J. William Schopf

J. William Schopf
Born (1941-09-27) September 27, 1941 (age 83)
Urbana, Illinois, U.S.
Other namesBill Schopf
Alma materOberlin College, Harvard University
Known forMicrofossils
Spouses
Julie Morgan
​
​
(m. 1966; div. 1979)​
Jane Shen-Miller
​
(m. 1980)​
ChildrenJames Christopher
AwardsMary Clark Thompson Medal (1986)
Oparin Medal (1989)
Paleontological Society Medal (2012)
Charles Doolittle Walcott Medal (2013)
Scientific career
FieldsPaleobiology
Evolutionary biology
InstitutionsUniversity of California Los Angeles
Websiteepss.ucla.edu/people/faculty/594/

James William Schopf (born September 27, 1941) is an American paleobiologist and professor of earth sciences at the University of California Los Angeles.[1][2] He is also Director of the Center for the Study of Evolution and the Origin of Life, and a member of the Department of Earth and Space Sciences, the Institute of Geophysics and Planetary Physics, and the Molecular Biology Institute at UCLA. He is most well known for his study of Precambrian prokaryotic life in Australia's Apex chert. Schopf has published extensively in the peer reviewed literature about the origins of life on Earth. He is the first to discover Precambrian microfossils in stromatolitic sediments of Australia (1965), South Africa (1966), Russia (1977), India (1978), and China (1984).[3] He served as NASA's principal investigator of lunar samples during 1969–1974.[4][5]

  1. ^ Hall, Brian K.; Hallgrimsson, Benedikt (2008). Strickberger's Evolution (4 ed.). Sudbury, Mass. (US): Jones and Bartlett Publishers. p. 125. ISBN 978-0-7637-0066-9.
  2. ^ Wolpert, Stuart (December 12, 2012). "Professor awarded Paleontological Society Medal". UCLA. University of California Los Angeles. Archived from the original on April 16, 2016. Retrieved October 7, 2014.
  3. ^ "J. William Schopf Bio". John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation. Archived from the original on October 12, 2014. Retrieved October 7, 2014.
  4. ^ Ponnamperuma, C.; Kvenvolden, K.; Chang, S.; Johnson, R.; Pollock, G.; Philpott, D.; Kaplan, I.; Smith, J.; Schopf, J. W.; Gehrke, C.; Hodgson, G.; Breger, I. A.; Halpern, B.; Duffield, A.; Krauskopf, K.; Barghoorn, E.; Holland, H.; Keil, K. (1970). "Search for organic compounds in the lunar dust from the Sea of Tranquillity". Science. 167 (3918): 760–762. Bibcode:1970Sci...167..760P. doi:10.1126/science.167.3918.760. PMID 17781583. S2CID 36491950.
  5. ^ Grymes, R.A. (2011). "Pioneers of astrobiology. J. William Schopf". Astrobiology. 11 (1): 9–14. doi:10.1089/ast.2010.1129. PMID 21294675.