Course Instructor
Linda Sohl
Linda Sohl, Ph.D, is a planetary systems scientist, having worked for over 20 years at Columbia University and the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies. At AMNH, Linda is a mentor in the Museum’s Science Research Mentoring Program for high school students. She is also faculty in the Museum’s Master of Arts in Teaching Earth Science Residency Program.
Growing up in the Bronx, Linda sat for hours with a rock & mineral guide in one hand and some pebbles in the other, trying to figure out what the last ice age had left in her backyard. She was also a huge sci-fi fan. Now, Linda blends those interests by studying climates across Earth history and using that information to help search for other planets that could harbor life. Back on modern Earth, Lindaenjoys using the diverse climates of Earth and other planets to introduce students to climate science and climate modeling.
Linda received a B.A. in communications from Fordham University, and worked for a publisher in Manhattan before making the leap into science. She received a B.A. in Geology from Hunter College-CUNY and a Ph.D. in Earth and Environmental Science from Columbia University. Her dissertation combined fieldwork in Australia with laboratory studies to show that Earth suffered through an extreme ice age (“Snowball Earth”) at a critical time for the evolution of more complex life, between 720 and 635 million years ago. Linda’s current research uses NASA’s exoplanetary global climate model, the ROCKE-3D GCM, to explore climate processes of past and future Earth.