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James Kennett (born September 3, 1940) is a professor emeritus in the Department of Earth Sciences at the University of California, Santa Barbara. Kennett’s work has been vital in developing the disciplines of marine geology and paleoceanography and has contributed towards a deeper understanding of environmental change throughout the Cenozoic Era. Kennett is also a founding editor of the scientific journal "Paleoceanography" and a member of the National Academy of Sciences.

Biography
James Kennett was born in Wellington, New Zealand, and developed an early interest in geology due to the abundance of geologic exposures present. He received a B.S. from the University of New Zealand in 1962 and a PhD from the University of Wellington in 1965, studying Cenozoic stratigraphy, micropaleontology, and the geology of the Antarctic. Kennett emigrated to the United States with his wife in 1966 in order to begin a postdoctoral fellowship at the University of Southern California.

Professional Career
James Kennett has authored over 250 journal publications, 4 books, 16 edited volumes, 42 published reports, 5 book reviews, and over 300 published abstracts. He is the Founding Editor of the journal Paleoceanography, published by the American Geophysical Union. He has taught at Florida State University, the University of Rhode Island, and the University of California, Santa Barbara.

Kennett’s studies often include the usage of techniques such as stable isotope geochemistry, biostratigraphy, magnetostratigraphy, and sedimentology. He has developed the usage of planktonic and benthic foraminifera as paleoceanographic and stratigraphic tools and contributed towards an understanding of their phylogeny.

Kennett’s analysis of Deep Sea Drilling Project cores, Ocean Drilling Program cores, and exposed Cenozoic sediments on land has been vital in understanding many of the most important paleoceanographic and paleoclimatic events of the Cenozoic, from the Paleocene through the Quaternary. In particular, Kennett has done much to constrain the history of Antarctic glaciation in the Cenozoic, including the first formation of Antarctic bottom water and subsequent beginnings of thermohaline circulation, as well as the onset of permanent Antarctic ice sheets in the Miocene. Kennett was among the earliest to conclude that there was a transient warming period at the Paleocene-Eocene boundary that corresponded with a negative carbon isotope excursion and the extinction of many benthic foraminifera, an event now known as the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum.

Starting in 1987 with his appointment as Director of the Marine Science institute at UCSB, Kennett proposed a project to analyze cores within the Santa Barbara Basin due to their continuous and high resolution record of Earth’s climate, as well as their recording of influences from both the California Current and its "countercurrent". He also began to study exposed sections of Cenozoic sediments such as the Monterey Formation. With the combined data from these two sources, Kennett and his collaborators were able to record the rapid oscillations in Earth’s climate and oceans that have taken place in recent geologic history due to occurrences such as glacial-interglacial cycles. Kennett’s work has also focused in particular on the Younger Dryas, constraining the timing of the event and proposing causes, including the "impact hypothesis".

Honors
Kennett is a member of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences, an Honorary Fellow of the Royal Society of New Zealand, a Fellow of the American Geophysical Union, an Honorary Fellow of the European Union of Geosciences, a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and a Fellow of the Geological Society of America.