Ellen Thomas (scientist)

Ellen Thomas (born 1950, Hengelo)[1] is a Dutch-born environmental scientist and geologist specializing in marine micropaleontology and paleoceanography. She is the emerita Harold T Stearns Professor and the Smith Curator of Paleontology of the Joe Webb Peoples Museum of Natural History at Wesleyan University, and a senior research scientist at Yale University.

Academic career and research

Thomas attended the University of Utrecht (BSc, 1971; MSc 1975; and PhD, 1979).[2] Thomas studies environmental and climate change over geologic timescales, specializing in the study of benthic foraminifera. Thomas was the first scientist to discover a mass extinction in benthic foraminifera close to the Paleocene-Eocene boundary,[3] now recognized as a result of the climate event known as the Paleocene–Eocene Thermal Maximum, for which she received the 2012 Maurice Ewing medal of the American Geophysical Union and Ocean Naval Research.[4]

Thomas was editor-in-chief of the journal Paleoceanography and Paleoclimatology from 2015 to 2019, published by the American Geophysical Union.[5]

Awards and honors

  • 2011 - Fellow AAAS (American Association for the Advancement of Science).[6]
  • 2012 - Maurice Ewing Medal of the American Geophysical Union.[4]
  • 2016 - Brady Medal of The Micropalaeontological Society.[7]
  • 2019 - Fellow GSA (Geological Society of America)
  • 2020 - Joseph A. Cushman Medal for Excellence in Foraminiferal Research
  • 2022 - BBVA Foundation Frontiers of Knowledge Award.[8] in Climate Change, shared with J. C. Zachos

References

  1. ^ Digitaal Album Promotorum Archived 2018-03-15 at the Wayback Machine at Utrecht University.
  2. ^ "Career Profile, Ellen Thomas, Micropaleontologist". awg.org.
  3. ^ "Development of Cenozoic deep-sea benthic foraminiferal faunas in Antarctic waters" (PDF). Geological Society, London, Special Publications.
  4. ^ a b "Ellen Thomas: 2012 Maurice Ewing Medal Winner". agu.org.
  5. ^ "Editorial Board". agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/. doi:10.1002/(ISSN)1944-9186.
  6. ^ Allen, Summer (December 12, 2014). "5 Things About Me: Micropaleontologist/Paleoceanographer Ellen Thomas". aaas.org.
  7. ^ Brady Medal 2016
  8. ^ "Paleoclimatologists James Zachos and Ellen Thomas win the Frontiers of Knowledge Award in Climate Change for identifying a "greenhouse effect" 56 million years ago that serves to predict the destructive impacts of today's human-induced global warming".