John Robert McNeill (born 1954) is an American environmental historian, author, and professor at Georgetown University. He is best known for "pioneering the study of environmental history". In 2000 he published Something New Under the Sun: An Environmental History of the Twentieth-Century World, which argues that human activity during the 20th century led to environmental changes on an unprecedented scale, primarily due to the energy system built around fossil fuels. Life and career McNeill was born on October 6, 1954, in Chicago, Illinois. His father was the noted University of Chicago historian William H. McNeill, with whom he published a book, The Human Web: A Bird's-eye View of World History, in 2003. He attended the University of Chicago Laboratory Schools. McNeill received his BA from Swarthmore College in 1975, then went on to Duke University where he completed his MA in 1977 and his PhD in 1981. In 1985 he became a faculty member at Georgetown University, where he serves in both the History Department and the Walsh School of Foreign Service. From 2003 he held the Cinco Hermanos Chair in Environmental History and International Affairs, until he was appointed a University Professor in 2006. He has written 7 books and edited or co-edited 17. He has held two Fulbright Awards, a Guggenheim fellowship, a MacArthur Grant, and a fellowship at the Woodrow Wilson Center. He was president of the American Society for Environmental History (2011–13) and headed the Research Division of the American Historical Association, as one of its three Vice Presidents (2012–15). He was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2017, awarded the Heineken Prize in History in 2018, and served as president of the American Historical Association in 2019. Research McNeill focuses on environmental history, a field in which he has been recognized as a pioneer. In 2000, he published his best-known book, Something New Under the Sun: An Environmental History of the Twentieth-Century World, which argues that human activity during the 20th century led to environmental change on an unprecedented scale. He notes that before 1900, human activity did change environments, but not on the scale witnessed in the 20th century. His analysis of the reasons behind the scale of modern environmental change foregrounds fossil fuels, population growth, technological changes, and the pressures of international politics. His tone has been praised for being dispassionate, impartial, and lacking the moral outrage that often