Gail A. Mahood

Gail A. Mahood (born June 27, 1951 in Oakland , California ) is an American petrologist , volcanologist and geochemist .

Gail Mahood studied from 1969 at the University of California at Berkeley . At that time there was violent student unrest there and she moved within California to the College of Marin in Kentfield before returning to Berkeley in 1972. In 1974 she received her bachelor's degree in geology. She then worked as a geologist on an archaeological project in Copán ( Honduras ) and received her PhD in 1980 with Ian SE Carmichael in Berkeley. From 1979 she was an assistant professor at the Faculty of Geology at Stanford University , where she became an associate professor in 1987 and has been a professor since 1993. From 1996 to 1999 she headed the faculty. In 1983 she was visiting professor at Pennsylvania State University in State College and in 1989 at the University of Michigan .

Mahood was particularly concerned with volcanism, which occurs when fracture zones arise within continental plates where they drift apart. They are by rhyolite - Magma in which arises from partial crystallization of basalt and melting of siliceous crust in magma. Since they arise from the final stages of the crystallization of basalt magmas, they contain volatile and incompatible elements and Mahood investigated these elements and isotopes in order to elucidate the formation processes. She is also studying the mechanism of volcanic eruptions, especially in volcanoes with rhyolite magma, which are often particularly explosive. She examined these especially in California and Colorado , northwest Mexico , Alaska and Italy , and also old magma chambers of rhyolite volcanoes in the Sierra Nevada and the Andes . In addition, she deals with geological aspects in Central American archeology (e.g. determining the origin of obsidian ).

She is married to Wes Hildreth, a volcanologist with the United States Geological Survey . She was the founding editor of the Proceedings in Volcanology and was the associate editor of the Geological Society of America Bulletin .

Fonts

• with Phillip B. Gans: Synextensional magmatism in the Basin and Range Province: a study from the eastern Great Basin, GSA Special Papers, Volume 233, 1989, pp. 1-53
• with Wes Hildreth: Correlation of Ash Flow Tuffs, Geological Society of America Bulletin, Volume 96, 1985, pp. 968-974

literature

• Alexander E. Gates: Earth Scientists from A to Z, Facts on File, 2003

Web links

• Homepage in Stanford