Professor Geerat J. Vermeij

Geerat J. Vermeij, Ph.D. is Distinguished Professor of Geology, University of California at Davis. He has also served as editor or associate editor of prestigious journals such as Science, Evolution, and Paleobiology.
 
Geerat was born in the Netherlands and has been blind since the age of three. He graduated from Princeton University in 1968 and earned his Ph.D. in biology and geology from Yale University in 1971.
 
An evolutionary biologist and paleontologist, he studies marine mollusks both as fossils and as living creatures. He starting writing about his Escalation hypothesis in the 1980s. He received a MacArthur Fellowship in 1992. In 2000 he was awarded the Daniel Giraud Elliot Medal from the National Academy of Sciences.
 
Geerat studies:

• Marine ecology and paleoecology.
• The functional morphology of marine mollusks.
• The coevolutionary reactions between predators and prey, and their effects on morphology, ecology, and evolution.
• Biogeography and climate, and their reconstruction from paleontological evidence.
• The marine Mesozoic revolution.
• The paleobiogeography of the Arctic, and its influence on Atlantic and Pacific Cenozoic faunas.

Geerat has more than 200 publications, including many published books as well as papers in such leading journals as Paleobiology, Science, American Naturalist, and the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B. His latest book, Nature: An Economic History, tackles the subject of economics and evolution. In it, he draws close comparisons between the principles of economics and the principles of evolution, and ties both to major trends in the history of life and the history of humanity.
 
His books include Evolution and Escalation, Privileged Hands: A Scientific Life, The Evolutionary World: How Adaptation Explains Everything from Seashells to Civilization, A Natural History of Shells, and Biogeography and Adaptation: Patterns of Marine Life. Read the full list of his publications!
 
Read Hermit crabs socialize to evict their neighbors. Read To Sea with a Blind Scientist, Nutley Hall of Fame — Geerat J. Vermeij, Geerat J. Vermeij, and Dr. Geerat J. Vermeij. Read his Wikipedia profile.