DR. NANCY KNOWLTON

Coral Reef Biologist

Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute & National Museum of Natural History

Dr. Nancy Knowlton is a coral reef biologist who spent much of her career at the Smithsonian, in Panama at the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute, and at the National Museum of Natural History in Washington, DC, prior to moving to Brooksville in Maine. She was also a professor at Yale and the founding director of the Center for Marine Biodiversity and Conservation at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, University of California San Diego. She is the author of Citizens of the Sea and former Editor-in-Chief of the Smithsonian’s Ocean Portal. In 2013 was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and to the U.S. National Academy of Sciences. She is a winner of the Peter Benchley Prize, the Heinz Award, the Women’s Aquatic Network 2018 Woman of the Year award, the National Marine Sanctuary Foundation Lifetime Achievement Award, and the International Coral Reef Society’s Darwin Medal. In 2014 she helped launch #OceanOptimism on Twitter, where you can follow her at
@SeaCitizens.