Don L. Anderson

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Don L. Anderson

Don Lynn Anderson (born March 5, 1933 in Frederick , Maryland , USA; † December 2, 2014 in Cambria , California , USA) was an American geophysicist who, primarily as a seismologist, made important contributions to determining the large-scale structure of the Earth's interior Has. Most recently, he was an emeritus Eleanor and John R. McMillan Professor of Geophysics at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) .

CV and main academic achievements

After earning a Bachelor of Science in Geology / Geophysics from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (1955), Anderson worked for several years in industry and in the military before moving to Caltech, where he received his doctorate in geophysics and mathematics in 1962. In 1963 he became a Sloan Research Fellow . Most of his subsequent scientific career was also spent at the Caltech Seismological Laboratory.

In the 1960s and 1970s in particular, Anderson and his team researched the relationships between the behavior of the rocks in the earth's mantle under high pressures and temperatures, phase transformations of mantle minerals and the occurrence of earthquakes . They also used seismological methods to study convection currents in the Earth's mantle and thus made a decisive contribution to the understanding of tectonic plate movements. This research led to the development of the Preliminary Reference Earth Model ( PREM ) in 1981 in collaboration with Adam M. Dziewonski , among others , which establishes a consistent radial model of the earth for numerous important geophysical parameters (including seismic velocities, damping and density ).

Since the 1980s, it has also emerged through some unconventional, provocative, and controversial ideas that deviate from common doctrinal opinion. This includes in particular an alternative model for the mineralogical composition of the upper mantle, according to which the lower areas consist of piclogite, a rock that is relatively pyroxic and garnet - rich , and not of the olivine- dominated peridotite with the composition of pyrolite . Another thesis by Anderson is that the theory of convective plumes in the earth's mantle developed by W. Jason Morgan is invalid and that " hotspots " and oceanic islands such as Hawaii or Iceland are instead caused by chemical-mineralogical anomalies in the upper mantle.

He has also written an influential and widely used textbook, Theory of the Earth .

Anderson received numerous awards for his scientific achievements, including the James B. Macelwane Medal (1966), the Emil Wiechert Medal of the German Geophysical Society (1986), the gold medal of the Royal Astronomical Society (1988), the William Bowie Medal of the American Geophysical Union (1991), the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences Crafoord Prize (1998, with Dziewonski), and the US National Medal of Science (1998). In 1972 he was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences , in 1982 to the National Academy of Sciences and in 1990 to the American Philosophical Society .

Publications (selection)

  • Adam M. Dziewonski, DL Anderson: Preliminary reference Earth model. Physics of the Earth and Planetary Interiors 25 , pp. 297-356 (1981)
  • Don L. Anderson: Theory of the Earth ( Memento June 30, 2011 on the Internet Archive ). Blackwell Scientific Publications (1989)
  • Don L. Anderson, Adam M. Dziewonski: Seismic Topography - 3D Images of the Earth's Mantle. In: Spectrum of Science Understandable Research: The Dynamics of the Earth. Spektrum Verlag Heidelberg 1988, pages 70-79.

Web links

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personal data
SURNAME Anderson, Don L.
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Anderson, Don Lynn
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American geophysicist, seismologist
DATE OF BIRTH March 5, 1933
PLACE OF BIRTH Frederick , Maryland , USA
DATE OF DEATH 2nd December 2014
Place of death Cambria , California , USA