Judith McKenzie
Judith Ann McKenzie (born May 4, 1942 in Pittsburgh , Pennsylvania ) is an American geologist who deals with sedimentology .
McKenzie first studied chemistry at the University of Colorado in Boulder with a master's degree in 1970 and then marine geology and geochemistry at the Scripps Institute of Oceanography in La Jolla and at the ETH Zurich , where she received her doctorate in 1976. At the ETH she set up a laboratory for isotope geochemistry and taught chemical sedimentology and limnogeology. In 1985 she became an Associate Professor at the University of Florida in Gainesville and from 1987 she returned to the ETH, where she received a full professorship in 1996. She is now Professor Emeritus.
It deals with clues to climate change and environmental changes from marine sediments and deposits in lakes. In addition, she studied current geological systems such as the Great Barrier Reef in Australia, hypersaline lagoons in Brazil or geochemical cycles in lakes in Switzerland, where she also examined the influence of humans. She is also investigating the role of bacteria, for example in dolomite and limestone formation, both in the present and in the history of the earth. She is involved in the international Ocean Drilling Program and coordinates the Swiss contribution to the Integrated Ocean Drilling Program (IODP).
Among other things, she also examines the earliest traces of life on earth such as stromatolites, which are grown at the ETH in the laboratory of Crisogono Vasconcelos, where experimental comparisons are made between recent and fossil formations. This is of particular importance, since doubts about the interpretation of these oldest traces of life as relics of biological formations had surfaced in the 2000s.
From 2002 to 2006 she was President of the International Association of Sedimentologists. McKenzie is a Fellow of the American Geophysical Union (1999) and a member of the Royal Danish Academy of Sciences and Arts (2006).
In 2006 she received the Lamarck Medal of the European Geosciences Union. In 2008 she received the Gustav Steinmann Medal for her “outstanding contributions to biogeochemistry, geomicrobiology and climate history” (laudatory speech). In 2017 she was awarded the William H. Twenhofel Medal .
literature
- Ursula Binggeli: Judith McKenzie, earth scientist (USA / Switzerland). In: When it comes to the sausage, I fight. 16 portraits of new Swiss nationals. Limmat Verlag , 2012. ISBN 978-3-857-91650-2
Web links
Individual evidence
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | McKenzie, Judith |
| ALTERNATIVE NAMES | McKenzie, Judith Ann (full name) |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | American geologist |
| DATE OF BIRTH | May 4, 1942 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Pittsburgh , Pennsylvania |