Media Inquiries: Department of
Communications April
2005
212-769-5800 or
communications@amnh.org
NORMAN D. NEWELL, RENOWNED SCIENTIST AND CURATOR EMERITUS, AMERICAN
MUSEUM OF NATURAL HISTORY, DIES AT 96
Norman D. Newell, a leading evolutionary paleontologist and Curator
Emeritus in the Division of Paleontology at the American Museum of
Natural History, died at home in Leonia, New Jersey, on Monday, April
18, ending a long and rich academic career. He was 96.
Born in Chicago, Illinois, in 1909, Dr. Newell received his B.S. in
1929 and his M.A. in 1931, both from the University of Kansas. He
worked his way through college playing in jazz bands. He then attended
Yale University and in 1933 received his Ph.D. in geology. Dr. Newell
married his first wife, Valerie Zirkle, in 1929. He and Gillian Wendy
Wormall, who was employed by the Museum, were married in 1973.
Dr. Newell joined the staff of the Museum in 1945 as Curator in what
was then the Department of Geology and Paleontology. He served as Dean
of the Council of the Scientific Staff at the Museum from 1966 to 1967,
and was academic advisor to Columbia University graduate students
Stephen Jay Gould and Niles Eldredge—both longtime associates of the
Museum—steering them to better understand evolutionary problems in
fossil invertebrates. Other students included Roger Batten, now Curator
Emeritus in the Division of Paleontology; Kenneth Ciriacks, who became
vice president of technology with Amoco Corporation; and Al Fischer and
Bernhard Kummel, faculty stalwarts at Princeton and Harvard,
respectively. Dr. Newell officially retired from the Museum in 1977,
and was awarded emeritus status.
During the 1930s, Dr. Newell became an internationally recognized
authority on fossil bivalve mollusks, his core specialty. His research
style and publications served as models for young invertebrate
paleontologists engaged in changing the scope and image of their
discipline. His 1937 and 1942 monographs on the late Paleozoic
pelecypods were breakthroughs in the incorporation of sophisticated
biological information and perspective in the interpretation of form
and function of fossil invertebrates. Several decades later, he brought
to completion the two multiauthored Bivalvia volumes of the Treatise on
Invertebrate Paleontology, which still serve as the single most
important reference on fossil bivalve mollusks. In addition, he applied
pioneering work on modern carbonate sediments to a seminal study of the
west Texas Permian reef complex.
Perhaps his most lasting, compelling contribution was his insistence
that mass extinctions were real phenomena that had enormous and
little-understood effects on the evolution of life. He published widely
on this subject long before it was widely accepted.
Dr. Newell was an outspoken and early voice alerting scientists to the
importance of public understanding of the theory of evolution and to
the threats creationism poses to academic freedom and science
education. His 1982 book Creation and Evolution: Myth or Reality?
remains one of the strongest rebuttals to creationism as a science. In
1987, the American Association for the Advancement of Science awarded
him its Scientific Freedom and Responsibility Award for this work.
Other awards throughout his career include the Verrill Medal from Yale
University’s Peabody Museum, the Paleontological Society Medal, the
Geological Society of America Penrose Medal, a Special Award from the
American Association of Petroleum Geologists, and the first Raymond C.
Moore Medal for Excellence in Paleontology from the Society for
Sedimentary Geology. He was awarded the American Museum of Natural
History Gold Medal for Achievement in Science in 1978, and most
recently, in 2004, he was presented with the Legendary Geoscientist
Award in Geology from the American Geological Institute (AGI) and AGI
Foundation.
Dr. Newell served as President of the Society for the Study of
Evolution and was elected to the National Academy of Sciences and the
American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He was also Professor Emeritus
at Columbia University.
In 1989, Stephen Jay Gould wrote, “I was Norman Newell’s student, and
everything that I ever do, as long as I live, will be read as his
legacy.”
Funeral services will be held at the Church of the Good Shepherd, 1576
Palisades Avenue, Fort Lee, New Jersey, at 12:00 noon on Thursday,
April 21. In lieu of flowers, gifts may be made to the Church of the
Good Shepherd or to the Norman D. Newell Fund, American Museum of
Natural History.
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