Marilyn Fogel’s groundbreaking career spurred the opening of entirely new research areas in the biogeosciences, advancing knowledge at the Earth-life interface and inspiring a generation of geoscientists. During a career spanning more than 40 years, she drove the integration of isotope geochemistry with a variety of topics in the environmental and life sciences, ranging from paleoecology to the search for life on other worlds to questions in human evolution. She began this work at the Carnegie Institution during an era in which the word “biogeosciences” was seldom used and in which women were a rarity in geoscience. Marilyn was undaunted. The hallmark of her research was a holistic approach in which she established and advanced novel analytical methods; used them to make fundamental, foundational observations; and applied these innovations in impactful ways through numerous collaborations. Following this approach, Marilyn was the first to characterize many isotope fractionations for key biomolecules and critical biochemical processes. She pioneered the pursuit of palaeoecological and anthropological questions using isotope analyses. She was among the first to analyze isotopes in proteins and amino acids, ushering in new insights into nitrogen cycling in soils, sediments and aqueous systems. She took these and other insights into the field of astrobiology when it was still new. Over the years, Marilyn generously mentored students and postdocs who grew into a vast network of exceptional scientists; the number of stable isotope laboratories established and led by her former mentees is a remarkable legacy, the impact of which will be felt for decades to come. Her scope of influence grew as she stepped up into visible and creative leadership roles at the National Science Foundation and AGU; at the University of California (UC), Merced, where she was a founding department chair; and then as founding director of a new biogeosciences institute at UC Riverside. To all these roles she brought keen scientific insight, deeply humane ethics, an infectiously optimistic personality and a service-oriented leadership style. Marilyn thereby became a beloved citizen-leader of the biogeoscience community, inspiring countless scientists working at the Earth-life interface. She continued to inspire to the very end, through her astonishing example of leading and engaging while living with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS, or Lou Gehrig’s disease). An extraordinary person who made extraordinary contributions at the intersection of Earth and life sciences, Marilyn Fogel is the perfect recipient of the inaugural Eunice Newton Foote Medal for Earth-Life Science. — Ariel D. Anbar Arizona State University Tempe, Arizona

For pioneering breakthroughs and extensive achievement in isotopic biogeochemistry and leadership to establish the field of Biogeosciences.