Dr. Peter Crockford

Dr. Crockford is an isotope geochemist and geobiologist whose research focuses on understanding how the Earth’s carbon, sulfur and oxygen cycles have evolved from the origin of life to the present. Dr. Crockford earned a PhD at McGill University and was an Agouron Institute postdoctoral fellow at the Weizmann Institute of Science jointly with Princeton University.

Dr. Crockford has targeted some of the most important and poorly understood events in Earth history, discovered ways to observe and sample the geological and geochemical record and applied a suite of analytical techniques and simple models to provide insight into historic periods and events. The primary focus of his research at the Weizmann Institute’s Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences is to bring new understanding into the ancient carbon cycle. This involves a three-pronged approach where he aims to quantify the productivity of Earth’s ancient biosphere, develop new tools to link primary production and organic carbon burial, and evaluate sedimentary archives to determine primary environmental signatures (local or global) from diagenetic ones (physical and chemical changes that occur during the conversion of sediment to sedimentary rock.)  Dr. Crockford will apply this approach to address fundamental questions about the geochemical history of the oceans, atmosphere and biosphere.