Anthony Brian Watts facts for kids
Quick facts for kids
Tony Watts
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Anthony Brian Watts in 2014, portrait via the Royal Society
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Anthony Brian Watts
23 July 1945 |
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| Thesis | Geophysical investigations in the Faeroes to Scotland region, Northeast Atlantic (1970) |
| Doctoral advisor | Martin Bott |
Anthony Brian Watts is a British scientist who studies the Earth. He is a Professor of Marine Geology and Geophysics at the University of Oxford. His work helps us understand how the Earth's crust and oceans behave.
Education and Early Life
Anthony Watts was born in Essex, England. He went to Sidcot School, a special school in Somerset. Later, he studied at University College, London, where he earned a degree in Geology and Physics in 1967. He continued his studies at University of Durham, earning his PhD in Marine Geophysics in 1970. In 2003, he received a higher degree, a Doctor of Science, from the University of Oxford.
Career and Research
Professor Watts has taught at important universities, including the Lamont–Doherty Earth Observatory at Columbia University in the United States and the University of Oxford in the UK. He has written over 240 scientific papers and a book about how the Earth's surface bends under weight, a process called Isostasy and Flexure of the Lithosphere.
His main research focuses on the Earth's outer layers, especially under the oceans. He uses special techniques to study the Earth's crust and the layer just below it, called the upper mantle.
Professor Watts studies how the ocean floor responds to heavy loads, like volcanoes or layers of sediment. His research shows that the oceanic crust can support these heavy loads for millions of years. It does this by bending or "flexing" over large areas.
He also looks at how this bending affects the Earth's gravity and the shape of the ocean floor. His current work explores how this flexing helps shape continental margins (the edges of continents under the sea), how oceanic islands grow and shrink, and how mountain belts form.
Awards and Honours
Professor Watts has received many important awards for his scientific work. These include the Murchison Medal from the Geological Society of London and the George P. Woollard Award from the Geological Society of America. He also received the Arthur Holmes Medal from the European Geosciences Union.
In 2014, he was chosen as a Fellow of the Royal Society (FRS). This is a very high honour for scientists in the UK. He was recognized for his major contributions to understanding the structure and development of the world's ocean basins.
The Royal Society noted that he uses geophysics (the study of Earth's physical processes) to solve big geological puzzles. These include understanding isostasy (how the Earth's crust floats), lithospheric flexure (how it bends), and how deep-sea trenches and mountains form.
He is also an Honorary Member of the European Geosciences Union. He is a Fellow of the American Geophysical Union and the Geological Society of America. He is also a member of the Academia Europaea (MAE). In 2015, he gave the Harold Jeffreys Lecture for the Royal Astronomical Society. In 2020, he received the Maurice Ewing Medal from the US Navy and the American Geophysical Union.
