About Fred T. Mackenzie
Frederick T. Mackenzie (March 17, 1934 – January 3, 2024) was an American sedimentary and global biogeochemist. Mackenzie applied experimental and field data coupled to a sound theoretical framework to the solution of geological, geochemical, and oceanographic problems at various time and space scales. Mackenzie is identified closely with the book Evolution of Sedimentary Rocks co-authored in 1971 by Mackenzie with Robert M. Garrels, which reawakened and revitalized the scientific community to the ideas of the British geologist James Hutton that lay fallow for more than 150 years. Evolution of Sedimentary Rocks expanded on the theory of reverse weathering proposed by Mackenzie and Garrels in 1966. == Life and career == Mackenzie earned a bachelor's degree in physics and geology from Upsala College in 1955. He later earned an M.S. degree in 1959 and his Ph.D. in 1962 in geological sciences and biogeochemistry from Lehigh University. His Ph.D. dissertation research dealt with a paleocurrent and environmental analysis of the ~ 140 Ma Cretaceous Lakota and equivalent rock units of the Western Interior of the United States. Following completion of his Ph.D., Mackenzie went to work full-time for Shell Oil Company as an Exploration and Research Geologist. Two of his assignments at the time involved studies of the stratigraphy and structure of Ordovician carbonates in the Appalachian Mountains as targets for oil exploration and of the Devonian Marcellus Shale, which in recent years has become a horizon for gas production by fracking and a subject of strong environmental concern. Then in 1963, Mackenzie accepted a position as Staff Geochemist and assistant director at the Bermuda Biological Station for Research (BBSR, now the Bermuda Institute of Ocean Sciences).
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