Daniel M. Sigman

About

Daniel M. Sigman is the Dusenbury Professor of Geological and Geophysical Sciences at Princeton University, affiliated with the Department of Geosciences. He is part of the Sigman Research Laboratory at Princeton, where his research focuses on Geochemistry and Paleoclimate. His work involves studying the chemical processes and climate history recorded in geological materials, contributing to the understanding of Earth's past climate and biogeochemical cycles. Sigman has been recognized for his scientific contributions, including election to the National Academy of Sciences. His contact information includes an office phone number 609-258-2194 and an email address, and he maintains a professional profile with an ORCID ID 0000-0002-7923-1973.

Research topics

• Oceanography
• Geology
• Climatology
• Paleontology
• Biology
• Environmental science
• Earth science
• Environmental chemistry
• Chemistry
• Ecology

Selected publications

• Global Nitrogen Cycle: Critical Enzymes, Organisms, and Processes for Nitrogen Budgets and Dynamics

  Chemical Reviews · 2020 · 454 citations

  Senior authorCorresponding

  Nitrogen (N) is used in many of life’s fundamental biomolecules, and it is also a participant in environmental redox chemistry. Biogeochemical processes control the amount and form of N available to organisms (“fixed” N). These interacting processes result in N acting as the proximate limiting nutrient in most surface environments. Here, we review the global biogeochemical cycle of N and its anthropogenic perturbation. We introduce important reservoirs and processes affecting N in the environmen…

  DOI

• Southern Ocean upwelling, Earth’s obliquity, and glacial-interglacial atmospheric CO ₂ change

  Science · 2020 · 144 citations

  Previous studies have suggested that during the late Pleistocene ice ages, surface-deep exchange was somehow weakened in the Southern Ocean's Antarctic Zone, which reduced the leakage of deeply sequestered carbon dioxide and thus contributed to the lower atmospheric carbon dioxide levels of the ice ages. Here, high-resolution diatom-bound nitrogen isotope measurements from the Indian sector of the Antarctic Zone reveal three modes of change in Southern Westerly Wind-driven upwelling, each affect…

  DOI

• The Southern Ocean during the ice ages: A review of the Antarctic surface isolation hypothesis, with comparison to the North Pacific

  Quaternary Science Reviews · 2020 · 139 citations

  1st authorCorresponding

  The Southern Ocean is widely recognized as a potential cause of the lower atmospheric concentration of CO2 during ice ages, but the mechanism is debated. Focusing on the Southern Ocean surface, we review biogeochemical paleoproxy data and carbon cycle concepts that together favor the view that both the Antarctic and Subantarctic Zones (AZ and SAZ) of the Southern Ocean played roles in lowering ice age CO2 levels. In the SAZ, the data indicate dust-driven iron fertilization of phytoplankton growt…

  DOI

• <i>Australopithecus</i> at Sterkfontein did not consume substantial mammalian meat

  Science · 2025-01-16 · 28 citations

  article

  Incorporation of animal-based foods into early hominin diets has been hypothesized to be a major catalyst of many important evolutionary events, including brain expansion. However, direct evidence of the onset and evolution of animal resource consumption in hominins remains elusive. The nitrogen-15 to nitrogen-14 ratio of collagen provides trophic information about individuals in modern and geologically recent ecosystems (&lt;200,000 years ago), but diagenetic loss of this organic matter preclud…

  PublisherDOI

• Nitrogen stable isotope fractionation by biological nitrogen fixation reveals cellular nitrogenase is diffusion limited

  PNAS Nexus · 2025-02-25 · 7 citations

  articleOpen access

  Abstract Biological fixation of dinitrogen (N2), the primary natural source of new bioavailable nitrogen (N) on Earth, is catalyzed by the enzyme nitrogenase through a complex mechanism at its active site metal cofactor. How this reaction functions in cellular environments, including its rate-limiting step, and how enzyme structure affects functioning remain unclear. Here, we investigated cellular N2 fixation through its N isotope effect (15εfix), measured as the difference between the 15N/14N r…

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

Recent grants

• Collaborative Research: Identifying the Role of Basin-scale Climate Variability in the Decline of Atlantic Corals

  NSF · $265k · 2015–2018

• MRI: Acquisition of Stable Isotope Instrumentation for the Biogeosciences at Princeton University

  NSF · $516k · 2009–2012

• Collaborative research: Non-Local Bacterial Transport of Nitrate within Sediments Underlying Oxygen Deficient Zones: A new Twist in the N Cycle

  NSF · $109k · 2007–2011

Frequent coauthors

• Gerald H. Haug

  297 shared

• Alfredo Martínez‐García

  169 shared

• Samuel L. Jaccard

  University of Lausanne

  122 shared

• Haojia Ren

  National Taiwan University

  88 shared

• Alexandra Auderset

  Max Planck Institute for Chemistry

  74 shared

• Anja S Studer

  57 shared

• François Fripiat

  Université Libre de Bruxelles

  55 shared

• Sarah E. Fawcett

  University of Cape Town

  51 shared

Labs

• The Sigman Research Laboratory at Princeton UniversityPI

Education

• Ph.D. MIT/WHOI Joint Program in Oceanography, Marine Geology and Geophysics

  Massachusetts Institute of Technology

  1997

• Bachelor of Science, Geology

  Stanford University

  1991

Awards & honors

• Member of the National Academy of Sciences

Similar researchers at Princeton University

• Michael Oppenheimerh-103
• Bess B. Wardh-81
• Jeroen Tromph-77