Norman Dennis Newell (January 27, 1909 – April 18, 2005) was a professor of

geology Geology (). is a branch of natural science concerned with the Earth and other astronomical objects, the rocks of which they are composed, and the processes by which they change over time. Modern geology significantly overlaps all other Earth ...

Columbia University Columbia University in the City of New York, commonly referred to as Columbia University, is a Private university, private Ivy League research university in New York City. Established in 1754 as King's College on the grounds of Trinity Churc ...

, and chairman and

curator A curator (from , meaning 'to take care') is a manager or overseer. When working with cultural organizations, a curator is typically a "collections curator" or an "exhibitions curator", and has multifaceted tasks dependent on the particular ins ...

invertebrate Invertebrates are animals that neither develop nor retain a vertebral column (commonly known as a ''spine'' or ''backbone''), which evolved from the notochord. It is a paraphyletic grouping including all animals excluding the chordata, chordate s ...

paleontology Paleontology, also spelled as palaeontology or palæontology, is the scientific study of the life of the past, mainly but not exclusively through the study of fossils. Paleontologists use fossils as a means to classify organisms, measure ge ...

at the

American Museum of Natural History The American Museum of Natural History (AMNH) is a natural history museum on the Upper West Side of Manhattan in New York City. Located in Theodore Roosevelt Park, across the street from Central Park, the museum complex comprises 21 interconn ...

New York City New York, often called New York City (NYC), is the most populous city in the United States, located at the southern tip of New York State on one of the world's largest natural harbors. The city comprises five boroughs, each coextensive w ...

Early life and education

Newell was born on January 27, 1909 in

Chicago Chicago is the List of municipalities in Illinois, most populous city in the U.S. state of Illinois and in the Midwestern United States. With a population of 2,746,388, as of the 2020 United States census, 2020 census, it is the List of Unite ...

Illinois Illinois ( ) is a U.S. state, state in the Midwestern United States, Midwestern United States. It borders on Lake Michigan to its northeast, the Mississippi River to its west, and the Wabash River, Wabash and Ohio River, Ohio rivers to its ...

to Virgil Bingham and Nellie Clark Newell. Shortly after he was born, his family moved to Stafford, Kansas. Newell's father, a dentist, died when he was 13, but had encouraged his early interest in geology from a young age, often taking him to

fossil A fossil (from Classical Latin , ) is any preserved remains, impression, or trace of any once-living thing from a past geological age. Examples include bones, shells, exoskeletons, stone imprints of animals or microbes, objects preserve ...

deposits in Kansas, and at Raymond Moore's suggestion, the

Florissant Formation The Florissant Formation is a sedimentary geologic formation outcropping around Florissant, Teller County, Colorado. The formation is noted for the abundant and exceptionally preserved insect and plant fossils that are found in the mudstones an ...

in Colorado. Newell also had musical talents at an early age and won a state-wide clarinet competition. In 1926, he enrolled at the

University of Kansas The University of Kansas (KU) is a public research university with its main campus in Lawrence, Kansas, United States. Two branch campuses are in the Kansas City metropolitan area on the Kansas side: the university's medical school and hospital ...

and studied closely under Raymond Moore, who took him on fossil collecting trips. To pay for tuition, he played the jazz saxophone in local bands. Newell graduated from Kansas with his B.S. in 1929 and his M.A. in 1931. After Moore recommended him for a graduate fellowship, Newell began studying at

Yale University Yale University is a Private university, private Ivy League research university in New Haven, Connecticut, United States. Founded in 1701, Yale is the List of Colonial Colleges, third-oldest institution of higher education in the United Stat ...

, earning his doctorate in geology. At Yale, he specialized in bivalve mollusks and was mentored by paleontologists Charles Schuchert and Carl Owen Dunbar.

Scientific career

Newell was an eminent paleontologist and systematist of Upper

Paleozoic The Paleozoic ( , , ; or Palaeozoic) Era is the first of three Era (geology), geological eras of the Phanerozoic Eon. Beginning 538.8 million years ago (Ma), it succeeds the Neoproterozoic (the last era of the Proterozoic Eon) and ends 251.9 Ma a ...

and

Mesozoic The Mesozoic Era is the Era (geology), era of Earth's Geologic time scale, geological history, lasting from about , comprising the Triassic, Jurassic and Cretaceous Period (geology), Periods. It is characterized by the dominance of archosaurian r ...

bivalves Bivalvia () or bivalves, in previous centuries referred to as the Lamellibranchiata and Pelecypoda, is a class of aquatic molluscs (marine and freshwater) that have laterally compressed soft bodies enclosed by a calcified exoskeleton consis ...

. After graduating from Yale, he returned to the University of Kansas as a faculty member while simultaneously working under Raymond Moore at the

Kansas Geological Survey The Kansas Geological Survey (KGS) is a research and service division of the University of Kansas, charged by statute with studying and providing information on the geologic resources of Kansas. The KGS has no regulatory authority and does not ta ...

. In 1937, Moore appointed Newell to attend the

International Geological Congress The International Union of Geological Sciences (IUGS) is an international non-governmental organization devoted to global cooperation in the field of geology. As of 2023, it represents more than 1 million geoscientists around the world. About Fo ...

held in the

Soviet Union The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR), commonly known as the Soviet Union, was a List of former transcontinental countries#Since 1700, transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 until Dissolution of the Soviet ...

. His doctoral research on bivalve mollusks led to the publication of ''Late Paleozoic Pelecypods: Petinacea'', which became a seminal text for introducing zoological concepts to the discipline of invertebrate paleontology. From 1939 to 1942, Newell was a coeditor of the ''

Journal of Paleontology The ''Journal of Paleontology'' is a peer-reviewed scientific journal covering the field of paleontology. It is managed and published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of the Paleontological Society. Indexing The ''Journal of Paleontology ...

'' That same year, Newell left Kansas and accepted a professorship at the

University of Wisconsin A university () is an institution of tertiary education and research which awards academic degrees in several academic disciplines. ''University'' is derived from the Latin phrase , which roughly means "community of teachers and scholars". Uni ...

, where he worked until 1942, when the

U.S. Department of State The United States Department of State (DOS), or simply the State Department, is an executive department of the U.S. federal government responsible for the country's foreign policy and relations. Equivalent to the ministry of foreign affairs o ...

enlisted him to survey the petroleum resources of

Peru Peru, officially the Republic of Peru, is a country in western South America. It is bordered in the north by Ecuador and Colombia, in the east by Brazil, in the southeast by Bolivia, in the south by Chile, and in the south and west by the Pac ...

as well as the stratigraphy of

Lake Titicaca Lake Titicaca (; ; ) is a large freshwater lake in the Andes mountains on the border of Bolivia and Peru. It is often called the highest navigable lake in the world. Titicaca is the largest lake in South America, both in terms of the volume of ...

. In 1945, he began teaching geology and paleontology at

, where he would train future paleontologists

Stephen Jay Gould Stephen Jay Gould ( ; September 10, 1941 – May 20, 2002) was an American Paleontology, paleontologist, Evolutionary biology, evolutionary biologist, and History of science, historian of science. He was one of the most influential and widely re ...

Niles Eldredge Niles Eldredge ( ; born August 25, 1943) is an American biologist and paleontologist, who, along with Stephen Jay Gould, proposed the theory of punctuated equilibrium in 1972. Education Eldredge began his undergraduate studies in Latin at Colum ...

Steven M. Stanley Steven M. Stanley (born November 2, 1941) is an American paleontologist and evolutionary biologist at the Florida State University. He is best known for his empirical research documenting the evolutionary process of punctuated equilibrium in the fo ...

Alan Cheetham Alan H. Cheetham is a paleobiologist and retired senior scientist and curator of invertebrate paleontology at the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of Natural History. Born in El Paso, Texas, January 30, 1928, Cheetham grew up in Taos, Ne ...

, Alfred Fischer, and Don Boyd. Stephen Jay Gould remarked, "The work of graduate students is part of a mentor's reputation forever, because we trace intellectual lineages in this manner. I was Norman Newell's student, and everything that I ever do, as long as I live, will be read as his legacy." He also joined the

as a curator in 1945, where he would remain until his retirement in 1977. An important part of Newell's research was the study of mass extinctions on the history of life, publishing on the topic well before the

Alvarez hypothesis The Alvarez hypothesis posits that the Extinction event, mass extinction of the non-avian dinosaurs and many other living things during the Cretaceous–Paleogene extinction event was caused by the Impact event, impact of a large asteroid on the Ea ...

made such theorizing respectable. In the 1940s and 1950s, he conducted considerable research on

Permian The Permian ( ) is a geologic period and System (stratigraphy), stratigraphic system which spans 47 million years, from the end of the Carboniferous Period million years ago (Mya), to the beginning of the Triassic Period 251.902 Mya. It is the s ...

reefs in

West Texas West Texas is a loosely defined region in the U.S. state of Texas, generally encompassing the desert climate, arid and semiarid climate, semiarid lands west of a line drawn between the cities of Wichita Falls, Texas, Wichita Falls, Abilene, Texa ...

New Mexico New Mexico is a state in the Southwestern United States, Southwestern region of the United States. It is one of the Mountain States of the southern Rocky Mountains, sharing the Four Corners region with Utah, Colorado, and Arizona. It also ...

, and

the Bahamas The Bahamas, officially the Commonwealth of The Bahamas, is an Archipelagic state, archipelagic and island country within the Lucayan Archipelago of the Atlantic Ocean. It contains 97 per cent of the archipelago's land area and 88 per cent of ...

. In the 1980s, Newell wrote on more publicly contentious topics, including a book in defense of

Darwinian evolution ''Darwinism'' is a term used to describe a theory of biological evolution developed by the English naturalist Charles Darwin (1809–1882) and others. The theory states that all species of organisms arise and develop through the natural sele ...

over

creationism Creationism is the faith, religious belief that nature, and aspects such as the universe, Earth, life, and humans, originated with supernatural acts of Creation myth, divine creation, and is often Pseudoscience, pseudoscientific.#Gunn 2004, Gun ...

and a paper in Palaios attributing mass extinctions to human-driven

climate change Present-day climate change includes both global warming—the ongoing increase in Global surface temperature, global average temperature—and its wider effects on Earth's climate system. Climate variability and change, Climate change in ...

. In 1949, Newell served as the president of the

Society for the Study of Evolution The Society for the Study of Evolution is a professional organization of evolutionary biologists. It was formed in the United States in 1946 to promote the study of evolution and the integration of various fields of science concerned with evolution ...

, the

Paleontological Society The Paleontological Society, formerly the Paleontological Society of America, is an international organisation devoted to the promotion of paleontology. The Society was founded in 1908 in Baltimore, Maryland, and was incorporated in April 1968 in ...

in 1960 and 1961, and the Society of Systematic Zoology in 1973. Newell was a member of the

National Academy of Sciences The National Academy of Sciences (NAS) is a United States nonprofit, NGO, non-governmental organization. NAS is part of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, along with the National Academy of Engineering (NAE) and the ...

, the

American Association for the Advancement of Science The American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) is a United States–based international nonprofit with the stated mission of promoting cooperation among scientists, defending scientific freedom, encouraging scientific responsib ...

, and the

American Philosophical Society The American Philosophical Society (APS) is an American scholarly organization and learned society founded in 1743 in Philadelphia that promotes knowledge in the humanities and natural sciences through research, professional meetings, publicat ...

, and the

American Academy of Arts and Sciences The American Academy of Arts and Sciences (The Academy) is one of the oldest learned societies in the United States. It was founded in 1780 during the American Revolution by John Adams, John Hancock, James Bowdoin, Andrew Oliver, and other ...

. His numerous awards include accolades from

, the

American Geological Institute The American Geosciences Institute (AGI) is a nonprofit federation of about 50 geoscientific and professional organizations that represents geologists, geophysicists, and other earth scientists. The organization was founded in 1948. The name of ...

, and the

. In 1994, the Norman D. Newell Fund was established at the American Museum of Natural History to support paleontological research. In 2004, he was named a Legendary Geoscientist by the

Awards

* 1960: Mary Clark Thompson Medal, National Academy of Sciences * 1961: Distinguished Service to Mankind Alumni Award, Kansas University * 1965:

Hayden Memorial Geological Award The Hayden Memorial Geological Award is presented by the Academy of Natural Sciences of Drexel University (formerly the Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia), Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA. It was named after US geologist Ferdinand Vandeve ...

Philadelphia Academy of Natural Sciences The Academy of Natural Sciences of Drexel University, formerly the Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia, is the oldest natural science research institution and museum in the Americas. It was founded in 1812, by many of the leading natur ...

* 1966: Verrill Medal, Peabody Museum * 1977: Geological Society of Peru Medal * 1978: American Museum of Natural History Gold Medal for Achievement in Science * 1979:

Paleontological Society Medal The Paleontological Society Medal is an award given by the Paleontological Society to a person whose eminence is based on advancement of knowledge in paleontology.Paleontology Society Medal information page https://www.paleosoc.org/paleontological- ...

* 1980: Raymond C. Moore Medal, the Society of Economic Paleontologists and Mineralogists * 1987: Scientific Freedom and Responsibility Award, American Association for the Advancement of Science * 1990:

Penrose Medal The Penrose Medal was created in 1925 by R.A.F. Penrose, Jr., as the top prize awarded by the Geological Society of America. Originally created as the Geological Society of America Medal it was soon renamed the Penrose Medal by popular assent of ...

, Geological Society of American * 1996: Special Award,

American Association of Petroleum Geologists The American Association of Petroleum Geologists (AAPG) is one of the world's largest professional geological societies with about 17,000 members across 129 countries. The AAPG works to "advance the science of geology, especially as it relates to ...

Personal life and death

Newell was twice married. His first marriage was to Valerie Zirkle on February 25, 1928. Newell married Zirkle while an undergraduate at the University of Kansas. Valerie Zirkle died in 1972. His second marriage was to Gillian W. Wormall on April 28, 1973. Wormall was a co-worker of Newell's at the American Museum of Natural History in New York. Newell died at his home in Leonia,

New Jersey New Jersey is a U.S. state, state located in both the Mid-Atlantic States, Mid-Atlantic and Northeastern United States, Northeastern regions of the United States. Located at the geographic hub of the urban area, heavily urbanized Northeas ...

, on April 18, 2005, at the age of 96.Pearce, Jeremy
"Norman Newell, 96, Scientist Who Studied Dying Species, Has Died"
''

The New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''NYT'') is an American daily newspaper based in New York City. ''The New York Times'' covers domestic, national, and international news, and publishes opinion pieces, investigative reports, and reviews. As one of ...

'', April 23, 2005. Accessed May 10, 2012. "Dr. Norman D. Newell, an influential paleontologist who challenged opponents of evolutionary theory and helped shape theories explaining the mass extinctions of species, died on Monday at his home in Leonia, N.J., his family said. He was 96."

Bibliography

*Newell, N. D. (1952)
"Periodicity in invertebrate evolution."
''Journal of Paleontology'' 26 (May): 371-385. *Newell, N. D. (1954)
"Expedition to Raroia, Taumotus."
''Atol Research Bulletin'' 31 (Nov. 30): 1-109. *Newell, N. D. (1959)
"The Nature of the Fossil Record."
''Proceedings, American Philosophical Society'' 103 (2): 264-285. *Newell, N. D. (1962). "Paleontological Gaps and Geochronology." ''Journal of Paleontology'' 36 (3): 592-610. *Newell, N. D. (1963). "Crises in the History of Life." ''

Scientific American ''Scientific American'', informally abbreviated ''SciAm'' or sometimes ''SA'', is an American popular science magazine. Many scientists, including Albert Einstein and Nikola Tesla, have contributed articles to it, with more than 150 Nobel Pri ...

'' 208 (2): 76-92. *Newell, N. D. (1965). "Mass Extinctions at the End of the Cretaceous Period." ''Science'' 149 (27 August): 922-924. *Newell, N. D. (1967). "Revolutions in the History of Life." In ''Uniformity and Simplicity''. Boulder CO: Geology Society of America, pp. 63–91. *Newell, N. D. and S. J. Gould, ed. (1980).
Late Paleozoic Pelecypods: Pectinacea and Mytilacea.
' Salem, NH: Ayer Publishing. *Newell, N. D. (1982). "Creation and Evolution: Myth or Reality." New York: Columbia University Press. *Newell, N. D. (2001)
"Half century later."
In G.D. Stanley ''The History and Sedimentology of Ancient Reef Systems''. New York: Springer Press, 205-216.

Notes

{{DEFAULTSORT:Newell, Norman 1909 births 2005 deaths American curators 20th-century American geologists Fellows of the American Association for the Advancement of Science Members of the United States National Academy of Sciences Penrose Medal winners People associated with the American Museum of Natural History People from Leonia, New Jersey University of Kansas alumni Yale University alumni Members of the American Philosophical Society