Bob White (geophysicist) facts for kids
Robert (Bob) Stephen White (born 12 December 1952) is Professor of Geophysics in the Earth Sciences department at Cambridge University (since 1989) and was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society (FRS) in 1994. He is Director of the Faraday Institute for Science and Religion.
Biography
Bob White is also a Fellow of St Edmund's College, Cambridge, prior to which he was a student and Research Fellow at Emmanuel College, Cambridge. A Fellow of the Geological Society, and a member of the American Geophysical Union and several other professional bodies; he serves on numerous of their committees. He leads a research group investigating the Earth's dynamic crust. His most cited paper (White & McKenzie 1989) used geophysical evidence in conjunction with models of melt generation beneath rifts to show that the largest and most rapid effusions of volcanic rock on the earth, known as flood basalts, result from continental rifting above mantle plumes. He has organised fieldwork in many different countries and supervised 50 PhD students at the Department of Earth Sciences in Cambridge, many of whom are now prominent in academia, industry, government and education. His work at sea has taken him to the Atlantic, Indian and Pacific Oceans and his research group is currently investigating the internal structure of volcanoes in Iceland, New Zealand, the Faroes and the Atlantic margin. His scientific work is published in over 350 papers and articles.
Honours and awards
- 2018 Awarded the Gold Medal of the Royal Astronomical Society for Geophysics
