Daniel A. Livingstone is the James B Duke Professor Emeritus and Research Professor, in the Department of Biology

Biology

Biology is a natural science concerned with the study of life and living organisms, including their structure, function, growth, origin, evolution, distribution, and taxonomy. Biology is a vast subject containing many subdivisions, topics, and disciplines...

 at Duke University

Duke University

Duke University is a private research university located in Durham, North Carolina, United States. Founded by Methodists and Quakers in the present day town of Trinity in 1838, the school moved to Durham in 1892. In 1924, tobacco industrialist James B...

, Durham, North Carolina

Durham, North Carolina

Durham is a city in the U.S. state of North Carolina. It is the county seat of Durham County and also extends into Wake County. It is the fifth-largest city in the state, and the 85th-largest in the United States by population, with 228,330 residents as of the 2010 United States census...

. Born August 3, 1927 at Detroit, Michigan, Livingstone studied at McGill and Dalhousie Universities before joining Ed Deevey

Edward Smith Deevey, Jr.

Edward Smith Deevey, Jr. , born in Albany, New York, was a prominent American ecologist and paleolimnologist, and an early protégé of G. Evelyn Hutchinson at Yale University...

's research group as a PhD student at Yale University

Yale University

Yale University is a private, Ivy League university located in New Haven, Connecticut, United States. Founded in 1701 in the Colony of Connecticut, the university is the third-oldest institution of higher education in the United States...

.

His research has primarily addressed issues of historical ecology

Ecology

Ecology is the scientific study of the relations that living organisms have with respect to each other and their natural environment. Variables of interest to ecologists include the composition, distribution, amount , number, and changing states of organisms within and among ecosystems...

, including lake ontogeny

Paleolimnology

Paleolimnology is a scientific subdiscipline closely related to both limnology and paleoecology. Palaeolimnological studies are concerned with reconstructing the paleoenvironments of inland waters – and especially changes associated with such events as climatic change, human impacts , and...

, forest history, fish biogeography

Biogeography

Biogeography is the study of the distribution of species , organisms, and ecosystems in space and through geological time. Organisms and biological communities vary in a highly regular fashion along geographic gradients of latitude, elevation, isolation and habitat area...

, palynology

Palynology

Palynology is the science that studies contemporary and fossil palynomorphs, including pollen, spores, orbicules, dinoflagellate cysts, acritarchs, chitinozoans and scolecodonts, together with particulate organic matter and kerogen found in sedimentary rocks and sediments...

, Quaternary

Quaternary

The Quaternary Period is the most recent of the three periods of the Cenozoic Era in the geologic time scale of the ICS. It follows the Neogene Period, spanning 2.588 ± 0.005 million years ago to the present...

 bioclimatology

Bioclimatology

Bioclimatology is the interdisciplinary field of science that studies the interactions between the biosphere and the Earth's atmosphere on time scales of the order of seasons or longer .-Examples of relevant processes:...

, and the paleolimnology

Paleolimnology

Paleolimnology is a scientific subdiscipline closely related to both limnology and paleoecology. Palaeolimnological studies are concerned with reconstructing the paleoenvironments of inland waters – and especially changes associated with such events as climatic change, human impacts , and...

 of African lakes.

He is the inventor of the Livingstone corer, widely used by American palynologists and paleolimnologist

Paleolimnology

Paleolimnology is a scientific subdiscipline closely related to both limnology and paleoecology. Palaeolimnological studies are concerned with reconstructing the paleoenvironments of inland waters – and especially changes associated with such events as climatic change, human impacts , and...

s. In 1989, he was awarded the G. Evelyn Hutchinson Award

G. Evelyn Hutchinson Award

The G. Evelyn Hutchinson Award is an award granted annually by the American Society of Limnology and Oceanography to a mid-career scientist within the society's field for outstanding scientific contributions. The award is named for the limologist G. Evelyn Hutchinson.- Awardees :* 1982 Gene E....

 by the American Society of Limnology and Oceanography

American Society of Limnology and Oceanography

Initiated in 1947, the American Society of Limnology and Oceanography is a scientific society with the goal of Advancing the Sciences of Limnology and Oceanography. With approximately 4000 members in nearly 60 different countries, ASLO is the largest scientific society, worldwide, devoted to...

.

Selected publications

• Livingstone, D.A. 1950-51. The freshwater fishes on Nova Scotia. Proceedings of the Nova Scotia Institute of Science 23: 1-90.

• Livingstone, D.A. 1957. On the sigmoid growth phase in the history of Linsley Pond. American Journal of Science 255: 364-373.

• Livingstone, D.A., Bryan, K., Jr., and Leahy, R.G. 1958. Effects of an arctic environment on the origin and development of freshwater lakes. Limnology and Oceanography 3: 192-214.

• Livingstone, D.A., and Livingstone, B.G.R. 1958. Late-glacial and postglacial vegetation from Gillis Lake in Richmond County, Cape Breton Island, Nova Scotia. American Journal of Science 256: 341-359.

• Livingstone, D.A., and Boykin, J.C. 1962. Vertical distribution of Phosphorus in Linsley Pond mud. Limnology and Oceanography 7: 57-62.

• Livingstone, D.A. 1968. Some interstadial and postglacial pollen diagams from eastern Canada. Ecological Monographs 38: 87-125.

• Stager, J.C., Reinthal, R.N., and Livingstone, D.A. 1986. A 25, 000-year history for Lake Victoria, East Africa, and some comments on its significance for the evolution of cichlid fishes. Freshwater Biology 16: 15-19.

• Livingstone, D.A. 1998. An historical view of African Inland waters, in Science in Africa: Emerging Water Management Issues, edited by J. Schoneboom, pp. 1-11, Washington, DC: AAAS .

• Livingstone, D.A. 1999. Historical geochemistry of tropical Africa, SIL. Verh. Internat. Verein Limnol., 27: 27-34 (Kilham Memorial Lecture.)

• Livingstone, D.A. 2001. A geological perspective on the conservation of African forests, in African Rain Forest Ecology and Conservation, p. 50-56, edited by W. Weber, L.J.T. White, A. Vedder, and L. Naughton-Treves, Yale University Press, New Haven and London.