James William Schopf (born September 27, 1941), commonly known as J. William Schopf, is an American paleobiologist and evolutionary biologist who is professor emeritus in the Department of Earth, Planetary, and Space Sciences at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA).His research focuses on the Precambrian fossil record, the origin and early evolution of life, microfossils, and the geological record of early photosynthesis.

He is most well known for his study of Precambrian prokaryotic life in Australia's Apex chert. Schopf has published extensively in the peer reviewed literature about the origins of life on Earth. He is the first to discover Precambrian microfossils in stromatolitic sediments of Australia (1965), South Africa (1966), Russia (1977), India (1978), and China (1984). He served as NASA's principal investigator of lunar samples during 1969–1974.

Early life and education

James William Schopf was born in Urbana, Illinois, to father James M. Schopf, a paleontologist, and mother Esther Schopf, a school teacher. He was educated at Oberlin College, from where he graduated with AB degree in high honours in 1963. He joined Harvard University in 1963 and earned AM degree in 1965, and PhD in 1968.

Schopf's undergraduate Honors thesis addressed the early fossil record of life, an interest he carried on to his graduate studies at Harvard. He was also associated with the NASA Ames Research Center and later was appointed to NASA's six-member Lunar Sample Preliminary Examination Team that carried out the initial studies of the lunar samples returned by the Apollo program.

Career Schopf joined UCLA in 1968 as an assistant professor of geology. He became an associate professor in 1970 and a professor in 1973. He also served as vice-chair of the Department of Geology and dean of the Division of Honors in the College of Letters and Science.

He also directed the university's Center for the Study of Evolution and the Origin of Life from 1984 to 2009 and was a member of the Institute of Geophysics and Planetary Physics and the UCLA Molecular Biology Institute. Following his retirement in 2023, he has served as a Distinguished Research Professor in the Department of Earth, Planetary, and Space Sciences.

Research

Schopf's research has focused extensively on the fossil record of life during Precambrian Era, the earliest 88% of Earth history. His studies have examined fossilized microorganisms, stromatolites, organic matter preserved in ancient rocks, and the geological record of early microbial ecosystems. From 1965 to 1978 he traveled widely and discovered a total of 11 Precambrian microbiotas including the first known from Australia, South Africa, Russia, and India.

He has also studied the ancient history of photosynthesis, both anoxygenic and oxygenic. His research has concluded that evidence for photosynthetic activity extends to approximately 3.5 billion years ago, although the timing of the origin of oxygen-producing photosynthesis remains a separate question.

Apex Chert Schopf's research concerns the Apex Chert, a geological formation in the Pilbara Craton of Western Australia. In research published beginning in the 1980s and continuing into the following decades, Schopf and collaborators described microscopic structures in the approximately 3.46-billion-year-old chert as possible fossilized microorganisms.

Martin Brasier and his team from University of Oxford sought to discredit the fossils as "secondary artefacts formed from amorphous graphite" in 2002. Brasier then claimed to have discovered found an older fossil from the same region in 2011. In 2017-2018, Schopf and his colleagues reported discovery of an additional fossil microbiota of about the same age – that of the 3.43-billion-year-old Strelley Pool Formation, also in the Pilbara Craton of Western Australia. By use of Raman spectroscopy and secondary ion mass spectrometry.

Schopf's broader work on Paleoarchean microfossils has also included material from the Strelley Pool Formation, where researchers have used Raman spectroscopy and secondary ion mass spectrometry to investigate the morphology and geochemistry of the fossils.

Astrobiology and early life Schopf's research has also contributed to astrobiology, including the study of terrestrial microfossils as analogues for possible evidence of ancient life on Mars. His collaborators reported microscopic fossils preserved in gypsum and suggested that similar deposits on Mars could be targets in the search for past life.

In 2024, he published a historical review of origin-of-life research and the oldest known fossil evidence.

Awards and honours

Schopf was honoured with the Sigma Xi Distinguished Lecturer in 1976, Rubey Lecturer in 1976, M.W. Haas Visiting Distinguished Professor of Geology in 1979, Golden Year Distinguished Lecturerin 1980, University of Cincinnati Sigma Xi distinguished lecturer in 1980, extraordinary visiting professor at the University of Nijmegen during 1980–81, Distinguished Lecturer at the Buffalo Museum of Science in 1982; J.A. Bownocker Lecturer at the Ohio State University in 1982, Gold Shield Prize for Academic Excellence in 1993, Frontiers of Knowledge Lecturer in 2000. He is the recipient of the Mary Clark Thompson Medal in 1986, The Paleontological Society Medal in 2012 and the Charles Doolittle Walcott Medal in 2013. He has received two Guggenheim Fellowships (in 1973, for work in Australia; and in 1988, for work in the Netherlands), and Alexander von Humboldt Prize Fellow from Germany. He also received Oparin Medal, Alan T. Waterman Award in 1972, Thompson Medal of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences, and Waterman Medal of the U.S. National Science Board. He was selected by the Botanical Society of America as a Centennial Scientist in 2006.

He is elected member of the Institute of Geophysics and Planetary Physics in 1973, Board of Trustees of UCLA Foundation in 1983, Molecular Biology Institute in 1991, of the US National Academy of Sciences in 1998, the American Philosophical Society, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the American Academy of Microbiology in 2011, the Linnean Society of London (as Foreign Member), elected President of the International Society for the Study of the Origin of Life, and he is the first-elected Foreign Member of the Scientific Presidium of the A.N. Bach Institute of Biochemistry of the Russian Academy of Sciences. He is life member of the National Center for Science Education.

Personal life

Schopf married Julie Morgan in 1966, had a son James Christopher in 1970, and divorced in 1979. He remarried Jane Shen-Miller, a biochemist, on January 16, 1980 and they reside in Los Angeles.

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