Lisa Tauxe is a Professor Emerita in the Geosciences Research Division at Scripps Institution of Oceanography, University of California, San Diego. She served Scripps in many roles, most recently as Department Chair.

Tauxe’s studies concentrate on paleomagnetism, the study of remanent magnetism in geological and archaeological materials. She is working to extend the record of geomagnetic field behavior back throughout the history of the Earth.

She was born in Rochester, MN and completed high school at the Ecole d’Humanite in Goldern, Switzerland. She graduated cum laude as Scholar of the House from Yale University and earned an MA, an MPhil, and a PhD in geology from Columbia University. After graduate school, she joined Scripps as an Assistant Research Geophysicist.

Tauxe has received many awards and honors, including the George P. Woollard Award of the Geological Society of America, Outstanding Academic Title in Earth Science from the American Library Association for Essentials of Paleomagnetism, the Antarctic Service Medal, the Benjamin Franklin Medal, the Arthur L. Day Medal and was elected to the National Academy of Sciences and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. She has served as a Distinguished Lecturer of the Joint Oceanographic Institutions (twice) and as an Invited Speaker of the Science Lecture Series at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study. Tauxe is an elected fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, of the Geological Society of America, and of the American Geophysical Union. She has served as President of the Geomagnetism/Paleomagnetism Section and as the General Secretary/Treasurer of the American Geophysical Union. Tauxe has published more than 225 scientific papers.

(Updated January 2021)