J. William Schopf

James William Schopf ( born September 27, 1941 in Urbana, Illinois) is an American paleontologist and international recognized expert in the earliest life forms on Earth ( Precambrian Paleobiology ). He also deals with paleobotany. His botanical and mycological author abbreviation is " JWSchopf ".

Schopf studied at Oberlin College (Bachelor 1963) and Harvard University, where in 1965 he took his master's degree and received his doctorate in biology at Elso S. Barghoorn 1968. After that, he was Assistant Professor and from 1973 Professor of Paleobiology at the University of California, Los Angeles ( UCLA). Since 1984 he was the Director of The Center for the Study of Evolution and the Origin of Life, which he founded.

In 1965 he published with Elso S. Barghoorn over about one billion years old stromatolites from the Australian Bitter Spring Formation, which revitalized the research field after a first discoveries by Barghoorn and Tyler 1954 following a halt. He discovered in 1993 in Western Australia ( Apex Chert, Warrawoona Group) 3.5 billion years old traces of life from single-celled organisms, the previously oldest fossils. However, his interpretation was found to be traces of life of cyanobacteria in 2002 by Martin D. Brasier (Oxford) in question and interpreted as chemical hydrothermal formations.

From 1969 to 1982 he was a member of the Space Science Advisory Committee of NASA and from 1968 to 1971 part of the team of NASA to study the moon rock. In 1997 he received the Group Achievement Award from NASA. He was a member of the international stratigraphic commissions for the Precambrian and Cambrian - Precambrian the border.

In 1974 he was awarded the Charles Schuchert Award. In 1989 he received the AI Oparin Medal from the International Society for the Study of the Origin of Life, 1986, the Mark Clark Thompson Medal from the National Academy of Sciences, 1977 Alan T. Waterman Award of the National Science Foundation and the 1966 New York Botanical Garden Award. 1973 and 1988 he was a Guggenheim Fellow in 1997 and Senior Research Fellow of the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation. 1973 to 1987 he was co-editor of the journal Origins of Life. Schopf 2012 was awarded with the Paleontological Society Medal, 2013, Charles Doolittle Walcott Medal of the.

Schopf is a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the National Academy of Sciences, the American Association for the Advancement of Science and the Linnean Society of London. He is the brother of Thomas J. M. Schopf.

Writings

  • Cradle of life. The discovery of the earth 's earliest fossils, Princeton University Press 1999
  • Publisher: Life's origin. The beginnings of biological evolution. University of California Press 2002
  • Publisher: Earth's earliest biosphere: its origin and evolution, Princeton University Press 1983
  • Publisher: Evolution! Facts and Fallacies, Academic Press 1999
  • Publisher: Major events in the history of life, Jones and Bartlett, 1992 ( UCLA Symposium 1991)
  • Published by Cornelis Klein: The proterozoic biosphere: a multidisciplinary study, Cambridge University Press 1992
  • Publisher Charles Marshall: Evolution and the molecular revolution, Jones and Bartlett 1996
  • Solution to Darwin 's dilemma: Discovery of the missing Precambrian record of life, Proc. NAS, 97, 2000, 6947
Urbana (Illinois) International Plant Names Index Integrated Authority File
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