Deepsea Dawn - Dawn Wright

Dr Dawn Wright -  Marine Geologist and Physical Geographer; Chief scientist at ESRI (Environmental Systems Research Institute); Member of the USA National Academy of Sciences; Member of the USA National Academy of Engineering; Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science; and many more awards and accolades.

Dawn, as you can tell from her awards above (being in a National Academy of any country is a BIG deal), is a living legend. In addition to having published more than 130 papers, broken ground in how the ocean is mapped and understood, and written five books, she’s one of only 27 people (as of April 2024) who have descend to the deepest part of the ocean and the first Black person to do so.

There are so many great interviews and articles that share how awesome she is. Below are a few of them but before that, some specific SuperScientists questions for her.

What is your top tip, your advice for young people?

Practice KINDNESS to those around you. Also, as a young scientist practice the discipline of SPEAKING UP whenever you can, e.g., asking questions in class or at presentations you attend, bringing issues to your local leaders, speaking out on issues that you care about.

Who are your heroes, scientific or otherwise, and why?

My mother (for her courage and kindness and undying belief in me); Marie Tharp (for her bravery in inventing modern ocean cartography); Don Walsh (for his bravery in being the first to Challenger Deep and his kindness and mentorship of generations of ocean explorers); Sylvia Earle (for her relentless energy in speaking out about the ocean); also Barack Obama, Deb Haaland (current US Secretary of the Interior), the 1999 US Women’s Soccer team, basketball star Caitlin Clark, firefighters and bicycle messengers everywhere :)

How would you rank the following in order of what you think is most important to succeed in science and life - hard work, creativity, curiosity, communication?

 1) Hard work 2) Curiosity 3) Communication 4)Creativity

 What other characteristic is as or is more important that we have not included?

A good sense of humor and positive attitude, especially when things go awry, which they will!

Follow Dawn: on Instagram - in addition to science, she loves Lego, biking and has a cute! dog.

Read and watch all about her!

All SuperScientists, Champion, Marine, Women, CurrentJustin Yarrow