Cesare Emiliani (1922-1995): the founder of paleoceanography
Cesare Emiliani in the early 1950s when he was doing his pioneering
research at the University of Chicago (Photo from Robert Ginsburg).
Cesare Emiliani was born as a son to Luigi and Maria (Manfredidi) Emiliani
on December 8, 1922 in Bologna, Italy. He studied geology at the University
of Bologna, specializing in micropaleontology. He received the DSc from
the University of Bologna in 1945. His earliest publications concerned
philately, an interest that continued throughout his life. After graduation
he worked as a micropaleontologist with the Societa Idrocarburi Nationali in
Florence from 1946-48. During this time he published several papers on
taxonomy and stratigraphy of foraminifera of the Cretaceous argille
scagliose near Bologna, and from Pliocene sections near Faenza.
In 1948 he received the Rollin D. Salisbury Fellowship in the Department of
Geology at the University of Chicago and obtained the Ph.D. in 1950. It was
in Chicago that he met, and on June 28, 1951, married his wife, Rosita.
They had two children, Sandra and Mario. 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. It was in this
laboratory that the pioneering work was being done to establish
relationships between stable isotopes and environmental variables. The early
work of Urey and his students had involved studies of the relation between
oxygen isotopes and temperature in recent molluscs, and the application of
this relationship to the determination of paleotemperatures in the
Cretaceous. Emiliani initiated use of this technique to the shells of
foraminifera in ancient sediments from the ocean floor and concluded that
the deep waters of the ocean had been much warmer in the early Tertiary. The
discovery that the deep ocean was not the constant unchanging environment
that had been assumed marked the beginning of a new field of science:
paleoceanography.
Further major discoveries followed rapidly. Using the piston corer developed
by Kullenberg, the Swedish Deep Sea Expedition (1947-1949) and the Lamont
Geological Observatory had taken long cores in the deep-sea carbonate oozes
of the Pacific and Caribbean. Emiliani took on the job of applying the
oxygen isotope technique to the tests of planktonic foraminifera sampled at
10 cm intervals down the length of the cores. He found a systematic periodic
variation in the ratio of 18O:16O following a characteristic sawtooth
pattern. It was known that the changing ratios reflected two major factors,
the temperature of the seawater and the volume of glacial ice. Cooler
temperatures and greater ice volumes both result in more positive 18O:16O
ratios. He supposed that 60% of the signal was due to the temperature
effect, 40% to the ice effect. He concluded that equatorial and tropical
ocean surface temperatures had been several degrees cooler during times of
glaciation. At the time he did this work, it was thought that there had been
only four major glaciations during the Pleistocene. Emiliani's analysis
indicated that there had been many more cycles of glaciation; he found
seven, extending to the base of the Caribbean cores and fifteen in the
Pacific cores. He concluded that the cyclic glaciations were related to
orogenic uplift, changing insolation (Milankovitch cycles), ice-albedo
feedback, and the effect of isostatic adjustments to the loading of
continental crust by glacial ice sheets - all topics still being actively
discussed today. His discoveries revolutionized ideas about the history of
the ocean and of the glaciation.
In 1957 Emiliani moved to the University of Miami's Institute of Marine
Science, later to become the Rosenstiel School of Marine and Atmospheric
Sciences. There, he organized the program in marine geology and geophysics,
built a major laboratory for isotope geology, and continued to develop the
ideas about the nature and cause of the Quaternary glaciations. At this
time, a major activity in American science was "Project Mohole", the effort
to drill a hole to the Mohorovicic Discontinuity, the surface separating the
Earth's crust from mantle. Cesare Emiliani, however, was convinced that much
more could be learned from recovering long cores which would record the
history of the ocean. As the cost projections for "Project Mohole" escalated
and the project collapsed, Emiliani submitted a proposal termed "LOCO" (for
Long Cores) to the U.S. National Science Foundation. A suitable ship, the
SUBMAREX, was chartered for test drilling of cores on the Nicaragua Rise.
The success was such that it was immediately recognized that the recovery of
drilled cores from the deep sea would provide evidence of the history of the
ocean and also serve to test the hypotheses of sea-floor spreading and plate
tectonics. The result was formation of JOIDES (Joint Oceanographic
Institutions for Deep Earth Sampling) and its three sequential projects, the
JOIDES drilling on the Atlantic continental margin off Jacksonville, Florida
(1966), the Deep Sea Drilling Project (1967-1983) and the Ocean Drilling
Program (1984-2003).
In 1967 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 was an extraordinary, exciting teacher; he used Earth
Sciences as a focus for introducing large numbers of students to the
sciences as a whole.
Cesare Emiliani was a renaissance scientist in the truest sense. He was a
scholar familiar with classical languages, and extraordinarily well versed
in history. His interests were very broad, ranging far beyond the field of
stable isotope geology to tectonics, catastrophes, extinction, evolution,
human history and human impact on the planet. Among other innovative
ideas, he proposed drilling to the oceanic Mohorovicic Discontinuity from
land (Eleuthera Island in the Bahamas), controlling earthquakes by the use
of nuclear explosions, that viruses might be responsible for extinctions,
and that evolution might be more a process of niche-filling after
extinctions rather than direct competition.
He worked to introduce calendar reform, in part to eliminate the BC-AD
chronology hiatus caused by the lack of a zero year, but more importantly to
eliminate the use of religion-based systems in a multicultural context. He
was also very much concerned about the unrestrained growth of the human
population and its effect on the environment of the planet.
He was very much concerned that scientists and the public in general were
losing touch with the development of knowledge as a whole. To combat this he
wrote The Scientific Companion (1988) which is a broad review of science
that makes entertaining and excellent reading for specialists and laymen
alike. Much of his extraordinary character and his broad interests are
revealed in Planet Earth (1992) which is a fascinating introduction to
mathematics, physics, chemistry, and biology, and as well as earth science,
all set in the historical context of the development of ideas. 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 (Sweden) in 1983, and the
Agaasiz Medal of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences in 1989. He died
unexpectedly of a heart attack on July 20, 1995 at his home in Palm Beach
Gardens, Florida.
From the frontispiece of Emiliani's 1992 book "Planet Earth".
William W. Hay(1), Eloise Zakevich(2)
(1) Geomar. Christian-Albrechts-Universitat.
Wischhosfstrasse 1-3. D-24148 Kiel. Germany.
(2)Miami, FL, USA
whay@geomar.de
[International Microbiology, (1999), 2, 52-54, copyright
Springer-Verlag]
Ehux
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Toby Tyrrell : T.Tyrrell@noc.soton.ac.uk
