In 1986, Tom Fenchel was the recipient of the Ecology Institute Prize and the Huntsman Medal for Excellency in Oceanography. He is an honorary member of the Society for General Microbiology and is a Professor of Marine Biology and the Director of the Marine Biological Laboratory at the University of Copenhagen in Denmark. He has authored and co-authored several books and has published about 120 original and review papers on microbial ecology, marine biology and population biology. He holds a Ph.D and a Dr.Sc. from the University of Copenhagen and is a member of the Danish Royal Academy of Sciences and of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences.