DAVID MALCOLM RAUP: 24 APRIL 1933 · 9 JULY 2015

Knoll provides details on David Malcolm Raup, a University of Chicago paleontologist. Raup studied the fossil record and the diversity of life on Earth. He contributed to the knowledge of extinction events along with his colleague Jack Sepkoski. He was one of the most innovative and influential pale...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inProceedings of the American Philosophical Society Vol. 161; no. 2; pp. 177 - 182
Main Author Knoll, Andrew H.
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published Philadelphia THE AMERICAN PHILOSOPHICAL SOCIETY 01.06.2017
University of Pennsylvania Press
Subjects
BIOGRAPHICAL MEMOIRS
Fossils
Hypothesis testing
Morphology
Numerical analysis
Paleontology
Raup, David
Taxonomy
New York
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Summary:Knoll provides details on David Malcolm Raup, a University of Chicago paleontologist. Raup studied the fossil record and the diversity of life on Earth. He contributed to the knowledge of extinction events along with his colleague Jack Sepkoski. He was one of the most innovative and influential paleontologists of the twentieth century. As a young scientist, he entered a field driven almost exclusively by description and left it decades later a vibrant, quantitative discipline powered in no small part by models, numerical analysis, and hypothesis testing. By the mid-1960s, Dave had discovered the power of computing, launching research that would change not only his own career trajectory but that of paleontology as a whole. As a new decade dawned, Dave turned his attention to another area of growing paleontological interest: the history of animal diversity in the oceans. As an author, he wrote two accessible volumes on extinction: The Nemesis Affair: A Story of the Death of Dinosaurs and the Ways of Science and Extinction: Bad Genes or Bad Luck?
ISSN:0003-049X
2326-9243