---
id: people/marten-scheffer
about:
  label: Marten Scheffer
  depiction: people/marten-scheffer.jpg
  depiction_credit: 'webted, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 2.0.'
  description: >-
    Dutch ecologist at Wageningen who studies critical transitions in complex
    systems and led the 2009 review of early-warning signals for tipping points.
  tags:
    - tipping points
    - critical transitions
    - ecology
person:
  affiliation: Wageningen University & Research
  role: ecologist
  homepage: 'https://www.wur.nl/en/persons/profdr-m-marten-scheffer'
provenance:
  origin: agent
  sources:
    - title: Marten Scheffer (Wikipedia)
      url: 'https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marten_Scheffer'
    - title: prof.dr. M (Marten) Scheffer (WUR)
      url: 'https://www.wur.nl/en/persons/profdr-m-marten-scheffer'
    - title: >-
        Early-warning signals for critical transitions (Nature, 2009; Crossref
        record)
      url: 'https://api.crossref.org/works/10.1038/nature08227'
  created: '2026-11-02'
  reviewed: '2026-11-02'
  reviewed_by: 'Claude, from the sources listed'
  status: draft
---
Marten Scheffer, born in Amsterdam on 13 September 1958, is a Dutch ecologist and mathematical biologist.[^1] He studied ecology at Utrecht University, took his doctorate there in 1992, and worked at the Dutch government agency RIZA before becoming professor of Aquatic Ecology and Water Quality Management at Wageningen in 1998.[^1,2] His own page describes his interest as the stability and change of complex systems, with examples in ecosystems, the climate, the brain and society.[^2]

He won the Spinoza Prize in 2009, cited for work on critical transitions in complex systems "varying from shifts in shallow lakes to climate change and the collapse of ancient cultures".[^1] His books include Ecology of Shallow Lakes and Critical Transitions in Nature and Society (Princeton University Press, 2009).[^1] He is a member of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences and a foreign associate of the US National Academy of Sciences.[^1]

He is first author of "Early-warning signals for critical transitions", a review in Nature in September 2009 with nine co-authors.[^3] The [tipping points](/terms/tipping-points/) entry draws on that review for its account of early warnings.