Wallace S. Broecker

Passed away in February 2019. He was newberry Professor of Earth and Environmental Sciences at Columbia’s Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory. His major research interest had been the ocean’s role in climate change. He was among the pioneers in radiocarbon and isotope dating, and the first person to recognize and name the Ocean Conveyor Belt. A prolific researcher, teacher, and author, he has published over 400 scientific articles and was the author or coauthor of several textbooks. Among those, stand out How To Build a Habitable Planet (1985), Greenhouse Puzzles (1998), Fossil Fuel CO2 and the Angry Climate Beast (2003), The Ocean’s Role in Climate Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow (2005), Fixing Climate: What Past Climate Changes Reveal About the Current Threat and How to Counter It (2008), The Great Ocean Conveyor: Discovering the Trigger for Abrupt Climate Change (2010) and A Geochemist in his Garden of Eden (2016)

In 1979, he was elected to membership in the National Academy of Sciences.

He was also a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, a Fellow of both the American and European Geophysical Unions, and a Foreign Member of the Royal Society. Among numerous other awards, in 2009 he received the Frontiers of Knowledge Award in Climate Change from the BBVA Foundation.