Rachel Wood (geologist)

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Rachel Wood is a palaeobiologist and geologist who is Professor of Carbonate Geoscience at the University of Edinburgh. Her research looks at the end of the Precambrian and the start of the Cambrian, how biomineralisation began, how reef systems developed, and how carbonate rocks have formed over time. She wrote Reef Evolution (Oxford University Press, 1999). Wood earned a BSc with honours in Geology and Zoology from the University of Bristol and a PhD from the Open University. She has studied Ediacaran fossils in Siberia and Namibia and serves as an associate editor of Science Advances. Her awards include the Johannes Walther Medal (2018), the Lyell Medal (2020), and election as a Fellow of the Royal Society (2022). In 2022 she also became a Corresponding Member of the Göttingen Academy of Sciences and Humanities and she is Honorary Consul to Namibia in Scotland.