A tidal estuary that flows toward the Atlantic Ocean on the banks of his childhood home in New Jersey led Dr. David Kieber to ponder a really big question: How does the ocean work? “
Growing up in New Jersey, along the Jersey shore, I was down at the Navesink River all the time, turning rocks over and catching things in the water,” said Kieber, ESF’s newest member of the SUNY Distinguished Academy. “This is what I always wanted to do — I wanted to study the ocean. At the time I had no idea what that meant.”
The budding scientist took charge of his early education, writing letters to oceanographers whose names he found in the magazines at a nearby marine research institute. He asked them how he could become an oceanographer. They spoke with one voice: start by going to college and getting a basic science degree.
Kieber went to Cook College at Rutgers University, majoring in environmental science and taking all the chemistry, math and biology courses he could fit into his schedule. He moved on to the University of Delaware for a master’s degree in marine science, then followed his adviser to the University of Miami for his doctorate in chemical oceanography.
Dr. David Kieber works at the Bermuda Institute for Ocean Science Tudor Hill Marine Atmospheric Observatory collecting aerosols to determine their chemical composition and study how sunlight affects them.
Over the next 30 years, Kieber became known as an international expert in the field of chemical oceanography. His career comprises nearly 25 years of academic excellence in scholarship, teaching and creative activities. He has made a number of seminal contributions to the understanding of oceanic carbon and sulfur cycles (in the Antarctic, the Black Sea, the Mediterranean Sea, the Atlantic and Pacific oceans), the role of photochemical and biological processes in these cycles and the effect of aerosols across the air-sea interface. He has made a number of advanced findings in the study of the effects of sunlight on seawater chemicals, reactive oxygen species generation and the production of volatile organic sulfur compounds by marine phytoplankton.
He has more than 7,100 citations in 78 peer-reviewed publications in leading journals within his field, including articles in Nature, Nature Geosicence, Limnology and Oceanography, Environmental Science and Technology, and Environmental Chemistry. When Kieber was appointed SUNY Distinguished Professor this past spring, ESF Interim President David Amberg described him as “an exemplary scholar, scientist, teacher, mentor and colleague.”
“His pioneering work on sunlight-driven production of biological substrates in natural waters has led to research by scientists globally to try to understand the interactions of sunlight, organic matter and aquatic food web dynamics in both freshwater and marine environments,” Amberg wrote in Kieber’s nomination.
“Additionally, his groundbreaking work on the organosulfur compound dimethylsulfoniopropionate has opened up an entirely new area of research regarding biocompatible solutes and their role as antioxidants in living cells.” Kieber said he is motivated by curiosity about how the ocean and atmosphere interact, and by the way living organisms affect that cycle around the globe. “I’m driven by fundamentally trying to understand how the Earth works,” he said. “I’m focused on the oceans because we’re a water world — 71 percent of the world is water in the oceans. And there’s so much in the oceans we don’t know.” His chemical oceanography work is inextricably tied to marine biology.
“I’ve always said that, ‘microbes rule.’ In the average milliliter of lake or ocean water, there are 100,000 to 1 million bacteria. They are biochemical machines remineralizing organic matter produced by algae and other organisms, or produced by chemical transformations initiated by solar energy,” he said.
“When that organic matter absorbs ultraviolet radiation coming from the sun, lots of things happen —they can transmit that energy as heat or light, or undergo a chemical change.” Kieber’s work focuses on those chemical transformations — what they are, and how they impact the marine food web or volatile gases that get into and affect the atmosphere.
“There’s an assumption by the general public that being an environmental scientist means looking at pollution, looking at the effect we’ve had on nature,” he said. “But, in order to understand those impacts, you have to understand how the Earth’s systems work fundamentally. We know so little about these interactions.”
As an example, he pointed to El Nino, the complex oceanic-atmospheric changes that occur in the equatorial Pacific Ocean. Scientists are beginning to understand how the phenomenon will affect weather around the globe, but the cause is still a mystery.
“We are far from understanding all these interactions,” he said. “I tell my students, ‘Ask the interesting questions. Don’t be afraid to follow your dream and ask the important questions. Because you don’t have enough time to answer all the questions.”
Claire B. Dunn was the editor of ESF Magazine. She recently retired from ESF.
Dr. David Kieber works at
the Bermuda Institute for Ocean Science Tudor Hill Marine Atmospheric Observatory collecting aerosols to determine their chemical composition and study how sunlight affects them.
A tidal estuary that flows toward the Atlantic Ocean on the banks of his childhood home in New Jersey led Dr. David Kieber to ponder a really big question: How does the ocean work? “
Growing up in New Jersey, along the Jersey shore, I was down at the Navesink River all the time, turning rocks over and catching things in the water,” said Kieber, ESF’s newest member of the SUNY Distinguished Academy. “This is what I always wanted to do — I wanted to study the ocean. At the time I had no idea what that meant.”
The budding scientist took charge of his early education, writing letters to oceanographers whose names he found in the magazines at a nearby marine research institute. He asked them how he could become an oceanographer. They spoke with one voice: start by going to college and getting a basic science degree.
Kieber went to Cook College at Rutgers University, majoring in environmental science and taking all the chemistry, math and biology courses he could fit into his schedule. He moved on to the University of Delaware for a master’s degree in marine science, then followed his adviser to the University of Miami for his doctorate in chemical oceanography.
Over the next 30 years, Kieber became known as an international expert in the field of chemical oceanography. His career comprises nearly 25 years of academic excellence in scholarship, teaching and creative activities. He has made a number of seminal contributions to the understanding of oceanic carbon and sulfur cycles (in the Antarctic, the Black Sea, the Mediterranean Sea, the Atlantic and Pacific oceans), the role of photochemical and biological processes in these cycles and the effect of aerosols across the air-sea interface. He has made a number of advanced findings in the study of the effects of sunlight on seawater chemicals, reactive oxygen species generation and the production of volatile organic sulfur compounds by marine phytoplankton.
He has more than 7,100 citations in 78 peer-reviewed publications in leading journals within his field, including articles in Nature, Nature Geosicence, Limnology and Oceanography, Environmental Science and Technology, and Environmental Chemistry. When Kieber was appointed SUNY Distinguished Professor this past spring, ESF Interim President David Amberg described him as “an exemplary scholar, scientist, teacher, mentor and colleague.”
“His pioneering work on sunlight-driven production of biological substrates in natural waters has led to research by scientists globally to try to understand the interactions of sunlight, organic matter and aquatic food web dynamics in both freshwater and marine environments,” Amberg wrote in Kieber’s nomination.
“Additionally, his groundbreaking work on the organosulfur compound dimethylsulfoniopropionate has opened up an entirely new area of research regarding biocompatible solutes and their role as antioxidants in living cells.” Kieber said he is motivated by curiosity about how the ocean and atmosphere interact, and by the way living organisms affect that cycle around the globe. “I’m driven by fundamentally trying to understand how the Earth works,” he said. “I’m focused on the oceans because we’re a water world — 71 percent of the world is water in the oceans. And there’s so much in the oceans we don’t know.” His chemical oceanography work is inextricably tied to marine biology.
“I’ve always said that, ‘microbes rule.’ In the average milliliter of lake or ocean water, there are 100,000 to 1 million bacteria. They are biochemical machines remineralizing organic matter produced by algae and other organisms, or produced by chemical transformations initiated by solar energy,” he said.
“When that organic matter absorbs ultraviolet radiation coming from the sun, lots of things happen —they can transmit that energy as heat or light, or undergo a chemical change.” Kieber’s work focuses on those chemical transformations — what they are, and how they impact the marine food web or volatile gases that get into and affect the atmosphere.
“There’s an assumption by the general public that being an environmental scientist means looking at pollution, looking at the effect we’ve had on nature,” he said. “But, in order to understand those impacts, you have to understand how the Earth’s systems work fundamentally. We know so little about these interactions.”
As an example, he pointed to El Nino, the complex oceanic-atmospheric changes that occur in the equatorial Pacific Ocean. Scientists are beginning to understand how the phenomenon will affect weather around the globe, but the cause is still a mystery.
“We are far from understanding all these interactions,” he said. “I tell my students, ‘Ask the interesting questions. Don’t be afraid to follow your dream and ask the important questions. Because you don’t have enough time to answer all the questions.”
Claire B. Dunn was the editor of ESF Magazine. She recently retired from ESF.