John Smol

Among over 70 awards and fellowships, he is the recipient of the Gerhard Herzberg Canada Gold Medal for Science and Engineering, given by the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC) to honour Canada’s top scientist or engineer. Smol was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society (FRS) in 2018. He holds six honorary degrees: LLD, St Francis Xavier University (2003); PhD, University of Helsinki (2007); DSc, University of Waterloo (2012); LLD, Mount Allison University (2016); DSc, Ryerson University (2016); DSc, Western University (University of Western Ontario) (2017). In 2013 he was named an Officer of the Order of Canada.

John P. Smol, OC FRS FRSC is a Canadian ecologist, limnologist and paleolimnologist who is a Distinguished University Professor in the Department of Biology at Queen's University, Kingston, Ontario, where he also held the Canada Research Chair in Environmental Change for the maximum of three 7-year terms (2001 – 2021). He founded and co-directs the Paleoecological Environmental Assessment and Research Lab (PEARL).

The author or editor of 23 books and over 660 journal publications and book chapters, Smol is an international lecturer and media commentator on a variety of topics, but most dealing with environmental issues. From 1987 to 2007, he edited the Journal of Paleolimnology. Since 2004, he has been editor of the journal Environmental Reviews. He is the series editor of the Developments in Paleoenvironmental Research book series. He held the Chair of the International Paleolimnology Association for two three-year terms ending in August 2018, and he is currently President (2019–2022) of the Academy of Science, Royal Society of Canada.