1. David John Beerling FLSW was born on 21 June 1965 and is the Director of the Leverhulme Centre for Climate change mitigation and Sorby Professor of Natural Sciences in the Department of Animal and Plant Sciences at the University of Sheffield, UK.
David Beerling is Editor-in-Chief of the Royal Society journal Biology Letters.
David Beerling's PhD was supervised by Ron Walter Edwards CBE and he authored two ecological monographs on the species and scientific papers reporting simulated projections of their potential future distributions in Europe with global climate change.
David Beerling's paper resulted in major new international research programmes that subsequently identified evidence confirming the carbon cycle perturbation in marine and terrestrial sediments world-wide.
David Beerling extended this discovery by evaluating hypothesized causal mechanisms with numerical geochemical carbon cycle modelling in collaboration with the Yale University geochemist Robert Berner.
David Beerling is a leading architect in the field of experimental palaeobiology, adopting advanced experimental research programmes to address fundamental questions raised by the fossil record of plant life.
David Beerling's has published over 200 papers in leading peer reviewed scientific journals including Science and Nature.
David Beerling's best-selling popular science book The Emerald Planet: How plants changed Earth's history presents a case for recognising the role of plants in shaping Earth's history.
The story David Beerling tells could not have been put together even 10 years ago, for it depends on the latest insights from palaeontology, climate science, genetics, molecular biology and chemistry, all brilliantly and beautifully integrated.
The book formed the basis of a major three-part BBC Two television series, How to Grow a Planet, for which David Beerling acted as the Scientific Consultant.
David Beerling is the author of an advanced technical book Vegetation and the terrestrial carbon cycle: the first 400 million years.
David Beerling is interested in the history of science and publishes occasional scholarly articles on this theme.
David Beerling's discovery was widely reported including in Scientific American and Science which coined the memorable 'Newton was no sap' strap line.
David Beerling placed these findings in the context of the pioneering English plant physiologist Stephen Hales's book Vegetable Staticks published in 1727.
David Beerling's research has been funded by the Natural Environment Research Council, the Department for International Development, the Economic and Social Research Council, The Royal Society, and The Leverhulme Trust.
David Beerling was awarded a Philip Leverhulme Prize in Earth sciences for outstanding contributions to palaeobotany and palaeoclimatology in 2001.
In 2009, David Beerling was awarded a Royal Society Wolfson Research Merit Award, a scheme funded by the Wolfson Foundation and Department for Business, Innovation and Skills for recruiting or retaining respected scientists of outstanding achievement and potential to the UK.
David Beerling was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 2014, his certificate of election reads:.
David Beerling is one of the world's leading botanists widely respected internationally for his major contributions to understanding the co-evolution of plants and the environment over the past half billion years.
David Beerling is distinguished for pioneering cross-disciplinary research programmes that combine palaeobotanical, experimental and theoretical modelling approaches.
David Beerling was elected a Fellow of the Learned Society of Wales in 2022.
David Beerling married Juliette Fraser in 2011, they have one son Joshua.