Marcia McNutt

Marcia Kemper McNutt (born February 19, 1952) is an American geophysicist and the 22nd president of the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) of the United States.

McNutt was the 15th director of the United States Geological Survey (USGS) (the first woman to hold the post) as well as science adviser to the United States Secretary of the Interior from 2010 to 2013. Before working for USGS, McNutt was president and chief executive officer of the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute (MBARI), an oceanographic research center in the United States, professor of marine geophysics at the Stanford University School of Earth Sciences, professor of marine geophysics at University of California, Santa Cruz, and professor of geophysics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

She served as editor-in-chief of the peer-reviewed journal Science from 2013 to 2016 and holds a visiting appointment at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography. She is a member of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine advisory committee for the Division on Earth and Life Studies and the Forum on Open Science.

McNutt chaired the NASEM climate intervention committee who delivered two reports in 2015.

McNutt was valedictorian of her class at the Northrop Collegiate School (now The Blake School) in Minneapolis, graduating in 1970. She received a bachelor's degree in physics summa cum laude, Phi Beta Kappa, from Colorado College in 1973. As a National Science Foundation Graduate Fellow, she then studied geophysics at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography where she earned a PhD in earth sciences in 1978. Her dissertation was titled Continental and Oceanic Isostasy.

After holding a brief appointment at the University of Minnesota, McNutt worked for three years on earthquake prediction at the US Geological Survey in Menlo Park, California. In 1982, she became an assistant professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and in 1988 was appointed Griswold Professor of Geophysics. She previously served as director of the Joint Program in Oceanography and Applied Ocean Science and Engineering, a cooperative effort of MIT and the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution.

McNutt is a National Association of Underwater Instructors (NAUI)-certified scuba diver and trained in underwater demolition and explosives handling with the Underwater Demolition Team (UDT) of the United States Navy and the United States Navy SEALs.

Marcia Kemper McNutt's first husband Marcel Hoffmann Jr died in 1988. They had three daughters: Meredith McNutt Hoffmann and identical twins Dana and Ashley Hoffmann. Ashley Hoffmann was "Miss Rodeo California" in 2009. Marcia McNutt is also a horse enthusiast and enjoys barrel racing on her mare Lulu.