Ellen Thomas (born 1950, Hengelo) is a Dutch-born environmental scientist and geologist specializing in marine micropaleontology and paleoceanography. She is the emerita Harold T Stearns Professor and the Smith Curator of Paleontology of the Joe Webb Peoples Museum of Natural History at Wesleyan University, and a senior research scientist at Yale University.

Academic career and research

Thomas attended the University of Utrecht (BSc, 1971; MSc 1975; and PhD, 1979). Thomas studies environmental and climate change over geologic timescales, specializing in the study of benthic foraminifera. Thomas was the first scientist to discover a mass extinction in benthic foraminifera close to the Paleocene-Eocene boundary, now recognized as a result of the climate event known as the

Paleocene–Eocene Thermal Maximum The Paleocene–Eocene thermal maximum (PETM), alternatively (ETM1), and formerly known as the "Initial Eocene" or "", was a time period with a more than 5–8 °C global average temperature rise across the event. This climate event o ...

, for which she received the 2012 Maurice Ewing medal of the American Geophysical Union and Ocean Naval Research. Thomas was editor-in-chief of the journal '' Paleoceanography and Paleoclimatology'' from 2015 to 2019, published by the American Geophysical Union.

Awards and honors

* 2011 - Fellow AAAS (American Association for the Advancement of Science). * 2012 -

Maurice Ewing Medal Two international geophysical societies offer awards each year which are named in honor of Maurice Ewing; these are the American Geophysical Union and the Society of Exploration Geophysicists: __TOC__ AGU Ewing Medal The Maurice Ewing Medal is awa ...

of the American Geophysical Union. * 2016 - Brady Medal of The Micropalaeontological Society. * 2019 - Fellow GSA (Geological Society of America) * 2020 - Joseph A. Cushman Medal for Excellence in Foraminiferal Research * 2022 - BBVA Foundation Frontiers of Knowledge Award.https://www.eurekalert.org/news-releases/976295 in Climate Change, shared with J. C. Zachos

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Thomas, Ellen 1950 births Living people American climatologists Women climatologists Dutch climatologists 20th-century American geologists 20th-century Dutch geologists Environmental scientists People from Hengelo Dutch emigrants to the United States Utrecht University alumni Wesleyan University faculty Micropaleontologists