One of the world’s foremost experts in studying long-term environmental changes in lakes and rivers has just been awarded a major international prize for his work.

John Smol, a paleolimnologist and professor at Queen’s University, has not only shaped his field, but his work has informed national and international negotiations in regards to sustainable development, Indigenous rights and managing the planet’s fragile northern regions.

Smol, now more than four decades into his career, has earned yet another major accomplishment. He was awarded the Mohn Prize on Feb. 4, 2026 by Norwegian Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Støre for outstanding research related to the Arctic.

During his acceptance speech, Smol referred to science as a team sport, likening himself to an ice hockey coach winning the Stanley Cup. “It’s the team that wins, but I get to lift the trophy,” he said.

Contributions to science

As Støre rose to introduce Smol, he focused on the professor’s role in “solving real life challenges.”

From acid rain and nutrient pollution to the climate crisis, there have been enough real-life environmental challenges to keep Smol busy.

More than 30 years ago, before climate change or global warming were widely recognized beyond the Earth sciences, Smol and his team showed the warming climate had already been altering ecosystems, such as Arctic shallow ponds that had vanished due to increasing evaporation.

In later years, Smol and his team at the Paleoecological Environmental Assessment and Research Lab (PEARL) explored how pollutants, particularly from industrial activities such as Arctic mining, have affected freshwater systems in the Arctic.

Throughout his decades of working in the Arctic, Smol has recognized and valued the role that the Northern region’s Indigenous peoples play in stewarding the land and helping fill in contextual gaps when looking at the history of lakes and rivers.

While in Norway for the award presentation, Smol held a lecture at the University of Norway about his successes blending Western scientific approaches with Indigenous knowledge systems.

“I tend to look at history because history tells us where we’re coming from,” he told Canada’s National Observer. “To show how we know the environment is changing. We don’t know what it was like in the 1700s or 1800s, but we can construct that using Indigenous knowledge.”

Smol also stressed the importance of maintaining scientific collaboration, especially with the Arctic becoming a region of geopolitical and economic importance over the next couple decades due to climate change.

“We’ve developed very complex problems … and it’s very hard to deal with complex issues on your own.”

Smol views the environment as a diplomatic tool.

“In some ways, any type of collaboration with countries is good, diplomatically. The more we know each other, the less likely it is we’ll fight,” he said.

“How do I put this? There’s only one planet and these are global issues, so you need global solutions. The more interactions you can have with other scholars, other researchers, and have the politicians or policy makers understand the data, I think that’s very positive for sure.”

A legacy of students

Even with a long list of achievements — including winning the 2004 Herzberg Canada Gold Medal for Science and Engineering, which honours Canada’s top scientist or engineer, or being elected as the President of the Academy of Science, Royal Society of Canada — and having contributed to over 700 publications, it is the hundreds of students he has mentored and continues to mentor that he reflects upon the fondest.

One of them is Kathryn Hargan, who has gone on to become an associate professor of biology at the Memorial University of Newfoundland. She said she’s not unusual among his students.

“You will find us at over half the universities in Canada, international universities, in government, high schools, the environmental sector, NGOs,” Hargan said. “It’s a long list! I want to believe that I will be continuing John’s Arctic work for another 30 years.”

Some of his PhD students in 2016 asked the late John Glew to draw a “family tree” of Smol’s PhD students and the students they have gone on to mentor. Ten years later, there have been five more PhD graduates with more to come.

“John’s enthusiasm is infectious and I think that is why he has had so many students and a powerful impact,” said Irene Gregory-Eaves, McGill Professor of Biology. “He has a very effective way of communicating science to all kinds of audiences and gets people mobilized to think about environmental issues that desperately need attention.”

She said it may be too early to start talking about legacy.

“It is totally natural to start thinking about someone’s legacy at John’s age, but I don’t see him stopping anytime soon,” Gregory-Eaves said.

The Mohn Prize was established in 2018 and was named after Henrik Mohn, founder of Norwegian meteorology. He supplied several Norwegian polar expeditions in the 1800s with meteorological equipment. The bi-annual prize is worth 2,000,000 Norwegian Kroner, or approximately CAD $275,000.