Green Jersey

Princeton environmental scientist among MacArthur Fellows

Daniel Sigman in his lab. Image via princeton.edu.

An environmental scientist at Princeton who studies climate and the mechanisms responsible for life on Earth has won one of this year’s MacArthur Fellowships.

Daniel Sigman, a biogeochemist and oceanographer, joined Princeton’s Department of Geosciences as a postdoctoral fellow in 1998 and became a faculty member in 2000.

From the Star-Ledger:

Sigman, who teaches and runs a lab with a handful of doctoral students on campus, wants to sharpen the models scientists use to predict changes to climate, soil moisture, rainfall levels and other elements of natural systems. Those models are based on “good physical and biological fundamentals,” he said, but lack the complexity that comes with detailed data reaching back far into the past.

From the Philadelphia Inquirer:

Sigman, 40, seeks to understand why the earth’s climate was plunged into periodic ice ages over the past several million years. He has found that a profound role was played by algae — capturing carbon dioxide that would otherwise escape from the ocean to the atmosphere.

From Princeton’s press release:

Sigman is searching for the underlying mechanisms that explain how life on Earth has been sustained through a web of chemical, biological and physical forces over time. In doing so, he has developed methods to track the flow of elements vital to life, such as nitrogen and carbon, today and in the past.

His methods for analyzing isotopes of nitrogen have helped show how different processes in the ocean’s nitrogen cycle respond to one another. His research also focuses on the role of the ocean’s “biological carbon pump” — in which the sinking of dead algae sequesters carbon dioxide in the deep ocean — in Earth’s climate history. Using deep-sea sediment cores from throughout the world’s oceans, Sigman is carefully reconstructing the contribution of ocean biology to the carbon cycle over time.

“Danny Sigman has established a first-rate laboratory with a world-class reputation and a major scientific impact in the field of isotope geochemistry,” said Bess Ward, the William J. Sinclair Professor of Geosciences and chair of Princeton’s Department of Geosciences. “His new methods for the analysis of nitrogen and oxygen isotope composition of nitrate and other compounds are far superior to previously existing methods in terms of sensitivity and speed of analysis.”

…Through collaborations with the Bermuda Institute of Ocean Sciences, Sigman teaches courses in ocean science that offer field and lab experiences. These include a freshman seminar, “The Ocean Environment,” and a summer course, “Observing the Marine Environment.” Through a project funded by the National Science Foundation, he also offers summer research internships for Princeton undergraduates.

…”Darwin explained why individual organisms work: natural selection,” Sigman said. “My field seeks a similarly general theory for the Earth’s maintenance of habitable conditions for complex organisms over millions of years. Given the passage of biologically necessary elements into and out of the environment on typically much shorter time scales, this continuous habitability is remarkable and mysterious.”

…Sigman said he will use the award to support his research. “I am remarkably prone to obsess about the daily operation of my research facilities,” he said. “This support will provide freedom to obsess more creatively, to increase the number of stupid things I try, and to spend more time interacting with colleagues and with my own research group on topics other than how tightly to seal a vial.”

Princeton can also claim a second MacArthur Fellow, Theodore Zoli; Zoli, a structural engineer who designs bridges, is a 1988 alumnus and visiting lecturer there.

The fellowships provide recipients with awards of $500,000 over five years.