Peter John Wyllie

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Peter John Wyllie (born February 8, 1930 in London ) is a British petrologist and former geology professor at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech). He is known for his contributions to the understanding of magmatism and the author of two textbooks on magmatism and plate tectonics .

Life

After his basic training at the Royal Air Force Barracks Padgate in 1948 in Poulton-with-Fearnhead - Wyllie received the Best Recruit Award - he completed his military service as a radio operator ( Radiotelephony Operator ) with the rank of Aircraftsman First Class until 1949 . He was a boxer and became the Royal Air Force Heavyweight Champion in Scotland in 1949 .

1952 to 1954 he took part in the British North Greenland Expedition under Jim Simpson , and then studied physics and geology at the University of St Andrews . In 1952 he received a bachelor's degree in physics and geology there and in 1955 he received his B.Sc. with the First Class Honors in Geology and was then Assistant Lecturer in Geology at St. Andrews in 1955/56. From 1956 he was at the University of Pennsylvania , where he became an assistant professor in 1958 and (after an interim stay in 1960/61 at the University of Leeds ) from 1961 associate professor and 1962/63 head (acting head) of the department of geochemistry and mineralogy. In 1958 he became a Ph.D. in geology at St. Andrews. Between 1959 and 1961 he taught Experimental Petrology at the University of Leeds before returning to Pennsylvania State University as Professor of Petrology. In 1965 he went to the University of Chicago , where he was professor of petrology and geochemistry until 1983. Afterwards he was bGeology professor at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) until his retirement in 1999 , where he was head of the Faculty of Earth Sciences and Planetary Sciences from 1983 to 1987 and retired in 1999.

He has both British and US citizenship. Wyllie has been married since 1956 and has three children.

Act

He dedicated many of his scientific contributions to the understanding of magmatism , especially through experimental work on the petrology of magmas and their volatile components. In the early 1970s, Wyllie wrote two widely used textbooks, The Dynamic Earth (1971) and The Way the Earth Works (1976), which summarized the new understanding of magmatism and plate tectonics. He worked on the geosciences section in the Encyclopædia Britannica , and wrote an overview of this field of research for the second part of the Britannica descendant Propaedia .

Honors, prizes and memberships (selection)

The National Academy of Sciences (1981), the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (1982) and the Royal Society (1984) have elected him as a member, and he is also a Fellow of the Geological Society of America , the American Geophysical Union , and the Mineralogical Society of America , honorary member of the Mineralogical Society of London , the Geological Society of Edinburgh and the German Geological Society and a member of the Russian Academy of Sciences , Academia Europaea (1996), the Indian National Science Academy and the Chinese Academy of Sciences . He was several times president of scientific associations, so 1977/78 of the Mineralogical Society of America, 1986–1990 of the International Mineralogical Association and 1995–99 of the International Union of Geodesy and Geophysics .

He has been honored with numerous prizes, including

In 1974 he received an honorary doctorate (D. Sc.) From the University of St. Andrews.

Fonts

  • A geological reconnaissance through South Germania Land , Copenhagen, CA Reitzel 1957 (Greenland Expedition)
  • with Lister The geomorphology of Dronning Louise Land , Copenhagen, CA Reitzel 1957
  • Editor Ultramafic and related rocks , Wiley 1967
  • The dynamic earth: a textbook in geosciences , Wiley 1971
  • The way the earth works: an introduction to the new global geology and its revolutionary development , Wiley 1976

Web links

literature

  • Art Montana: Presentation of the Roebling Medal of the Mineralogical Society of America for 2001 to Peter John Wyllie . In: American Mineralogist . Volume 87, 2002, pp. 788–789 ( online article , pdf, 60.3 kB).

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Life and career data according to American Men and Women of Science , Thomson Gale 2004
  2. ^ A b Professor Peter John Wyllie, Biographical summary. Caltech website
  3. ^ William J. Mills: Exploring polar frontiers: a historical encyclopedia . tape 1 . ABC-CLIO, 2003, ISBN 978-1-57607-422-0 , p. 608 ( p. 608 in Google Book Search).
personal data
SURNAME Wyllie, Peter John
BRIEF DESCRIPTION British petrologist and geologist
DATE OF BIRTH February 8, 1930
PLACE OF BIRTH London