paleontologist university professor
Doctor Palmer graduated from the Pennsylvania State University in 1946. He received his Doctor of Philosophy in geology from the Department of Geology and Geophysics at the University of Minnesota in 1950. He then worked at the United States Geological Survey until 1966, where he studied the stratigraphy and paleontology of the Cambrian.
His work has focused on the Cambrian period. He has had a career of nearly fifty years as a geologist with the United States Geological Survey and universities. The author of some 137 scientific articles, his research has been important in understanding of the origin and evolution of life on Earth.
From 1966 to 1980 he was professor of paleontology at the State University of New York at Stony Brook.
He was on the board of the Faculty of Geosciences from 1974 to 1977. In 1980, Palmer left Stony Brook to become the centennial science program coordinator for the Geological Society of America in Boulder, Colorado.
He was also the coordinator of educational programs from 1988 to 1991. He retired from the Geological Society of America in 1993 to become an adjunct professor at the University of Colorado at Boulder where he remains in active research today.
He is a fellow of American Association for the Advancement of Science and was president of the Paleontological Society in 1983.
Between 1972 to 1984 he was president of the Subcommittee for the Cambrian of the International Commission on Stratigraphy.
