Donald Canfield


Donald Eugene Canfield is a geologist and Professor of Ecology at the University of Southern Denmark known for his work on ocean chemistry. The Canfield ocean, a sulfidic partially oxic ocean existing between the Archean and Ediacaran periods, is named after him.

Education

Canield was educated at Miami University and Yale University where he was awarded a PhD for research on diagenesis in marine sediments supervised by Robert Berner in 1988.

Career and Research

Canfield has been the director of the Nordic Center for Earth Evolution since August 2006, and works at the University of Southern Denmark. His research investigates the geobiology of ocean chemistry. Prior to his current position he has worked at Ames Research Center, Aarhus University, the University of Michigan, the Max Planck Institute for Marine Microbiology in Germany and the Georgia Institute of Technology.

Awards and honors

Canfield was elected a member of the National Academy of Sciences in 2007. He was awarded the European Geosciences Union's Vladimir Ivanovich Vernadsky Medal in 2010.