Dr. Rhodes W. Fairbridge, one of the first geoscientists to discuss climate change, passed away on November 8, 2006 at the age of 92.
Dr. Fairbridge, a geologist at Columbia University had been a supervising editor for the “Encyclopedia of Earth Sciences,†aimed at graduate students and which continues to be used as a reference. In addition to the important work he completed for the “Encyclopediaâ€, he is best known for the research that he was a part of on coral reefs and shorelines to study the effects of climate change upon them. He developed the Fairbridge Curve, which is a record of changes in sea levels over the last 10,000 years that showed periodic changes against a trend of rising sea levels.
Fairbridge was born in Pinjarra, Australia and received his undergraduate degree from Queen’s University in Ontario and his master’s from Oxford. He received his Ph.D. in geology in 1941 from the University of Western Australia. After that, he taught at Western Australia and the University of Illinois before becoming a professor of geology at Columbia University in 1955.
Tags: In Memorium