Tullis Onstott


Tullis Onstott is a professor of geosciences at Princeton University who has done research into endolithic life deep under the Earth's surface. In 2007, Onstott was listed among Time Magazine's 100 most influential people in the world. In 2011 he co-discovered Halicephalobus mephisto, a nematode worm living under the ground, the deepest multicellular organism known to science. He won a LExEN Award for his work "A Window Into the Extreme Environment of Deep Subsurface Microbial Communities: Witwatersrand Deep Microbiology Project".

Early life and education

Onstott attended the California Institute of Technology and was awarded a B.S. in Geophysics in 1976. He later moved to Princeton University to earn a M.A. in 1978 and later a Ph.D. in 1980, both in Geology, under the direction of Robert B. Hargraves. After receiving his doctoral degree, Onstott, spent the next three years as a postdoctoral fellow in Derek York's laboratory at the University of Toronto performing research involving 40Ar/39Ar geochronology, before returning to Princeton as a professor.

Research

Research projects include:
The first two research projects were done in collaboration with stable isotope biogeochemist and colleague Lisa Pratt of Indiana University.