Neil Shubin
Neil Shubin (born December 22, 1960) is an American paleontologist, evolutionary biologist and popular science writer. He is the Robert R. Bensley Professor of Organismal Biology and Anatomy, Associate Dean of Organismal Biology and Anatomy and Professor on the Committee of Evolutionary Biology at the University of Chicago along with being the Provost of the Field Museum of Natural History. He is best known for his discovery of Tiktaalik roseae.
Raised outside Philadelphia, Shubin earned a Ph.D. in organismic and evolutionary biology from Harvard University in 1987. He also studied at Columbia University and the University of California, Berkeley.
Shubin was elected to the National Academy of Sciences in 2011 and elected to the American Philosophical Society in 2017.
Shubin was ABC News' "Person of the Week" in April 2006 when Tiktaalik was unveiled, and made appearances on The Colbert Report January 14, 2008 and January 9, 2013.
The Communication Awards of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine awarded a $20,000 prize for excellence in communicating science to the general public to Michael Rosenfeld, David Dugan, and Neil Shubin in Film/Radio/TV on October 14, 2015 for "Your Inner Fish". The awards are given to individuals in four categories: books, film/radio/TV, magazine/newspaper and online, and are supported by the W. M. Keck Foundation. Neil Shubin hosted Your Inner Fish on PBS. The show was produced by Windfall Films and Tangled Bank Studios, a production company for the Howard Hughes Medical Institute that makes materials available for science classroom education.
He was elected to the American Philosophical Society in 2017.
