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Dr. Craig Taylor

• Graduated from McEwen High School in 1963

  • lettered in track

  • was class officer

  • member of student council

  • participated in science fairs and competitions (it is in high school where his lifelong interest in science began)

  • during his freshmen year he won the high school science fair by assembling a chicken skeleton from a bird that had died on his farm

• He also had a love for all things mechanical, having constructed a hot rod from parts he collected and assembled in his father's farm shop

  • it would be the combining of his love for science and mechanics that make him one of the leading reserach oceanographers in the world today

• He grew up on a farm north of Athena on Waterman Road with family roots that run deep in Umatilla County

  • his great grandfather was Sheriff Till Taylor who in July 1920 was mortally wounded by a group of prisoners in a jail break

  • Till Taylor Park is named for him in Pendleton

• Following graduation, he went to Eastern Oregon University

• He then transferred to Portland State University receiving a BS in 1967 and a masters in 1969

• He continued his education with a second masters at the University of Illinois in 1971, then a Microbiology PhD in 1973

• It was at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in Massachusetts that he did his postdoctoral studies

• He never left Woods Hole, spending his entire professional career at this world-famous research institution

  • from 1982-2015 he held the position of tenured Associated Scientist 

  • since 2015 he holds the prestigious position of Emeritus Resident Scholar

  • over the course of his career he has had 70 peer-reviewed publications

    • on such published work was titled "Sampling Apparatus for Collecting Samples from Underwater Hydrothermal Vents and the Marine or Limnological Water Column" shows the complexity of his research

  • his research interests include:

    • Ecology and physiology of marine sulfur-oxidizing microorganisms

    • development of automated instrumentation for the time-series measurement ofchemical and biological properties in oceanic and coastal environments

    • instrumentation for collection of contamination and exogenous DNA-free microbial samples

    • dynamics and microbiology of oceanic carbon monoxideoxidation.

  • one his more famous inventions was the Submersible Incubation Device or SID

    • such a device was needed to do some very important research but it didn't exist so he designed and built it

    • he combined his technical skills and his scientific understanding to build the SID

    • he stated "it takes time to evolve an instrument that really can withstand the ocean, and for scientists to realize the value of it. Scientist need the kind of information these machines provide. Now their need coincides with the technology, which has matured to the point where it is actually useful."

    • this is but one example of the accomplishments of 2 decades of research and technology Dr Craig Taylor has contributed to the field of Science