WBerger

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Bio

Wolfgang H. Berger is professor of oceanography in the Geosciences Research Division at Scripps Institution of Oceanography, University of California, San Diego.
Berger, a native of Erlangen, Germany, came to the United States as an exchange student at the University of Colorado. He received an MS in geology from that university in 1963, and a PhD in oceanography at Scripps in 1968. That year, he was appointed an assistant research oceanographer at Scripps and an assistant professor of oceanography at San Diego State University. He held both positions until 1970 when he returned to Germany to serve as an assistant research scientist in geology at the Universitaet Kiel.

In 1971, Berger rejoined Scripps. He served as chair of the Geosciences Research Division in 1994-1996. He stepped down from that position when he was named interim director of Scripps in September 1996. He held that position until December 1997 when Charles Kennel was appointed Scripps director.

In January 1998 Berger was appointed director of the California Space Institute, a statewide education and research center at UCSD. In this position, he oversees basic and applied research in many interdisciplinary, space-related fields at UCSD and other UC campuses.
His research includes investigations of plankton ecology, the carbon cycle, the history of climate, and the productivity of the oceans. Funding for his research has been primarily from the National Science Foundation, the Office of Naval Research, and the Electric Power Research Institute.

In 2001, he was awarded the Francis P. Shepard Medal from the Society for Sedimentary Geology. In 1998, he received the Steinmann Medal of the German Geological Association. In 1993, he received the international Balzan Prize for his pioneering work in paleoceanography using micropaleontological methods for deciphering the geological history of the oceans and climatic implications. In 1988, he received the Maurice Ewing Medal from the American Geophysical Union (AGU) and the U.S. Navy, for contributions in marine geophysics.

He received the Humboldt Award from the Alexander-von-Humboldt Foundation, Bonn, Germany, in 1986, for contributions to the earth sciences, and the Huntsman Medal of the Bedford Institute of Oceanography, Halifax, Canada, in 1984, for contributions to the marine sciences. In 1979, he was awarded the Henry Bryant Bigelow Gold Medal from Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, for distinguished service to oceanography. Berger was an ARCS Foundation (Achievement Rewards for College Scientists) scholar while conducting graduate studies at Scripps. In 1976, he received that foundation’s first Alumnus of the Year Award.
He is the author of more than 180 scientific publications and has written a popular book, Walk along the Ocean, about the shoreline of San Diego’s North County. He is coauthor, with E. Seibold, of a textbook on marine geology, The Sea Floor, which has been translated into Russian and Japanese. He has served on the editorial boards of Geology, the AGU Monograph Series, Marine Geology, Marine Micropaleontology, the Journal of Foraminiferal Research, AGU Paleoceanography, and the Journal of Paleoclimatology.

Berger is a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the American Geophysical Union, and the Geological Society of America.

He and his family reside in Solana Beach, Calif.

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http://www.sio.ucsd.edu/Profile/?who=wberger