Don L. Anderson facts for kids

Quick facts for kids Don L. Anderson
Born	(1933-03-05)March 5, 1933 Frederick, Maryland
Died	December 2, 2014(2014-12-02) (aged 81) Cambria, California
Nationality	American
Alma mater	Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, California Institute of Technology
Known for	Plate Tectonics, Seismology, Geochemistry, Scientific Poetry
Awards	Crafoord Prize (1998) National Medal of Science (1998) William Bowie Medal of the American Geophysical Union (1991) Gold Medal of the Royal Astronomical Society (1988) Arthur L. Day Medal of the Geological Society of America (1987)
Scientific career
Fields	Seismology, Geophysics, Geology, Geochemistry
Institutions	California Institute of Technology, Caltech Seismological Laboratory
Doctoral advisor	Frank Press
Doctoral students	Thomas H. Jordan
Notes
Anderson's expertise in numerous scientific disciplines has been recognized with gold medals from the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, the Geological Society of America, the Royal Astronomical Society, and the highest science medals from the American Geophysical Union and the President of the United States.

Don Lynn Anderson (March 5, 1933 – December 2, 2014) was an American geophysicist. He helped us understand how Earth and other planets were formed. He also studied their structure and what they are made of.

Anderson was an expert in many science areas. He combined seismology (studying earthquakes and waves), solid state physics, geochemistry (studying Earth's chemistry), and petrology (studying rocks). This helped him explain how our planet works.

He was best known for his ideas about Earth's deep inside. He also suggested that hotspots (places with lots of volcanic activity) are part of plate tectonics. This was different from the idea that they come from deep "plumes" inside Earth.

Anderson was a professor at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech). He won many awards for his work. In 1998, he received the Crafoord Prize and the National Medal of Science. He also had honorary degrees from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and the University of Paris.

Discovering Earth's Secrets

Don L. Anderson was born in Frederick, Maryland in 1933. He moved to Baltimore when he was six. After high school, he studied geology and geophysics at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute.

He then worked in the oil industry. He also served in the United States Air Force. In Greenland, he studied how strong sea ice was. This research made him want to learn even more. So, he went to Caltech to get his Ph.D. in geophysics and mathematics.

Anderson spent most of his career at Caltech's Seismological Laboratory. He was its director for a long time, from 1967 to 1989. He was married to Nancy Ruth Anderson and had two children.

Early Research and Earth's Inside

When Anderson started his science career, he studied sea ice in Greenland. He needed to know if the ice could hold heavy aircraft. This work showed him he wanted more education.

At Caltech, his Ph.D. research looked at how waves travel inside Earth. Before his work, scientists thought Earth's inside was like glass. Anderson showed that it was more complex. He studied how the mantle (the layer below the crust) behaves.

Later in his career, he returned to these ideas. He and his team found ways to understand how seismic waves move. They showed that Earth is not a perfect, elastic ball.

Studying Other Planets

During his 50-year career, Anderson wrote papers about the Moon, Venus, and Mars. He was even involved in the Viking mission to Mars in 1971.

He and his team also studied how rocks in Earth's mantle behave. They looked at how high pressure and heat affect them. Their work helped us understand earthquakes and how tectonic plate motions happen. They mapped how heat moves inside Earth's mantle using seismic methods.

This led to the creation of the Preliminary Reference Earth Model (PREM). This model gives standard values for Earth's properties. These include how fast seismic waves travel, density, and pressure. PREM is now the main reference model for Earth. This important work earned Anderson and his colleague Adam Dziewonski the Crafoord Prize in 1998.

Challenging Old Ideas

Anderson used physics and thermodynamics to develop new ideas about Earth. He believed that some standard models of Earth's chemistry were wrong. He said they broke the laws of thermodynamics, which is about how energy works. He thought these models made Earth seem like a perpetual motion machine.

He compared these old models to "Just So Stories" – simple tales that explain things without real proof. Anderson's models were based on strong physics and evidence.

He also had a different idea about what the mantle is made of. Most scientists thought the mantle was mainly made of a rock called olivine. Anderson showed that the middle mantle might be made of a different rock called piclogite. He also argued that the deeper parts of the mantle are too dense to rise to the surface. This meant that all basalts (a type of volcanic rock) must come from the upper mantle.

Volcanoes and Hotspots

Anderson also challenged the common idea about how volcanoes form. Many scientists believed in the "mantle plume" theory. This theory says that volcanoes like those in Hawaii come from narrow plumes of hot rock rising from deep inside Earth.

Anderson argued that this plume idea was not correct. He said that hotspots and islands like Hawaii are simply normal results of plate tectonics. He showed that volcanoes can be explained by differences in the upper mantle.

He also pointed out that the mantle plume idea often broke the laws of thermodynamics. It suggested a constant heat supply from deep Earth. Anderson believed that Earth's inside is cooling down. He thought volcanoes just tap into melted rock in the upper mantle. When plates move, this magma can reach the surface through cracks and rifts.

Anderson's ideas were seen as controversial. This was because they were different from what many geochemists believed. But his work was based on strong evidence from seismology, physics, and thermodynamics. His book, New Theory of the Earth, was praised for bringing together many ideas about our planet.

Don L. Anderson passed away in Cambria, California in 2014 from cancer. He was 81 years old.

Awards and Honors

Don L. Anderson received many important awards for his scientific work:

• James B. Macelwane Medal of the American Geophysical Union (1966)
• Apollo Achievement Award of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (1969)
• Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (1972)
• Newcomb Cleveland Prize of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (1977) (for the Viking Mission Scientists)
• NASA Exceptional Scientific Achievement Medal (1977)
• Member of the National Academy of Sciences (1982)
• Honorary Foreign Fellow of the European Geosciences Union (1985)
• Emil Wiechert Medal of the German Geophysical Society (1986)
• Arthur L. Day Medal of the Geological Society of America (1987)
• Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (1988)
• Gold Medal of the Royal Astronomical Society (1988)
• Member of the American Philosophical Society (1990)
• William Bowie Medal of the American Geophysical Union (1991)
• Guggenheim Fellow (1998)
• Crafoord Prize of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences (1998 with Dziewonski)
• National Medal of Science (1998)
• Honorary doctorates from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI) and University of Paris (Sorbonne)

Important Books and Papers

Don L. Anderson wrote many important scientific papers and books, including:

• A. M. Dziewonski; D. L. Anderson. (1981). Preliminary reference Earth model; Physics of the Earth and Planetary Interiors 25, S.297–356.
• D. L. Anderson. (2007). New Theory of the Earth; Cambridge University Press, New York.
• D. L. Anderson. (1989). Theory of the Earth; Blackwell Scientific Publications.
• Don L. Anderson and James H. Natland. (2014) Mantle updrafts and mechanisms of oceanic volcanism; Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences [1] vol. 111 no. 41. .
• D. L. Anderson. (2013). The persistent mantle plume myth - Do plumes exist?; Australian Journal of Earth Sciences: and James H. Natland.
• Anderson, Don L. (2011). Hawaii, Boundary Layers and Ambient Mantle - Geophysical Constraints, J. Petrol., 52, 1547–1577; .
• G. R. Foulger, D. L. Anderson. (2005). A cool model for the Iceland hotspot; Journal of Volcanology and Geothermal Research 141.
• Anderson, D. L. (2005). Self-gravity, self-consistency, and self-organization in geodynamics and geochemistry, in Earth's Deep Mantle: Structure, Composition, and Evolution, Eds. R.D. van der Hilst, J. Bass, J. Matas & J. Trampert, AGU Geophysical Monograph Series 160, 165–186.
• Anderson, D. L. (2005). Scoring hotspots: The plume and plate paradigms, in Foulger, G.R., Natland, J.H., Presnall, D.C., and Anderson, D.L., eds., Plates, plumes, and paradigms: Geological Society of America Special Paper 388, p. 31–54.
• Anderson, Don L. and Natland, J. H. (2005). A brief history of the plume hypothesis and its competitors: Concept and controversy, in Foulger, G.R., Natland, J.H., Presnall, D.C., and Anderson, D.L., eds., Plates, Plumes, & Paradigms, : GSA Special Paper 388, p. 119-145.
• Meibom, A. and Anderson, D. L. (2003). The Statistical Upper Mantle Assemblage, Earth Planet Science Letters, 217, pp. 123–139.
• Wen, L., and Anderson, Don L. (1997). Layered mantle convection: A model for geoid and topography, Earth and Planetary Science Letters, v. 146, p. 367-377.
• Anderson, Don L. (1995). Lithosphere, asthenosphere and perisphere, Reviews of Geophysics, v. 33, p. 125-149.
• Anderson, Don L.; Zhang, Y.-S.; Tanimoto, T. (1992). Plume heads, continental lithosphere, flood basalts and tomography, in: Magmatism and the Causes of Continental Break-up, B. C. Storey, T. Alabaster and R. J. Pankhurst, eds., Geological Society Special Publication, No 68.
• Anderson, Don L.; Tanimoto, T.; and Zhang,Y.-S. (1992). Plate tectonics and hotspots: The third dimension, Science, v. 256, p. 1645-1650.
• Scrivner, C. and Anderson, Don L. (1992). The effect of post Pangea subduction on global mantle tomography and convection, Geophys. Res. Lett., vol. 19, no. 10, p. 1053-1056.
• Anderson, Don L. (1989). Where on Earth is the Crust?, Physics Today, March, p. 38-46.
• Anderson, Don L. (1987). A Seismic Equation of State II. Shear Properties and Thermodynamics of the Lower Mantle, Phys. Earth Planet. Interiors, v. 45, p. 307-323.
• Anderson, Don L. (1985). Hotspot magmas can form by fractionation and contamination of MORB, Nature, v. 318, p. 145-149.
• Tanimoto, T., and Anderson, Don L. (1985). Lateral heterogeneity and azimuthal anisotropy of the upper mantle: Love and Rayleigh waves 100-250 sec, Jour. Geophys. Res., v. 90, p. 1842-1858.
• Anderson, Don L. (1986). Earth sciences & public policy, Geotimes, v. 31, no. 10, p. 5.
• Nataf, H.-C.; Nakanishi, I.; and Anderson, Don L. (1986). Measurements of Mantle Wave Velocities and Inversion for Lateral Heterogeneities and Anisotropy, Part III: Inversion, Jour. Geophys. Res., v. 91, no. B7, p. 7261-7307.
• Anderson, Don L. (1984). The Earth as a planet: paradigms and paradoxes, Science, v. 223, no. 4634, p. 347-355. 178.
• Anderson, Don L. (1982). Hotspots, polar wander, mesozoic convection, and the geoid, Nature, v. 297, no. 5865, p. 391-393.
• Anderson, Don L.; and Given, J. W. (1982). Absorption band Q model for the Earth, Jour. Geophys. Res., v. 87, no. B5, p. 3893-3904.

Images for kids

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  Don L. Anderson receiving the National Medal of Science from President Bill Clinton.

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  Don and Nancy Anderson celebrating their 50th Wedding Anniversary.

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  The cover of Anderson's book, New Theory of the Earth. It shows the debate among scientists about how volcanoes form.

See also

• List of geophysicists