| Citation | Professor Andrew Knoll, Fisher Professor of Natural History, Department of Organismic and Evolutionary Biology, Harvard University
Andrew Knoll is a world leader in the study of the evolution of life on Earth and the potential for life to have existed on Mars. He was a pioneer in the use of isotopic chemostratigraphy and explored the influence of environmental evolution on major transitions in the history of life: the diversification of prokaryotes, the initial radiation of eukaryotes and, beginning near the end of the Neoproterozoic, the rise, diversification and extinctions of more complex organisms. He was instrumental in establishing the Ediacaran Period, the only geological period named since the 19th century.
|