Professional Achievements
While at the University of Cambridge, Briggs worked on the fossils of the Middle Cambrian Burgess Shale of British Columbia alongside British paleontologists Harry Blackmore Whittington and Simon Conway Morris on the exceptionally well-preserved Burgess Shale fauna. The Burgess Shale project subsequently became one of the most celebrated endeavors in the field of paleontology in the latter half of the 20th century. Briggs is currently Director of the Yale Institute for Biospheric Studies, Professor in the Department of Geology and Geophysics and Curator in charge of Invertebrate Paleontology at the Peabody Museum of Natural History. In July 2008 he took over as director of the museum. Briggs is a Fellow of the Royal Society and winner of the 2001 Boyle Medal.
Briggs's research is on the taphonomy, or preservation, and evolutionary significance of the exceptionally preserved fossil biotas known as Konservat-Lagerstätten - fossil formations that include evidence of faunal soft tissue. His work involves a range of approaches from experimental work on the factors controlling decay and fossilization, through studies of early diagenetic mineralization and organic preservation, to field work on a range of fossil occurrences.
Read more about this topic: Derek Briggs
Famous quotes containing the words professional and/or achievements:
“Virtue and vice suppose the freedom to choose between good and evil; but what can be the morals of a woman who is not even in possession of herself, who has nothing of her own, and who all her life has been trained to extricate herself from the arbitrary by ruse, from constraint by using her charms?... As long as she is subject to man’s yoke or to prejudice, as long as she receives no professional education, as long as she is deprived of her civil rights, there can be no moral law for her!”
—Flora Tristan (1803–1844)
“Our achievements speak for themselves. What we have to keep track of are our failures, discouragements, and doubts. We tend to forget the past difficulties, the many false starts, and the painful groping. We see our past achievements as the end result of a clean forward thrust, and our present difficulties as signs of decline and decay.”
—Eric Hoffer (1902–1983)