Thompson Webb III

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Thompson Webb III is an American paleoclimatologist and paleoecologist known for his research on past climate change and vegetation history during the late Quaternary period. He served as a professor at Brown University from 1972 to 2005, then as a Professor Emeritus of Geological Sciences. His work has contributed to understanding long-term climate patterns as inferred from fossil pollen data, lake-level records, and climate modeling.

Early life and education

Webb’s interest in paleontology and the study of the past began in 1958 when he participated in a fossil-hunting field trip across the western United States led by Raymond Alf, a teacher at the Webb Schools in Claremont, California, a school founded by Webb's grandfather. In 1961, he was selected to participate in an NSF-sponsored summer science program at Michigan State University, where he added to his education about geology and fossils before enrolling as an undergraduate at Swarthmore College and earning a Bachelor of Arts degree with honors in botany in 1966. He later pursued graduate studies at the University of Wisconsin–Madison under the direction of climate scientists, Reid Bryson and John Kutzbach, and received a Ph.D. in meteorology in 1971. His doctoral dissertation focused on reconstructing late-Quaternary climate events in Wisconsin and Minnesota using multivariate statistical analysis to interpret fossil pollen data.

Career

Academic appointments

Webb gained tenure in 1979, was promoted to full professor at Brown University in 1984 and continued teaching and research there until his retirement in 2005. After retiring, he enjoyed teaching middle-school students about the weather through summer and continuing studies programs at Brown until 2013.

Webb held several academic and research positions throughout his career, including:

• Postdoctoral Fellow, University of Michigan (1970–1971)
• Assistant Research Paleoecologist, University of Michigan (1971–1972)
• Assistant Professor (Research), Brown University (1972–1975)
• Associate Professor, Brown University (1975–1984)
• Professor, Brown University (1984–2005)
• Professor Emeritus, Brown University (2006– )

He also held visiting and fellowship positions at institutions such as the University of Wisconsin-Madison, the University of Cambridge, the University of Colorado, and Harvard University.

Awards and honors

• Visiting Fellowship at Clare Hall, University of Cambridge (1977–1978)
• CIRES Fellowship, University of Colorado (1988–1989)
• Elected Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (1991)
• Bullard Fellowship, Harvard University (1995–1996)
• Ermine Cowles Case Memorial Lecture in Paleontology, University of Michigan (1996)
• William S. Cooper Award of the Ecological Society of America (2004)
• Distinguished Career Award, American Quaternary Association (2006)
• Joseph Shane Award, Swarthmore College (2011)

Selected books

• Delcourt, P. A., H. R. Delcourt, and T. Webb III. 1984. Atlas of paired isophyte and isopoll maps for important eastern North American tree taxa. The American Association of Stratigraphic Palynologists, Inc., Contribution Series No. 14, 131 pp.
• Webb, T., III and J.-M. Dubois (eds.). 1985. Tendances climatiques l'Holocene en Amerique du Nord. Gèographie physique et Quaternaire 39, no. 2:113-226.
• Webb, T., III. 1985. A Global Paleoclimatic Data Base for 6000 yr B.P. Final Report for DOE Contract DE-AC02-79EV10097, TRO18, Carbon Dioxide Research Division, Office of Basic Energy Sciences, Office of Energy Research, U.S. Dept. of Energy, Washington, D.C. (available from N.T.I.S., Springfield, VA 22161). 155 pp.
• Huntley, B. and T. Webb III (eds.) 1988. Vegetation History. Vol. 7 in Handbook of Vegetation Science. Kluwer Academic Publ., Dordrecht, The Netherlands, (803 p.).
• Wright, H.E., Jr., J.E. Kutzbach, T. Webb III, W.F. Ruddiman, F.A. Street-Perrott, and P.J. Bartlein (eds.) 1993. Global Climates Since the Last Glacial Maximum. Univ. of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis. (569 p.). [13]
• Webb, T., III (ed.) 1998. Late Quaternary Climates: Data Syntheses and Model Experiments. Quaternary Science Reviews 17, Nos. 6-7: 465-688. [14]
• Williams, J. W., B. Shuman, P. J. Bartlein, J. Whitmore, K. Gajewski, M. Sawada, T. Minckley, S. Shafer, A. E. Viau, T. Webb, III, P. M. Anderson, L. B. Brubaker, C. Whitlock, and O. K. Davis. 2006. An Atlas of Pollen-Vegetation-Climate Relationships for the United States and Canada. American Association of Stratigraphic Palynologists Foundation, Dallas, TX. 293 pp.

References