Gordon JF MacDonald

Gordon James Fraser MacDonald (born July 30, 1929 in Mexico , † May 14, 2002 ) was an American geophysicist .

MacDonald was born in Mexico and grew up in San Luis Potosí as the son of a Scots immigrant and an American. He had polio as a child, but in his subsequent career tried to demonstrate to the world that this was not a handicap, for example by applying to Harvard with a football scholarship. He studied at Harvard University , where he received his bachelor's degree summa cum laude in 1949 . At first he studied chemical engineering, but then switched to geology. He was a Harvard Junior Fellow and used this for a stay in Europe (including climbing tours in the Alps). In 1954 he received his PhD in geology from Harvard and was then assistant professor in geophysics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology . In 1958 he became a professor at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), in 1968 at the University of California, Santa Barbara , in 1972 at Dartmouth College and in 1990 at the University of California, San Diego , where he retired in 1996.

With Walter Munk he studied the earth's rotation, about which they published a book. MacDonald had heard Munk lectures on the subject and was a sharp critic of open questions.

In the 1960s he dealt with the then since the 1940s in the USA current discussion of the artificial change of the weather (by inoculating clouds) and was on an advisory body of the National Science Foundation (NSF) on these questions (and from 1964 to 1967 ) 1961 to 1970 in the committee of the NSF on questions of the atmosphere), which came to the conclusion in a 1966 report that climate and weather changes by human hands were possible, which was heavily criticized at the time.

He represented scientific views that were contrary to the mainstream on important issues, for example as an opponent of plate tectonics in its early years in the early 1960s (he suggested pole migration instead for the interpretation of paleomagnetic data) or in the search for astronomical causes of global warming ( climate skeptics ).

From 1970 to 1972 he was an advisor to US President Richard Nixon on environmental issues. From 1993 to 1996 he was chairman of the Medea committee of the CIA , which decided the extent to which secret data from US satellites provided information on global environmental issues. In 1994 he received the Seal Medal from the CIA. From 1983 to 1990 he was Chief Scientist and Vice President of Miter Corporation and was a member of the JASON Defense Advisory Group .

MacDonald was a member of the National Academy of Sciences (1962), the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (1958), and the American Philosophical Society . In 1965 he received the James B. Macelwane Medal from the American Geophysical Union .

One of his hobbies was bird watching.

Fonts

with Walter Munk: Rotation of the earth: a geophysical discussion, Cambridge University Press 1960
with Sandra Claflin-Chalton Sound and light phenomena: a study of historical and modern occurrences , Miter Corporation 1978
Climate change and acid rain , Miter Corporation 1986
A study of the free oscillations of the earth, NASA 1962
with Richard A. Muller Ice ages and astronomical causes: data, spectral analysis, and mechanisms , Springer Verlag 2000, 2002
Editor with Luigi Sertorio: Global climate and ecosystem change , Plenum Press 1990 (NATO Advanced Study Workshop, Maratea, Italy 1989)
Spectrum of hydromagnetic waves in the exosphere, NASA 1963
Editor: The Long-term impacts of increasing atmospheric carbon dioxide levels , Ballinger, Cambridge / Massachusetts 1982
Editor with Daniel Nielson, Marc Stern: Latin American environmental policy in international perspective , Boulder, Colorado, Westview Press 1997

Web links

Munk, Naomi Oreskes, Richard Muller, Biographical Memoirs National Academy

Individual evidence

↑ Shortly before, in the 1950s, geologists and geophysicists in the United States tended to reject plate tectonics, unlike Europeans. There is a chapter on the subject in MacDonald's book with Munk on Earth's rotation. MacDonald's resistance was mainly influenced by considerations of the finite strength of the mantle material by Harold Jeffreys and by discussions with Albert Francis Birch , who emphasized the homogeneity of the earth's mantle. As early as 1962, however, he turned away from this topic and turned to weather modification.

personal data
SURNAME	MacDonald, Gordon JF
ALTERNATIVE NAMES	MacDonald, Gordon James Fraser (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION	American geophysicist
DATE OF BIRTH	July 30, 1929
PLACE OF BIRTH	Mexico
DATE OF DEATH	May 14, 2002

[1] Shortly before, in the 1950s, geologists and geophysicists in the United States tended to reject plate tectonics, unlike Europeans. There is a chapter on the subject in MacDonald's book with Munk on Earth's rotation. MacDonald's resistance was mainly influenced by considerations of the finite strength of the mantle material by Harold Jeffreys and by discussions with Albert Francis Birch , who emphasized the homogeneity of the earth's mantle. As early as 1962, however, he turned away from this topic and turned to weather modification.