Steven Chu To Speak At Harvard Commencement

U.S. Energy Secretary Steven Chu will be Harvard University's commencement speaker this spring.

Harvard President Drew Faust said in making the announcement Thursday that Chu is an "eloquent exponent of thoughtful, creative approaches" to global warming and alternative energy sources.

Chu was co-recipient of the Nobel Prize in physics in 1997 for his role in developing methods to cool and trap atoms with laser light.

He is a former professor at Stanford and the University of California, Berkeley, and was director of the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory until 2008.

Commencement is scheduled for June 4.

Previous speakers have included "Harry Potter" author J.K. Rowling last year and Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates in 2007.