Andrew Knoll

Fisher Research Professor of Natural History, Harvard University

For many years, Andy Knoll has worked to build an integrative history of our planet and the life it supports.  Drawing on field research on five continents, Knoll has discovered fossils that document the deep history of life, as well as chemical signatures that record how surface environments have changed through time.  He has also contributed to our understanding of early animals, the early evolution of land plants, and marine plankton, and has used insights from physiology to understand past mass extinctions and their relevance to 21st century global change. Knoll served on the science team for NASA’s MER mission to Mars and maintains an active interest in planetary research.  Additionally, he chaired the subcommission of the International Commission of Stratigraphy that established the Ediacaran Period, the first new period of the geologic time scale to be ratified in more than a century.  His books include Life on a Young Planet (2003), A Brief History of Earth: Four Billion Years in Eight Chapters (2021), and several edited volumes.

Honors include the Walcott and Thompson medals of the US National Academy of Sciences, the Paleontological Society Medal, the Wollaston Medal of the Geological Society (London), the International Prize for Biology, and the Crafoord Prize in Geosciences. Knoll is a member of the National Academy of Sciences, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and the American Philosophical Society, and a Foreign Member of the Royal Society of London. 

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Crafoord Prize: https://www.crafoordprize.se/startsida