Keith S. Thomson

Keith Thomson has had a distinguished career in a variety of roles, including as professor of biology (at Yale and at Oxford) and dean (at Yale), museum director (Yale, Philadelphia, and Oxford), an author, and most recently as a learned society administrator. He began as a biologist interested in the evolution of fishes and the origin of major features in the transition between fishes and tetrapods. That interest drew him to paleontology and to the study of the living fossil lungfishes and the coelacanth. In 1966 he obtained for study the first fresh specimen of the coelacanth from the Comoro Islands, which he described in his book Living Fossil (1991). His work has helped understanding of fossils in the same physiological, biomechanical, and ecological terms as living animals. In 1998 he was elected to be the first director (in modern times) of the Oxford University Museum, Professor of Natural History, and a Fellow of Kellogg College.