2013 Benjamin Franklin Medal in Earth and Environmental Science presented to Robert Arbuckle Berner

Abstract

The processes and cycles of the Earth that arise through the interactions of its biota, its soil and rocks, its atmosphere and oceans, are intricate and complex. These cycles also provide and define the environment that makes all life on Earth possible. For nearly half a century, Robert A. Berner has been exploring the geochemical cycles that shape the past, present, and future of the planet. His work made it clear that sediments are more than simply repositories of the past: they are also active chemical systems, affecting our present by controlling the amounts of important elements such as oxygen, carbon, and sulfur in the environment. The major contributions of his scientific enterprise have been: 1) understanding and modeling early sediment diagenesis; 2) studying processes of chemical weathering on time scales ranging from that in the laboratory to that of the geological record; 3) understanding and modeling the evolution of the atmosphere; and 4) developing the first truly large scale dynamic model of the biogeochemical cycles that have governed the composition of Earth's atmosphere and oceans over the eons of geologic time that life has existed on our planet.