This week, two highly acclaimed Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory research professors—whose pioneering work has advanced our understanding of polar ice sheets and global hydroclimate, among other discoveries—were honored with prestigious new appointments at Lamont.
Robin Bell has been named the Marie Tharp Lamont Research Professor and Richard Seager has been appointed Ewing Lamont Research Professor.
Bell joined Lamont in 1982 as a graduate student. Today, she is a global leader in using airborne and satellite technologies to study Earth’s large ice sheets, with the goal of helping coastal communities adapt to sea-level rise. She also has a long-standing commitment to advancing diversity, equity and inclusion in the geosciences and has been a strong advocate for the advancement of women in science, including developing a visiting fellowship for scientists named for Marie Tharp.
She was the first woman to chair the National Academy of Sciences Polar Research Board, where she developed the framework for the International Polar Year, elevating ice sheet stability as a global problem. Bell is a fellow and former president of the American Geophysical Union (AGU). In 2022, she received the Fulbright Australia CSIRO Distinguished Chair in Tasmania, which she reached in a two-person, 12-meter sailboat. Following her Fulbright, she and her husband, Karl Coplan, completed their circumnavigation of the globe, sharing copies of Marie Tharp’s ocean floor maps in ports along the way
Her appointment to the Marie Tharp chair is especially fitting. Tharp, a Lamont geologist for more than three decades, produced groundbreaking work that revolutionized how we understand the ocean floor and how it forms. At a time when women were barred from joining oceanographic expeditions, Tharp created the first bathymetric maps of the world’s oceans, including the iconic World Ocean Floor map published in 1977 and distributed by National Geographic. Her work revealed the global extent of the mid-ocean ridge system and the rift valleys along its crests—evidence that supported the theory of seafloor spreading.
Seager, who also began his career at Lamont as a graduate student in the 1980s, studies how interactions between the atmosphere and the oceans drives climate variability and change across the world on timescales of days to millennia. Recently he has developed foci on the influence of climate on ecosystems, water resources, agriculture and society—including migration and conflict. His work increasingly involves interdisciplinary collaboration with health scientists, agronomists, economists, and geographers to address complex global challenges.
Seager is a fellow of both the AGU and the American Meteorological Society (AMS). He received the AMS Jule G. Charney Medal for his “significant and innovative contributions in the attribution of past droughts and floods, and to understanding the impact of rising greenhouse gases on future hydroclimate.” Just a few weeks ago, Seager was also recognized with the Lamont Mentorship Award.
The Ewing Chair—named for Maurice Ewing, founder of the Observatory and a pioneering geophysicist and oceanographer—is the highest distinction given to Lamont research professors. Appointees are internationally renowned scientists recognized for outstanding scholarship and leadership in the geosciences. Seager joins fellow Ewing Lamont Research Professors Bob Anderson and Ed Cook in receiving this distinction. “I am deeply honored to receive this distinction, as Lamont has contributed more than any other institution to figuring out how the Earth works, and I am truly grateful it has supported my own career for 40 years,” says Seager. “Working out how we can live on this dynamic, changing planet is ever more important, and with its strength and depth, Lamont will surely play a central role in the way forward.”
“Lamont’s 75-year-long quest for knowledge underpins much of our modern society today,” says Bell. “Tharp and Ewing, along with the community of early Lamonters, made observations, and advanced ideas now routinely taught in schools. While current times are a bit stormy, I am looking forward to Lamont’s future of continued discovery and innovation supporting human life on this planet.”