Cesare Emiliani Explained

Cesare Emiliani
Birth Date:8 December 1922
Birth Place:Bologna, Italy
Death Place:Palm Beach Gardens, Florida, U.S.
Citizenship:Italy and United States
Nationality:Italian
Alma Mater:University of Bologna
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Known For:Developing the timescale of marine isotope stages
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Cesare Emiliani (8 December 1922 – 20 July 1995) was an Italian-American scientist, geologist, micropaleontologist, and founder of paleoceanography, developing the timescale of marine isotope stages, which despite modifications remains in use today.

He established that the ice ages of the last half million years or so are a cyclic phenomenon, which gave strong support to the hypothesis of Milankovitch and revolutionized ideas about the history of the oceans and of the glaciations. He was also the proponent of Project "LOCO" (for Long Cores) to the U.S. National Science Foundation. The project was a success providing evidence of the history of the oceans and also serving to test the hypotheses of seafloor spreading and plate tectonics.

Cesare Emiliani was honored by having the genus Emiliania erected as home for the taxon huxleyi, which had previously been assigned to Coccolithus. He was further honored by receiving the Vega Medal of the Swedish Society for Anthropology and Geography (SSAG) (Swedish: Svenska Sällskapet för Antropologi och Geografi) in 1983, and the Alexander Agassiz Medal of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences in 1989 for his isotopic studies on Pleistocene and Holocene planktic foraminifera.

In his later years, he dedicated a great deal of time to promoting a calendar reform based on the Holocene calendar (HE) concept to eliminate the BC–AD chronology gap caused by the lack of a year 0.

Biography

Cesare Emiliani was born in Bologna, Italy. His parents were Luigi and Maria (Manfredini) Emiliani.

Emiliani studied geology at the University of Bologna in post-war Italy and earned his degree in Geology (micropaleontology) also at Bologna in 1945. After graduation he worked as a micropaleontologist with the Società Idrocarburi Nazionali in Florence from 1946–48. In 1948 he was offered and accepted the Rollin D. Salisbury Fellowship in the Department of Geology at the University of Chicago where he subsequently obtained his PhD in Geology (isotopic paleoclimatology) in 1950. From 1950 to 1956 he was Research Associate in Harold Urey’s Geochemistry Laboratory in the Enrico Fermi Institute for Nuclear Studies at the University of Chicago.

In 1957 Cesare Emiliani was working on Foraminifera (microscopic protists whose remains are greatly abundant in the fossil record) and was particularly interested in great climate changes known to have occurred during the Pleistocene Age. He was sure these tiny shells deposited in the ubiquitous ooze that coats the sea bottom held important clues. For that reason he was looking at the time for a place to work where there were ships and trained personnel to help him to obtain core samples of the deep-sea sediments for his studies. An interview with Dr. Walton Smith convinced Cesare that the University of Miami’s Institute of Marine Science, which was renamed the Rosenstiel School of Marine, Atmospheric, and Earth Science, was the right place to conduct his research and thus he moved there that same year. In 1967 he was named Chairman of the Division of Geology and Geophysics at the Institute. At that time he organized the department of Geological Sciences on the main campus of the University of Miami and remained its Chairman until his retirement in 1993.

He died in Palm Beach Gardens, Florida in 1995. Memorial tributes were written by colleagues.[1] [2]

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Notes and References

  1. Lidz . Barbara H. . A tribute to Cesare Emiliani—Eminent scholar, professor, and friend . Marine Micropaleontology . November 1995 . 25 . 4 . 219–220 . 10.1016/0377-8398(95)90000-4.
  2. Hay . W. W. . Zakevich . E . Cesare Emiliani (1922-1995): the founder of paleoceanography. . International Microbiology . March 1999 . 2 . 1 . 52-4 . 10943392.

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