Samuel A. Bowring (Sept. 27, 1953 – July 17, 2019)[1] was the Robert R. Schrock Professor Emeritus of Geology in the Dept.
[2][3] He was expert in the field of U-Pb zircon geochronology, pushing the limits of geochronologic techniques to unprecedented analytical precision and accuracy and was expert in constraining rates of geologic processes and the timing of significant events in the geologic record.
He investigated the explosion of multi-cellular life in the Early Cambrian as well as the end-Permian and the end-Cretaceous mass extinctions.
He is also highly regarded for his work on the origin and evolution of continental crust, showing, for instance, that the Acasta Gneisses in the Northwest Territories of Canada were 4 billion years old.
In 1991 he joined the faculty of the Department of Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences at MIT.