Wallace S. Broecker is the Newberry Professor of Earth & Environmental Sciences and a member of The Earth Institute Academic Committee.  He received an A.B. (1953) and Ph.D. (1958) from Columbia, and has been on the faculty since 1959. 

Broecker's research interests include paleoclimatology, ocean chemistry, isotope dating and environmental science.  Well known to hundreds of students through his creative textbooks, which are designed to illustrate the dynamic nature of problems geochemists tackle, he is also author of textbooks entitled Chemical Equilibria in the Earth (1971, with V. Oversby,) McGraw-Hill, N.Y.; Chemical Oceanography (1974), Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, Inc., N.Y.; Tracers in the Sea (1982, with T.-H. Peng), Eldigio Press, N.Y.; and How to Build a Habitable Planet (1987), Eldigio Press, N.Y.  He has been highly successful in attracting young talent to earth science laboratories throughout the country and is recognized by his scientific colleagues as an exceptional leader in Earth Sciences.      

He is a recipient of numerous awards including the Arthur L. Day Medal awarded by the Geological Society of America; the A.G. Huntsman Award for Excellence in the Marine Sciences; the Alexander Agassiz Medal by the National Academy of Sciences; the Vetlesen Award by the Vetlesen Foundation; the Joseph Priestly Award by Dickinson College; the Wollaston Medal by the Geological Society of London; the Tyler Prize for Environmental Achievement by the University of Southern California; and the Blue Planet Prize by the Asahi Glass Foundation.