Wallace Broecker, a geochemist with an almost 67-year career at Columbia University’s Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory and a member of the National Academy of Sciences, died yesterday (February 18) in New York. He was 87 years old.
Broecker’s research helped develop scientists’ current understanding of ocean circulation and its role in global climate.
“Wally was unique, brilliant and combative,” Michael Oppenheimer of Princeton University tells the Associated Press. “He wasn’t fooled by the cooling of the 1970s. He saw clearly the unprecedented warming now playing out and made his views clear, even when few were willing to listen,” he says.
Broecker was born in Chicago and grew up in the suburb of Oak Park, Illinois. Although he considered a career as an actuary while studying at Wheaton College in Illinois, his plans changed after an internship in 1952 at Lamont Geological Observatory, now Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory (LDEO), where he worked on ...
