François MM Morel

François MM Morel (born February 11, 1944 in Versailles ) is a French geoscientist (environmental chemistry, geochemistry, biochemistry). He is one of the founders of the field of biogeochemistry .

Life

Morel studied at the University of Grenoble with a license in applied mathematics in 1966 and a diploma as hydraulic engineer in 1967. He then went to Caltech as a Fulbright Scholar , where he received his master's degree in 1968 and his doctorate in engineering in 1971. The dissertation was on red blood cell chemistry. As a post-doctoral student at Caltech, he developed computer programs for calculating complex chemical equilibria in the aquatic environment. The programs were widely used (the Minteq program of the Environmental Protection Agency is also a further development).

In 1973 he became assistant professor and later professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (1974 to 1977 Doherty Junior Professor, 1993/94 Turner Professor) in the department of civil engineering and environmental technology. In 1994 he became Professor of Geosciences at Princeton University (from 1996 Albert G. Blanke Professor of Geosciences ). Morel was director of the Ralph M. Parsons Laboratory from 1991 to 1994 and director of the Princeton Environmental Institute (PEI) from 1998 to 2006 and from 2014 to 2017.

He was also the founder and ten year director of the Center for Environmental Bioinorganic Chemistry (CEBIC) in Princeton, where he brought together biochemists and oceanographers.

From 1982 to 1995 he was visiting scholar at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution . From 1987 to 1995 he was visiting professor at the École Normale Supérieure in Paris and in 1986 he was research director at the École des Mines in Paris and from 1996 he also taught as a visiting professor at the University of Paris VI. In 2001 he was visiting professor at the University of Louis Pasteur. In 2010 he was Einstein Professor at the Chinese Academy of Sciences.

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He researches the interaction of trace elements with aquatic bacteria and algae and especially the role of metals in the global carbon and nitrogen cycle via microorganisms in the sea and on land. To do this, he investigated which metals microorganisms and especially phytoplankton need in the sea and in what form and what is toxic to them. One of his essential findings was that the chemical compound (or the complex or the ionic form) - the speciation - and not just the concentration in which trace elements are present in the ocean, are of decisive importance.

He also researched the adsorption of trace elements on minerals, dynamics of colloids in water, photochemical reactions, complex formation of metals with inorganic and organic compounds.

He and his group discovered the only known cadmium enzyme, a cadmium-based carbon anhydrase, with which marine phytoplankton extract inorganic carbon for photosynthesis. Before that it was thought that cadmium as a toxic metal played no role in living things. His discovery explained the distribution of cadmium in oceans and its role in controlling phytoplankton reproduction. The enzyme is flexible and can also use zinc instead of cadmium. A suggestion by Morel that large diatoms are more dependent on iron than the much smaller cyanobacteria was later confirmed by field studies.

He led a National Academy study on the effects of climate change on oceans through the increased dissolution of carbon dioxide and corresponding acidification. The study came to the conclusion that the effect on ocean life is smaller and slower due to the enzymatic adaptability of the microorganisms.

He was also known for research into the effects of mercury pollution in the ocean. Here, too, he found that the chemical compound in which the mercury is present is of crucial importance. He proved that the conditions in the sea are different from those in fresh water. Morel found that there was no significant change in the concentration of mercury in Pacific tuna over the past 30 years. According to Morel, methylmercury can form naturally in the ocean on the sea floor or in the deoxygenated pelagic. His expertise was crucial in a Californian court ruling in 2006 that mercury in marine fish and especially tuna mostly had natural causes and was therefore not a result of environmental pollution.

Memberships and honors

In 2012 he received the Dickson Prize in Science , 2001 the CC Patterson Medal of the Geochemical Society, 2010 the Award for Creative Advances in Environmental Science and Technology of the ACS and the ENI Environmental Award and in 2009 the Urey Medal of the European Association for Geochemistry, the Maurice Ewing Medal (2005) from the American Geophysical Union. He is a member of the American Association for the Advancement of Science , the National Academy of Sciences (2009) and the Istituto Veneti di Scienze, Lettre ed Arti and a Fellow of the Geochemical Society and American Geophysical Union . In 2009 he received the Distinguished Alumni Award from Caltech.

Fonts

Books:

• with Janet G. Hering: Principles and Applications of Aquatic Chemistry, Wiley-Interscience. 2nd Edition. 1993, ISBN 0-471-54896-0 . (first edition with Morel as sole author under the title Principles of aquatic chemistry. 1983)
• with David Dzombak: Surface Complexation Modeling: Hydrous Ferric Oxide. Wiley-Interscience, 1990.

Articles (selection):

• with MA Anderson: The influence of aqueous iron chemistry on the uptake of iron by the coastal diatom Thalassiosira weissflogii. In: Limnology and Oceanography. Volume 27, 1982, pp. 789-813.
• with RP Mason and WF Fitzgerald: The biogeochemical cycling of elemental mercury: anthropogenic influences. In: Geochimica et Cosmochimica Acta. Volume 58, 1994, pp. 3191-3198.
• with JR Reinfelder et al: Zinc and carbon co-limitation of marine phytoplankton. In: Nature. Volume 369, 1994, p. 740.
• with RP Mason and JR Reinfelder: Bioaccumulation of mercury and methylmercury. In: Water, Air, and Soil Pollution. Volume 80, 1995, pp. 915-921.
• with AML Kraepiel and M. Amyot: The chemical cycle and bioaccumulation of mercury. In: Annual Review of Ecology and Systematics. Volume 29, 1998, pp. 543-566.
• with U. Riebesell et al: Reduced calcification of marine plankton in response to increased atmospheric CO2. In: Nature. Volume 407, 2000, p. 364.
• with TW Lane: A biological function for cadmium in marine diatoms. In: Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA. Volume 97, 2000, pp. 4627-4631.
• with NM Price: The biogeochemical cycles of trace metals in the oceans. In: Science. Volume 300, 2003, pp. 944-947.
• with TW Lane: Biochemistry: a cadmium enzyme from a marine diatom. In: Nature. Volume 435, 2005, p. 42.

Web links

• Morel Trace Metals Group , Princeton
• Biography at Princeton

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Birth dates and career dates American Men and Women of Science , Thomson Gale 2004.