Dr Thomas Cronin is a worthy recipient of the Brady Medal, not simply for his outstanding achievements in the application of micropalaeontology to palaeoceanography, palaeoclimatology and evolutionary studies but because, like the Brady brothers, he has worked on both ostracods and foraminifera, fossil and living. Fig. 1 Tom Cronin. Tom Cronin was born in 1950 in the Bronx, New York City, USA and first became interested in geology when attending a freshman general course at Colgate University taught by Bob Linsley and Jim McClelland – in Tom's words: ‘two great educators’. He graduated with a BA in Geology from Colgate in 1972 and then carried out postgraduate work at Harvard University leading to a MA (1974) and PhD (1977) in Geology. After graduation he joined the US Geological Survey and is currently a senior scientist with the Eastern Geology and Climate Science Center, US Geological Survey in Reston, Virginia. There his present role is Project Chief for the ‘Abrupt Climate Change: Eastern US’ project and he also contributes to the ‘South Florida Ecosystem Project’. Tom's doctoral work concerned both foraminifera and ostracods of the Pleistocene of the north-eastern seaboard of North America, but it is as an ostracod worker that he is best known, especially for deep sea fossil and living faunas. His publications portray a developing pattern of research interest and achievement from a relatively classical doctoral treatment of shallow marine Pleistocene ostracods and foraminifera and their environmental significance, via early marine palaeoclimate reconstruction work in the Neogene-Quaternary of the US eastern seaboard, to the innovative interpretation of deep sea palaeoceanographic parameters using ostracods and other proxies. The following …