Max Walker de Laubenfels

{{More citations needed|date=September 2021}}

{{use mdy dates|date=April 2024}}

{{infobox scientist

|birth_date = {{death year|1894}}

|death_date = {{death date and given age|1958|02|04|63}}

|education = {{plainlist|

• Oberlin College
• Stanford University

}}

|employer = {{plainlist|

• University of Hawaii
• Oregon State College}}{{cite news |url=https://www.newspapers.com/article/albany-democrat-herald-newspaper-article/13807654/ |title=OSC Professor Of Zoology Dies |agency=UP |location=Portland |publication-place=Albany, OR |newspaper=Albany Democrat-Herald |date=1958-02-05}}

|awards = Fulbright

}}

Max Walker de Laubenfels (1894–1958) was an American spongiologist. He received his undergraduate degree from Oberlin College in 1916 and his master's and doctorate degrees from Stanford University in 1926 and 1929, respectively.

He was among the most prolific identifiers of new species of Caribbean sponges, describing 60 species from 1932 to 1954.{{cite journal |last1=Diaz |first1=Maria Cristina |last2=Ruetzler |first2=Klaus |title=Biodiversity of sponges: Belize and beyond, to the greater Caribbean |journal=Fisheries Centre Research Reports |date=2011 |volume=19 |issue=6 |page=59 |url=https://repository.si.edu/bitstream/handle/10088/17169/iz_Diaz_Ruetzler_2011.pdf |access-date=23 July 2022}} He also authored a complete taxonomic revision of all genera of fossil sponges published in the Treatise on Invertebrate Paleontology.{{Cite journal |title=Part E, Archaeocyatha (1955) |journal=Treatise on Invertebrate Paleontology |url=https://journals.ku.edu/InvertebratePaleo/issue/view/452 |access-date=2024-04-20 |language=en}}

He was a professor of zoology at Oregon State College from 1950 to 1958{{cite web |title=History of Department of Zoology 1889-1989 - page 25 - Appendix I |url=https://ir.library.oregonstate.edu/downloads/6d570229w |publisher=Oregon State University |access-date=29 September 2021 |date=1989}} and had previously worked at the University of Hawaii.

In 1956 he published one of the first accounts suggesting that the K-Pg Extinction Event might have been due to an asteroid strike.{{cite journal |author=de Laubenfels, M. W. |title=Dinosaur extinction: One more hypothesis |journal=Journal of Paleontology |pages=207–218 |year=1956 |volume=30 |issue=1 |jstor=1300393}}