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Maureen Raymo


Image of Emily BrodskyFor her “pioneering development of hypotheses that explain climate change across Earth’s history and her educational leadership in the Earth system sciences.”

 

Maureen Raymo was awarded the Nemmers Prize in Earth Sciences, a prize of $300,000, in recognition of her pioneering development of hypotheses that explain climate change across Earth’s history and her educational leadership in the Earth system sciences. Raymo is the G. Unger Vetlesen Professor of Earth and Climate Science in the Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences at Columbia University and Co-Founding Dean Emerita of the Columbia Climate School. 

A member of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences, Raymo has leveraged knowledge of the inner workings of Earth’s solid, liquid and gaseous spheres to advance our understanding of how Earth’s systems interact, change and ultimately drive climatic change on geologic time scales. She is best known for developing the Uplift-Weathering Hypothesis, which borrows from and links various Earth system science sub-disciplines, including science that underpins our understanding of plate tectonics, mountain building, atmospheric science, ocean biogeochemistry, chemical weathering, the carbon cycle and climate change.

Raymo will visit Northwestern during the 2026-27 academic year to engage in programming with faculty and students in the Department of Earth, Environmental and Planetary Sciences.