Doctor of Science

Kirk Johnson is the Sant Director of the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History, a position he has held since 2012. Johnson oversees the largest collection within the Smithsonian—more than 127 million objects. In 2015, the museum hosted more than 7 million visitors, and its scientists discovered and named 396 new plant and animal species.

Prior to his arrival at the Smithsonian, Johnson spent two decades at the Denver Museum of Nature & Science, most recently as chief curator and vice president of research and collections and, earlier, as a lead scientist. Johnson has conducted extensive research in the Great Plains and Rocky Mountain states, studying geology, fossil plants and the Cretaceous-Tertiary boundary extinction event, as well as the origins of biomes. In 2011, an excavation he led in Snowmass Village, Colo., unearthed more than 5,400 mammoth, mastodon and other ice-age animal bones. It inspired him to write Digging Snowmastodon: Discovering an Ice Age World in the Colorado Rockies. He has also written Cruisin’ the Fossil Freeway: An Epoch Tale of a Scientist and an Artist on the Ultimate 5,000-Mile Paleo Road Trip; Prehistoric Journey: A History of Life on Earth; and Ancient Denvers: Scenes from the Past 300 Million Years of the Colorado Front Range.

Johnson has explored fossil sites on every continent. He has led expedi- tions through 11 countries and 19 states throughout his career—endeav- ors that have resulted in the uncovering of 1,400 fossil sites.A paleobota- nist, Johnson focuses his research on plant fossils and dinosaur extinction. Johnson’s enthusiasm for his work prompted PBS to recruit him last fall to host a three-hour NOVA special called Making North America.

At Amherst, Johnson double-majored in geology and fine arts. He earned a master’s degree in geology and paleobotany from the University of Penn- sylvania and a Ph.D. in the same subjects from Yale. In 1987, during his graduate studies, Johnson discovered evidence of a previously unknown extinct species of flowering plant, which is now known as Tilia johnsoni.