Geerat Vermeij

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Geerat Jacobus Vermeij (born September 28, 1946 in Sappemeer ) is a Dutch paleontologist , zoologist ( malacologist , marine ecology) and evolutionary biologist .

Vermeij has been blind since she was three. He graduated from Princeton University with a bachelor's degree in 1968 and Yale University with a master's degree in 1970 and a PhD in biology and geology in 1971.

In 1971 he became an instructor and later a professor at the University of Maryland at College Park . From 1977 he was also a Research Associate of the Smithsonian Institution at the National Museum of Natural History. He was also affiliated with the University of Washington's Friday Harbor Laboratory for many years. Since 1989 he has been Professor of Geology at the University of California, Davis .

He is interested in marine shallow water communities (both recent and fossil) and in conclusions about the evolution from the fossil record, especially of mollusks (mussels and snails). Since he is blind, he feels morphological differences in the fossils and recent bowls - the title of his autobiography is therefore Privileged Hands .

In 1987 he set up his escalation theory, according to which the evolutionary pressure is mainly generated by hunters and food competitors.

In 1992 he became a MacArthur Fellow . In 1975/76 he was a Guggenheim Fellow . In 2006 he received the Paleontological Society Medal and in 2000 the Daniel Giraud Elliot Medal . In 1997 he was President of the American Society of Naturalists. He is a member of the American Association for the Advancement of Science . In 2016 Vermeij received the Addison Emery Verrill Medal .

He has been married since 1972 and has one child.

Fonts

  • Evolution and Escalation: An Ecological History of Life , Princeton University Press 1987
  • A Natural History of Shells , Princeton University Press 1993
  • Privileged Hands: a scientific life , Freeman, San Francisco 1997
  • Nature: An Economic History , Princeton University Press 2004
  • The Evolutionary World: How Adaptation Explains Everything from Seashells to Civilization , New York: Thomas Dunne Books 2010
  • Biogeography and adaptation: patterns of marine life , Harvard University Press 1978

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Life data according to American Men and Women of Science , Thomson Gale 2004
personal data
SURNAME Vermeij, Geerat
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Vermeij, Geerat Jacobus
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Dutch paleontologist
DATE OF BIRTH September 28, 1946
PLACE OF BIRTH Sappemeer