Cesare Emiliani was an Italian-American scientist, considered one of the greatest geologists and micropaleontologists

Micropaleontology

Micropaleontology is the branch of paleontology that studies microfossils.-Microfossils:...

 of the 20th century and the founder of paleoceanography

Paleoceanography

Paleoceanography is the study of the history of the oceans in the geologic past with regard to circulation, chemistry, biology, geology and patterns of sedimentation.- Source of information :...

, developing the timescale of marine isotope stage

Marine isotope stage

Marine isotope stages , marine oxygen-isotope stages, or oxygen isotope stages , are alternating warm and cool periods in the Earth's paleoclimate, deduced from oxygen isotope data reflecting changes in temperature derived from data from deep sea core samples...

s, which despite modifications remains in very wide use today.

He established that the ice age

Ice age

An ice age or, more precisely, glacial age, is a generic geological period of long-term reduction in the temperature of the Earth's surface and atmosphere, resulting in the presence or expansion of continental ice sheets, polar ice sheets and alpine glaciers...

s of the last half million years or so are a cyclic

Milankovitch cycles

Milankovitch theory describes the collective effects of changes in the Earth's movements upon its climate, named after Serbian civil engineer and mathematician Milutin Milanković, who worked on it during First World War internment...

 phenomenon, which gave strong support to the hypothesis of Milankovitch and revolutionized ideas about the history of the oceans and of the glaciations. He was also the proponent of Project "LOCO" (for Long Cores) to the U.S. National Science Foundation. The project was a success providing evidence of the history of the oceans and also serving to test the hypotheses of seafloor spreading

Seafloor spreading

Seafloor spreading is a process that occurs at mid-ocean ridges, where new oceanic crust is formed through volcanic activity and then gradually moves away from the ridge. Seafloor spreading helps explain continental drift in the theory of plate tectonics....

 and plate tectonics

Plate tectonics

Plate tectonics is a scientific theory that describes the large scale motions of Earth's lithosphere...

.

Cesare Emiliani was honored by having the genus

Genus

In biology, a genus is a low-level taxonomic rank used in the biological classification of living and fossil organisms, which is an example of definition by genus and differentia...

 Emiliania

Emiliania

Emiliania is a global coccolithophorid genus.It includes the species Emiliania huxleyi....

erected as home for the taxon

Taxon

|thumb|270px|[[African elephants]] form a widely-accepted taxon, the [[genus]] LoxodontaA taxon is a group of organisms, which a taxonomist adjudges to be a unit. Usually a taxon is given a name and a rank, although neither is a requirement...

 huxleyi

Emiliania huxleyi

Emiliania huxleyi, often abbreviated "EHUX", is a species of coccolithophore with a global distribution from the tropics to subarctic waters. It is one of thousands of different photosynthetic plankton that freely drift in the euphotic zone of the ocean, forming the basis of virtually all marine...

, which had previousiy been assigned to Coccolithus

Coccolithus

Coccolithus is a genus of haptophytes.- Species :Species include:*C. oceanicus*C. pelagicus*C. pliopelagicus- External links :* of Coccolithus at Algaebase...

. He was further honored by receiving the Vega Medal of the Swedish Royal Geographic Society in 1983, and the Alexander Agassiz Medal

Alexander Agassiz Medal

The Alexander Agassiz Medal is awarded by the U.S. National Academy of Sciences for an original contribution in the science of oceanography. It was established by Sir John Murray in honor of his friend Alexander Agassiz.-Recipients:-References:NotesA...

 of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences

United States National Academy of Sciences

The National Academy of Sciences is a corporation in the United States whose members serve pro bono as "advisers to the nation on science, engineering, and medicine." As a national academy, new members of the organization are elected annually by current members, based on their distinguished and...

 in 1989 for his isotopic

Isotopic

The word isotopic has a number of different meanings, including:* In the physical sciences, to do with chemical isotopes;* In mathematics, to do with a relation called isotopy.* In geometry, isotopic refers to facet-transitivity....

 studies on Pleistocene

Pleistocene

The Pleistocene is the epoch from 2,588,000 to 11,700 years BP that spans the world's recent period of repeated glaciations. The name pleistocene is derived from the Greek and ....

 and Holocene

Holocene

The Holocene is a geological epoch which began at the end of the Pleistocene and continues to the present. The Holocene is part of the Quaternary period. Its name comes from the Greek words and , meaning "entirely recent"...

 planktic

Plankton

Plankton are any drifting organisms that inhabit the pelagic zone of oceans, seas, or bodies of fresh water. That is, plankton are defined by their ecological niche rather than phylogenetic or taxonomic classification...

 foraminifera

Foraminifera

The Foraminifera , or forams for short, are a large group of amoeboid protists which are among the commonest plankton species. They have reticulating pseudopods, fine strands of cytoplasm that branch and merge to form a dynamic net...

.

In his later years, he dedicated a great deal of time to promoting a calendar reform

Calendar reform

A calendar reform is any significant revision of a calendar system. The term sometimes is used instead for a proposal to switch to a different calendar.Most calendars have several rules which could be altered by reform:...

 based on the Holocene calendar

Holocene calendar

The Human Era, also known as the Holocene calendar or Holocene era , is a year numbering system that adds exactly 10,000 years to the currently world-dominant Anno Domini and Common Era system, placing its first year near the beginning of the Holocene epoch and the Neolithic revolution...

 (HE) concept to eliminate the BC-AD chronology

Chronology

Chronology is the science of arranging events in their order of occurrence in time, such as the use of a timeline or sequence of events. It is also "the determination of the actual temporal sequence of past events".Chronology is part of periodization...

 gap caused by the lack of a year 0.

Biography

Cesare Emiliani was born in Bologna

Bologna

Bologna is the capital city of Emilia-Romagna, in the Po Valley of Northern Italy. The city lies between the Po River and the Apennine Mountains, more specifically, between the Reno River and the Savena River. Bologna is a lively and cosmopolitan Italian college city, with spectacular history,...

. His parents were Luigi and Maria (Manfredidi) Emiliani.

Emiliani studied geology at the University of Bologna

University of Bologna

The Alma Mater Studiorum - University of Bologna is the oldest continually operating university in the world, the word 'universitas' being first used by this institution at its foundation. The true date of its founding is uncertain, but believed by most accounts to have been 1088...

 in post-war Italy

Italy

Italy , officially the Italian Republic languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Italy's official name is as follows:;;;;;;;;), is a unitary parliamentary republic in South-Central Europe. To the north it borders France, Switzerland, Austria and...

 and earned his first doctorate in Geology (micropaleontology) also at Bologna in 1945. After graduation he worked as a micropaleontologist with the Società Idrocarburi Nazionali in Florence from 1946–48. In 1948 he was offered and accepted the Rollin D. Salisbury

Rollin D. Salisbury

Rollin Daniel Salisbury was an American geologist and educator.-Biography:Salisbury was born at Spring Prairie, Wisconsin in 1858. He studied at Whitewater State Normal School in Whitewater, Wisconsin, graduating in 1877 after completing the four-year course in just two-and-one-half years...

 Fellowship in the Department of Geology at the University of Chicago

University of Chicago

The University of Chicago is a private research university in Chicago, Illinois, USA. It was founded by the American Baptist Education Society with a donation from oil magnate and philanthropist John D. Rockefeller and incorporated in 1890...

 where he subsequently obtained his second Ph.D.

Ph.D.

A Ph.D. is a Doctor of Philosophy, an academic degree.Ph.D. may also refer to:* Ph.D. , a 1980s British group*Piled Higher and Deeper, a web comic strip*PhD: Phantasy Degree, a Korean comic series* PhD Docbook renderer, an XML renderer...

 in Geology (isotopic paleoclimatology

Paleoclimatology

Paleoclimatology is the study of changes in climate taken on the scale of the entire history of Earth. It uses a variety of proxy methods from the Earth and life sciences to obtain data previously preserved within rocks, sediments, ice sheets, tree rings, corals, shells and microfossils; it then...

) in 1950. From 1950 to 1956 he was Research Associate in Harold Urey

Harold Urey

Harold Clayton Urey was an American physical chemist whose pioneering work on isotopes earned him the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1934...

’s Geochemistry

Geochemistry

The field of geochemistry involves study of the chemical composition of the Earth and other planets, chemical processes and reactions that govern the composition of rocks, water, and soils, and the cycles of matter and energy that transport the Earth's chemical components in time and space, and...

 Laboratory in the Enrico Fermi

Enrico Fermi

Enrico Fermi was an Italian-born, naturalized American physicist particularly known for his work on the development of the first nuclear reactor, Chicago Pile-1, and for his contributions to the development of quantum theory, nuclear and particle physics, and statistical mechanics...

 Institute for Nuclear Studies at the University of Chicago

University of Chicago

The University of Chicago is a private research university in Chicago, Illinois, USA. It was founded by the American Baptist Education Society with a donation from oil magnate and philanthropist John D. Rockefeller and incorporated in 1890...

.

In 1957 Cesare Emiliani was working on Foraminifera

Foraminifera

The Foraminifera , or forams for short, are a large group of amoeboid protists which are among the commonest plankton species. They have reticulating pseudopods, fine strands of cytoplasm that branch and merge to form a dynamic net...

 (microscopic protists whose remains are greatly abundant in the fossil record) and was particularly interested in great climate changes known to have occurred during the Pleistocene Age. He was sure these tiny shells deposited in the ubiquitous ooze that coats the sea bottom held important clues. For that reason he was looking at the time for a place to work where there were ships and trained personnel to help him to obtain core samples of the deep-sea sediments for his studies. An interview with Dr. Walton Smith convinced Cesare that the University of Miami

University of Miami

The University of Miami is a private, non-sectarian university founded in 1925 with its main campus in Coral Gables, Florida, a medical campus in Miami city proper at Civic Center, and an oceanographic research facility on Virginia Key., the university currently enrolls 15,629 students in 12...

’s Institute of Marine Science, later to become the Rosenstiel School of Marine and Atmospheric Sciences, was the right place to conduct his research and thus he moved there that same year. In 1967 he was named Chairman of the Division of Geology and Geophysics at the Institute. At that time he organized the department of Geological Sciences on the main campus of the University of Miami

University of Miami

The University of Miami is a private, non-sectarian university founded in 1925 with its main campus in Coral Gables, Florida, a medical campus in Miami city proper at Civic Center, and an oceanographic research facility on Virginia Key., the university currently enrolls 15,629 students in 12...

 and remained its Chairman until his retirement in 1993.

He died in Palm Beach Gardens, Florida

Florida

Florida is a state in the southeastern United States, located on the nation's Atlantic and Gulf coasts. It is bordered to the west by the Gulf of Mexico, to the north by Alabama and Georgia and to the east by the Atlantic Ocean. With a population of 18,801,310 as measured by the 2010 census, it...

in 1995.

Popular works by Cesare Emiliani

• Emiliani, Cesare. (1992). Planet Earth : Cosmology, Geology, & the Evolution of Life & the Environment. Cambridge University Press. (Paperback Edition ISBN 0-521-40949-7)
• Emiliani, Cesare. (1995). The Scientific Companion : Exploring the Physical World with Facts, Figures, and Formulas (Wiley Popular Science) (2nd Edition). Wiley. (Paperback Edition ISBN 0-471-13324-8)
• Emiliani, Cesare. (1993). Dictionary of Physical Sciences. Oxford University Press. (Paperback Edition ISBN 0-19-503652-2)

Prominent works by Cesare Emiliani

• Emiliani C (1954) Depth habitats of some species of pelagic foraminifera as indicated by oxygen isotope ratios. American Journal of Science 252:149–158
• Emiliani C (1954) Temperature of Pacific bottom waters and polar superficial waters during the Tertiary. Science 119:853–855
• Emiliani C (1956) Oligocene and Miocene temperature of the equatorial and subtropical Atlantic Ocean. Journal of Geology 64:281–288
• Emiliani C (1956) On paleotemperatures of Pacific bottom waters. Science 123:460–461
• Emiliani C (1957) Temperature and age analysis of deepsea cores. Science 125:383–385
• Emiliani C (1961) The temperature decrease of surface water in high latitudes and of abyssal-hadal water in open oceanic basins during the past 75 million years. Deep-Sea Research 8:144–147
• Emiliani C (1965) Precipitous continental clopes and considerations on the transitional crust. Science 147:145–148
• Emiliani C (1966) Isotopic paleotemperatures. Science 154: 851–857
• Emiliani C (1966). Paleotemperature analysis of Caribbean cores P6304-8 and P6304-9 and a generalized temperature curve for the past 425,000 years. Journal of Geology 74:109–124
• Emiliani C (1968) The Pleistocene epoch and the evolution of man. Current Anthropology 9:27–47
• Emiliani C (1969) Interglacials, high sea levels and the control of Greenland ice by the precession of the equinoxes. Science 166:1503–1504
• Emiliani C (1969) A new paleontology. Micropaleontology 15:265–300
• Emiliani C (1970) Pleistocene paleotemperatures. Science 168:822–825
• Emiliani C (1971) The amplitude of Pleistocene climatic cycles at low latitudes and the isotopic composition of glacial ice. In: Turekian KK (ed) Late Cenozoic Glacial Ages. New Haven, CO: Yale University Press, pp 183–197
• Emiliani C (1971) Depth habitats and growth stages of pelagic formanifera. Science 173:1122–1124
• Emiliani C (1971) Paleotemperature variations across the Plio-Pleistocene boundary at the type section. Science 171:600–602
• Emiliani C (1978) The cause of the ice ages. Earth and Planetary Science Letters 37:347–354
• Emiliani C (1981) A new global geology. In: Emiliani C (ed) The Oceanic Lithosphere. The Sea (8th edn). Vol. 7. New York: Wiley Interscience, pp 1687–738
• Emiliani C (1982) Extinctive evolution. Journal of Theoretical Biology 97:13–33
• Emiliani C (1987) Dictionary of Physical Sciences. Oxford: Oxford University Press
• Emiliani C (1988) The Scientific Companion. New York: Wiley
• Emiliani C (1989) The new geology or the old role of the geological sciences in science education. Journal of Geological Education 37:327–331
• Emiliani C (1991) Avogadro number and mole: a royal confusion. Journal of Geological Education 39:31–33
• Emiliani C (1991) Planktic et al. Marine Micropaleontology 18:3
• Emiliani C (1991) Planktic/planktonic, nektic/nektonic, benthic/benthonic. Journal of Paleontology 65:329
• Emiliani C, Ericson DB (1991) The glacial/interglacial temperature range of the surface water of the ocean at low latitudes. In: Taylor HP, O’Neil JR, Kaplan IR (eds) Special Publication: Stable Isotope Geochemistry: A Tribute to Samuel Epstein. Pennsylvania: Geochemical Society, University Park, pp 223–228
• Emiliani C (1992) The Moon as a piece of Mercury. Geologische Rundschau 81:791–794
• Emiliani C (1992) Planet Earth: Cosmology, Geology, and the Evolution of Life and Environment. New York: Cambridge University Press
• Emiliani C (1992) Pleistocene paleotemperatures. Science 257:1188–1189
• Emiliani C (1993) Milankovitch theory verified; discussion. Nature 364:583
• Emiliani C (1993) Calendar reform. Nature 366:716
• Emiliani C (1993) Extinction and viruses. BioSystems 31:155–159
• Emiliani C (1993) Paleoecological implications of Alaskan terrestrial vertebrate fauna in latest Cretaceous time at high paleolatitudes: Comment. Geology 21:1151–1152
• Emiliani C (1993) Viral extinctions in deep-sea species. Nature 366:217–218
• Emiliani C (1995) Redefinition of atomic mass unit, Avogadro constant, and mole. Geochimica et Cosmochimica Acta 59:1205–1206
• Emiliani C (1995) Tropical paleotemperatures: discussion. Science 268:1264
• Emiliani C, Edwards G (1953) Tertiary ocean bottom temperatures. Nature 171:887–888
• Emiliani C, Elliott I (1995) Vatican confusion. Nature 375:530
• Emiliani C, Epstein S (1953) Temperature variations in the lower Pleistocene of Southern California. Journal of Geology 61:171–181
• Emiliani C, Gartner S, Lidz B (1972) Neogene sedimentation on the Blake Plateau and the emergence of the Central American Isthmus. Palaeogeography, Palaeoclimatology, Palaeoecology 11:1–10
• Emiliani C, Gartner S, Lidz B, Eldridge K, Elvey DK, Huang PC, Stipp JJ, Swanson M (1975) Paleoclimatological analysis of late Quaternary cores from the northwestern Gulf of Mexico. Science 189:1083–1088
• Emiliani C, Geiss J (1959) On glaciations and their causes. Geologische Rundschau 46:576–601
• Emiliani C, Harrison CG, Swanson M (1969) Underground nuclear explosions and the control of earthquakes. Science 165:1255–1256
• Emiliani C, Kraus EB, Shoemaker EM (1981) Sudden death at the end of the Mesozoic. Earth and Planetary Science Letters 55:327–334
• Emiliani C, Mayeda T, Selli R (1961) Paleotemperature analysis of the Plio-Pleistocene section at le Castella, Calabria, southern Italy. Geological Society of America Bulletin 72:679–688
• Emiliani C, Milliman JD (1966) Deep-sea sediments and their geological record. Earth Science Reviews 1:105–132
• Emiliani C, Price DA, Seipp J (1991) Is the Postglacial artificial? In: Taylor HP, O’Neil JR, Kaplan IR (eds) Special Publication: Stable Isotope Geochemistry: A Tribute to Samuel Epstein. Pennsylvania: Geochemical Society, University Park, pp 229–231
• Emiliani C, Shackleton NJ (1974) The Brunhes Epoch: paleotemperature and geochronology. Science 183:511–514