KU Scientist: Tom Taylor

Thomas ‘Tom’ Norwood Taylor was born on June 14, 1937, in Lakewood, Ohio. In high school, he aspired to become a professional golfer but when that dream did not come to fruition, he decided to pursue his passion for the sciences. Tom attended Miami University in Oxford, Ohio and earned his bachelor’s degree in Botany and Geology in 1960. Four years later he graduated from the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign with a Ph.D. in Paleobotany.

After graduating, Tom was a National Science Foundation postdoctoral fellow at Yale University from 1964 to 1965. In 1965, he was appointed Assistant Professor at the University of Illinois, Chicago and was promoted to full Professor before his departure in 1972. After a short tenure from 1972 to 1974 at Ohio University, Taylor moved to The Ohio State University where he taught botany for 21 years. While at OSU he also served as senior research scientist at the Byrd Polar Research Center and chair of the Department of Botany for four years. Tom was elected to the National Academy of Sciences in 1994, one of the highest honors for science in the United States. He was appointed to the National Science Board from 2006 to 2012 by President George W. Bush, where he helped establish policies at the National Science Foundation and served as an advisor to Congress and the President.  

Tom joined the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at the University of Kansas in 1995 and was both a Roy A. Roberts Distinguished Professor and a curator of Paleobotany at the University’s Biodiversity Institute and Natural History Museum. Edie, Tom’s wife and fellow paleobotanist, also joined the EEOB faculty at this time. She would make her own impressive contributions to paleontological research and led the field expeditions undertaken by the couple’s research labs. While at the University of Kansas, Tom & Edie’s research focused on advancing the world’s knowledge of the evolution of land plants and the colonization of the land in the tropical wetlands of the Carboniferous Period. They also helped deepen our understanding of the paleobiology of Antarctica during the Permian and Triassic Periods and Tom led research on the fossil record of fungi.

Tom was an innovative force in the field, pioneering the use of the electron microscope to study fossil pollen and spores, which previously had been considered too fragile to be well preserved as fossils. Tom’s fresh way of looking at the past would continue to impact the research he did in the future and inspire generations of students. "In their field work, research and teaching, Edie and Tom Taylor rocketed KU to number one in the nation in paleobotany, documenting and studying the origin and diversification of Earth’s land plants, particularly with their frontier expeditions to Antarctica […]." Leonard Krishtalka, a former director of the KU Biodiversity Institute remarked in a 2016 article.

Over the course of his research, Tom was awarded 60 National Science Foundation grants, had 468 publications in peer-reviewed journals and co-authored four major textbooks. He mentored 25 students for master’s and Ph.D. degrees and oversaw 27 postdoctoral students. In addition, his laboratory was an incredibly active crossroads for national and international paleobotanists, and he hosted 26 scientists as visiting faculty members during his career.

Though he was diagnosed with cancer, Tom continued his work as a KU professor and remained active in both his lab and office until only a few weeks before his death on April 28, 2016. He is remembered as an “enthusiastic paleobotanist and a dedicated teacher and mentor”, for his love of field work, and the extensive fossil collection he and Edie gathered from six continents, many of which are still housed at KU’s Natural History Museum.