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Dr. Lynn J. Rothschild, an evolutionary biologist at NASA's
Ames Research Center, is immersed in the field of Astrobiology. She has broad
training in biology, with degrees from Yale University, Indiana University,
and Brown University. At NASA her research has focused on how life has evolved
in the context of the physical environment, both here and potentially elsewhere,
with a current focus on the effect of UV radiation and oxidative damage. She
has co-edited a book on the subject entitled, "Evolution on Planet Earth:
The Impact of the Physical Environment" (Academic Press, 2003), which takes
a fresh look at how the environment has shaped evolution from prebiotic chemistry
to human society. Rothschild has studied carbon metabolism and DNA damage and
repair in the laboratory setting and on algal mats, work that has taken her
to field sites in Baja, Yellowstone National Park and thermal areas on New Zealand,
and hopefully some day to Mars. As a result of this work she has become an acknowledged
authority in the study of extremophiles, and wrote a critical review on them
for Nature (2001). Recent honors have included election to the Presidency of
the Society of Protozoologists, and as a fellow to the Linnean Society of London.
She is a founding editor of the International Journal of Astrobiology.
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