Andrew Herbert Knoll (born 1951) is the Fisher Research Professor of Natural History[1] and a Research Professor of Earth and Planetary Sciences[2] at Harvard University.[2][3] Born in West Reading, Pennsylvania, in 1951, Andrew Knoll graduated from Lehigh University with a Bachelor of Arts in 1973[2][3] and received his Ph.D. from Harvard University in 1977[3] for a dissertation titled "Studies in Archean and Early Proterozoic Paleontology."[2] Knoll taught at Oberlin College for five years before returning to Harvard as a professor in 1982.[2] At Harvard, he serves in the departments of Organismic and Evolutionary Biology and Earth and Planetary Sciences.[1][2]
Scientific work
Andrew Knoll is best known for his contributions to Precambrianpaleontology and biogeochemistry. He has discovered microfossil records of early life in Spitsbergen, East Greenland, Siberia, China, Namibia, western North America, and Australia,[1] and was among the first to apply principles of taphonomy and paleoecology to their interpretation. He has also elucidated early records of skeletonized animals in Namibia and remarkable fossils of the EdiacaranDoushantuo Formation, China, preserved in exceptional cellular detail by early diagenetic phosphate precipitation. Knoll and colleagues authored the first paper to demonstrate strong stratigraphic variation in the carbon isotopic composition of carbonates and organic matter preserved in Neoproterozoic (1000–539 million years ago) sedimentary rocks, and Knoll's group also demonstrated that mid-Proterozoic carbonates display little isotopic variation through time, in contrast to both older and younger successions.
Knoll has longstanding interests in biomineralization, paleobotany, plankton evolution, and mass extinction.[1][2] Among other things, Knoll and his colleagues were the first to hypothesize that rapid build-up of carbon dioxide played a key role in end-Permian mass extinction, 252 million years ago. More generally, Knoll uses physiology as a conceptual bridge to integrate geochemical records of environmental change with paleontological records of biological history. He has also served as a member of the science team for NASA's MER rover mission to Mars.[4]
Honors include membership in the US National Academy of Sciences,[5] the American Academy of Arts and Sciences,[6] the American Philosophical Society,[7] the American Academy of Microbiology, and Foreign Membership in the Royal Society of London and the National Academy of Sciences, India, as well as the Paleontological Society Medal, the Wollaston Medal of the Geological Society (London), the Moore Medal of the Society for Sedimentary Geology, the Oparin Medal of the International Society for the Study of the Origin of Life, the Sven Berggren Prize of the Royal Physiographic Society, Sweden, the Penrose Medal of the Geological Society of America, and both the Walcott and Thompson medals of the US National Academy of Sciences. He received the Phi Beta Kappa Book Award for "Life on a Young Planet: The First Three Billion Years of Evolution on Earth". In 2018, Knoll received the International Prize for Biology, conferred in Tokyo in the presence of the Emperor and Empress of Japan. In 2022, he received the Crafoord Prize in Geosciences.
Books
2004 – Life on a Young Planet: The First Three Billion Years of Evolution on Earth. Princeton University Press, Princeton NJ, 277 pp., ISBN978-0-691-12029-4
2007 – The Evolution of Primary Producers in the Sea. Falkowski, P. and A.H. Knoll, Eds. Elsevier, Burlington MA, 441 pp., ISBN978-0-12-370518-1
2012 – Fundamentals of Geobiology. Knoll, A.H., D.E. Canfield and K. Konhauser, Eds. Wiley-Blackwell, Chichester UK, 443 pp., ISBN978-1-4051-8752-7
2013 – Biology: How Life Works. Morris, J., D. Hartl, A.H. Knoll, R. Lue, and others. Macmillan. 2nd Edition 2016: ISBN978-1-319-06779-3; 4th Edition 2022.
2021 – A Brief History of Earth: Four Billion Years in Eight Chapters. Knoll, A.H. Custom House, New York NY, 272 pp., ISBN978-0-06-285391-2
Selected papers
Knoll, Andrew H.; Carroll, Sean B. (25 June 1999). "Early Animal Evolution: Emerging Views from Comparative Biology and Geology". Science. 284 (5423). American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS): 2129–2137. doi:10.1126/science.284.5423.2129. ISSN0036-8075. PMID10381872.
Knoll, Andrew H.; Walter, Malcolm R.; Narbonne, Guy M.; Christie-Blick, Nicholas (30 July 2004). "A New Period for the Geologic Time Scale". Science. 305 (5684). American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS): 621–622. doi:10.1126/science.1098803. ISSN0036-8075. PMID15286353. S2CID32763298.
Knoll, Andrew H.; Bambach, Richard K.; Payne, Jonathan L.; Pruss, Sara; Fischer, Woodward W. (2007). "Paleophysiology and end-Permian mass extinction". Earth and Planetary Science Letters. 256 (3–4). Elsevier BV: 295–313. Bibcode:2007E&PSL.256..295K. doi:10.1016/j.epsl.2007.02.018. ISSN0012-821X.
Wilson, Jonathan P.; Knoll, Andrew H.; Holbrook, N. Michele; Marshall, Charles R. (2008). "Modeling fluid flow in Medullosa, an anatomically unusual Carboniferous seed plant". Paleobiology. 34 (4). Cambridge University Press (CUP): 472–493. Bibcode:2008Pbio...34..472W. doi:10.1666/07076.1. ISSN0094-8373. S2CID54194897.
Sperling, E.A., C.A. Frieder, P.R. Girguis, A.V. Raman, L.A. Levin, and A.H. Knoll (2013) Oxygen, ecology, and the Cambrian radiation of animals. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, USA 110: 13446–13451.
Wordsworth, Robin; Knoll, Andrew H.; Hurowitz, Joel; Baum, Mark; Ehlmann, Bethany L.; Head, James W.; Steakley, Kathryn (2021). "A coupled model of episodic warming, oxidation and geochemical transitions on early Mars". Nature Geoscience. 14 (3). Springer Science and Business Media LLC: 127–132. arXiv:2103.06736. Bibcode:2021NatGe..14..127W. doi:10.1038/s41561-021-00701-8. ISSN1752-0894. S2CID263788799.
