical Society (APS) in 2020; and is its President in 2023.
Most of his scientific work has been related to fluid dynamics and plasma physics problems, as well as in applied mathematics and computational physics. Within the past decade, he has been increasingly involved in energy technologies, and in the public policy issues that relate to the development and deployment of various energy production and consumption technologies; and served as co-founding director of the Energy Policy Institute (EPIC) at the University of Chicago.