Life in Deep Time

J. William Schopf is Distinguished Professor and Director of the Center for the Study of Evolution and the Origin of Life at the University of California Los Angeles. He is an elected member of the American Philosophical Society, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and the National Academy of Sciences. He is the author or co-author of hundreds of scholarly journal articles, as well as many authored and edited books. His books have won 3 national prizes.

• IntroductionChapter 1 The Schopf LineageChapter 2 Bill Schopf’s Schooling and First Year of CollegeChapter 3 Earth’s Early Life – The Quest BeginsChapter 4 The Missing Precambrian Record of Life Chapter 5 Graduate School and Early CareerChapter 6 The 1970s – Lucky, Time and Time AgainChapter 7 The 1980s – The PPRG Defines the FieldChapter 8 This Science Over the Years Chapter 9 Today’s Status of This ScienceChapter 10 Final CommentsAddendum: Selected Relevant Literature in Chronological OrderIndex

Bill Schopf is a remarkable man, a great scientist and a fine writer... The voice of Bill Schopf is a humble yet commanding one: it deserves to be heard."This retrospective might provide an important test case for philosophers of science interested in questions about optimism versus pessimism in reconstructing the deep past. This is a case where methodological innovation has enabled scientists to extract more information about life in deep time than earlier researchers ever suspected was possible, but new discoveries continuously highlight remaining gaps in our understanding of life’s early history." - Derek D. Turner and Ahmed AboHamad, Philosophy, Connecticut College, New London, Connecticut