Warren B. Hamilton

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Warren Hamilton, Colorado 2007

Warren Bell Hamilton (born May 13, 1925 in Los Angeles , † October 26, 2018 in Golden , Colorado ) was an American geologist .

Hamilton graduated from the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) with a bachelor's degree in 1945 while doing military service as an officer in the US Navy. In 1951 he received his PhD in geology from UCLA. 1951/52 he was an assistant professor at the University of Oklahoma and from 1952 he did research for the US Geological Survey , where he stayed until his retirement in 1996 (most recently as a senior scientist). He was then a Distinguished Senior Scientist at the Colorado School of Mines .

He dealt with plate tectonics, marine geophysics, evolution of crust and mantle, petrology of igneous rocks and metamorphic rocks, tectonics of the western United States (including the batholiths of the Sierra Nevada), but also of Southeast Asia, Indonesia, Melanesia, the Soviet Union (where he was an exchange scientist in 1967) and the Antarctic, where he was in 1958/59 and 1963/64 and found evidence of common Gondwana structures with South Africa and Australia (Adelaide Geosyncline) in the Transantarctic Mountains .

With the advent of plate tectonics in the 1960s (at that time based on marine geology) he applied this to the explanation of continental tectonics, for example in California, where he recognized the separation of Baja California along the St. Andreas Fissure from Mexico. From 1969 he investigated the geology of Indonesia by plate tectonic (motivation was partly the oil exploration), combining offshore geology and investigations on land. This study of Indonesia also brought new insights into the mechanism of plate tectonics.

From the 1970s to the 1990s he dealt with the evolution of the earth's crust in the Phanerozoic and carried out field studies around the world. Then he extended the considerations to other planets and the first 4 billion years of the earth, where he took different views compared to the conventional picture of plate tectonics. While mantle convection and plume were usually assumed as driving forces in plate tectonics, Hamilton assumed a picture of surface cooling of the hot interior of the earth and sinking plates as driving forces. He saw volcanism in the middle of plates like in Hawaii, usually attributed to plumes, as a result of weaknesses in the earth's crust in this area. He saw convection restricted to the upper mantle (above the 660 km discontinuity ). He also took a different view of geological processes in the Archean and Proterozoic and only saw rocks in the late Proterozoic (from an age of 800 million years) that can be interpreted as a result of the usual plate tectonic processes of the Phanerozoic. He also rejected a formation by plate tectonics on Mars and Venus.

In 1981 he was visiting professor at the University of Amsterdam , 1973 at Caltech , 1968 and 1979 at the Scripps Institute of Oceanography and 1980 at Yale University .

In 1989 he received the Penrose Medal . He was a member of the Geological Society of America , the National Academy of Sciences, and the American Association for the Advancement of Science . The Hamilton Cliff in Antarctica bears his name.

He was married to Alicita Koenig (marriage in 1947) and had three children with her.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Life and career data according to American Men and Women of Science , Thomson Gale 2004
  2. ^ Obituary from legacy.com, accessed November 3, 2018
  3. ↑ Hamilton, Tectonics of Antarctica, Tectonophysics, Volume 4, 1967, pp. 555-568
  4. ↑ Hamilton, Antarctic tectonics and continental drift: Soc. Econ. Paleontol. Mineral., Special Publ. 10, 1963, pp. 74-93
  5. ↑ Hamilton, Origin of the Gulf of California, GSA Bulletin, Volume 72, 1961, pp. 1307-1318
  6. ↑ Hamilton, Tectonics of the Indonesian Region: USGS Prof. Paper 1078, 1979, 1981
  7. ↑ Hamilton, Terrestrial planets fractionated synchronously with accretion, but Earth progressed through subsequent internally dynamic stages whereas Venus and Mars have been inert for more than 4 billion years, 2015, pdf
personal data
SURNAME Hamilton, Warren B.
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Hamilton, Warren Bell
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American geologist
DATE OF BIRTH May 13, 1925
PLACE OF BIRTH los Angeles
DATE OF DEATH October 26, 2018
Place of death Golden , Colorado