Gerald Kooyman is a professor emeritus and research physiologist in the Center for Marine Biotechnology and Biomedicine at Scripps Institution of Oceanography, University of California, San Diego.

Kooyman’s research focuses on the comparative anatomy and physiology of respiration in air-breathing vertebrates as well as the exercise physiology and diving behavior of aquatic vertebrates, marine birds, and marine mammals, particularly the emperor penguin. He is a veteran scuba diver. In Antarctica he has studied Weddelland leopard seals, as well as emperor penguins.

Kooyman was born in Salt Lake City, Utah, and received an A.B. degree in zoology from the University of California, Los Angeles. After graduate work at both the University of California, Berkeley, and the Hopkins Marine Station in Pacific Grove, Calif., he received a Ph.D. degree in zoology from the University of Arizona.

Prior to joining Scripps as a postgraduate researcher, Kooyman was a postdoctoral fellow at the London Hospital Medical School.

He is scientific fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the Zoological Society of London, and the Explorers Club. He is also a member of the American Society of Zoologists, Sigma Xi, the American Physiological Society, and the American Polar Society.

Kooyman was the first recipient of the Kenneth S. Norris Lifetime Achievement Award from the Society for Marine Mammalogy. He was selected to present the seventh annual Roger E. Carpenter Lecture in Comparative Biology at San Diego State University. Kooyman received a Special Creativity Award from the National Science Foundation for his studies on the biology of emperor penguins in Antarctica.

Last updated December 2005