DEPARTMENT OF EARTH, ENVIRONMENTAL, AND PLANETARY SCIENCES

Professor Neal Blair is moving into well-deserved retirement after 19 years of working at Northwestern University, half the time in McCormick's Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, and the other half in our department in the Weinberg College of Arts and Sciences. Neal earned his PhD in Organic Chemistry from Stanford University. 

During his first decade at NU, Neal helped found what is now called the Stable Isotope Biogeochemistry Laboratory at Northwestern (NU-SIBL). Neal also directed the Program in Environmental Sciences, which was a joint Weinberg-McCormick endeavor. Neal's second decade was punctured by the COVID19-pandemic, which inspired him to include different live nature camera feeds as backgrounds to his lectures. Invariably something topical and of interest would happen in these nature feeds that would be discussed in class. The views in these camera feeds ranged from the bottom of the ocean to Earth orbit. Neal’s teaching portfolio included teaching the art of scientific observation by bringing students in his EARTH 106 course to the beach of Lake Michigan every week, observing the lake and its interaction with the coast and the atmosphere.

Neal and his students' research has focused on the biogeochemical transformations of carbon, with an emphasis on the sources and fates of organic carbon within the Earth's Critical Zone - tracking organic matter as it moves across landscapes and is trapped in reservoirs. They also investigated how these transformations and associated cycles are affected by human endeavors. The Earth’s Critical Zone is the near-surface region of Earth that sustains all terrestrial life on Earth.

In addition, Neal has been deeply involved in departmental service, most recently representing DEEPS in NU's faculty senate, and has an impressive record of service to a wide variety of environmental working groups and climate advisory bodies.