Fred T. Mackenzie


Frederick T. Mackenzie is an American sedimentary and global biogeochemist. Mackenzie applies experimental and field data coupled to a sound theoretical framework to the solution of geological, geochemical, and oceanographic problems at various time and space scales.
He is identified closely with the book Evolution of Sedimentary Rocks co-authored in 1971 by Mackenzie with Robert M. Garrels, which reawakened and revitalized the scientific community to the ideas of the British geologist James Hutton that lay fallow for more than 150 years. Evolution of Sedimentary Rocks expanded on the theory of reverse weathering proposed by Mackenzie and Garrels in 1966.

Life and career

Mackenzie earned a bachelor's degree in physics and geology from Upsala College in 1955. He went on to earn an M.S. degree in 1959 and his Ph.D. in 1962 in geological sciences and biogeochemistry from Lehigh University. His Ph.D. dissertation research dealt with a paleocurrent and environmental analysis of the ~ 140 Ma Cretaceous Lakota and equivalent rock units of the Western Interior of the United States.
Following completion of his Ph.D., Mackenzie went to work full-time for Shell Oil Company as an Exploration and Research Geologist. Two of his assignments at the time involved studies of the stratigraphy and structure of Ordovician carbonates in the Appalachian Mountains as targets for oil exploration and of the Devonian Marcellus Shale, which in recent years has become a horizon for gas production by fracking and a subject of strong environmental concern. Then in 1963, Mackenzie accepted a position as Staff Geochemist and Assistant Director at the Bermuda Biological Station for Research. One of his tasks at BBSR was to manage Hydrostation S, the longest continuously occupied hydrostation in the world.
In 1967 Mackenzie joined the faculty at Northwestern University becoming Full Professor and department Chair in 1971. Here between 1967 and 1981, he in association with colleagues Robert Garrels, Hal Helgeson, Abraham Lerman and his many graduate students and national and international colleagues published a number of classic papers involving an interdisciplinary range of scientific topics including early diagenetic processes of reverse weathering and controls on seawater composition, pore water geochemistry, kinetics and thermodynamics of mineral-water reactions, and modeling of Earth's surface environmental system over geological time.
In 1981 Mackenzie left Northwestern and accepted an appointment in 1982 at the University of Hawaii at Manoa, where he continues doing research and teaching until today, although in 2008, he became a Professor Emeritus of Oceanography and Geology & Geophysics. At the University of Hawaii, Mackenzie broadened his research and teaching program even more into the field of marine biogeochemistry, particularly into the biogeochemical interactions involving carbon and oxygen and the nutrient elements of nitrogen, phosphorus, and silicon between the land and coastal waters. He also investigated CO2 exchange in coastal marine waters, and the biogeochemistry and consequences of ocean acidification for reefs and other carbonate ecosystems.
In 1997, Mackenzie founded the Bachelor of Science degree program in Global Environmental Science at the University of Hawaii in the Oceanography Department.
Mackenzie is the author or co-author of nearly 300 scholarly works, and has written works with more than 200 co-authors. Mackenzie is also an ardent athlete, lifetime traveler, and mountaineer having climbed in many ranges of the world.

Fellowships, awards and honors

Mackenzie is a Fellow of the Mineralogical Society of America, the Geological Society of America, the Geochemical Society, the European Association of Geochemistry, and the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and is a Life Trustee of the Bermuda Institute of Ocean Sciences. He has received innumerable awards and honors including:

Books