James Jackson | |
---|---|
Born | |
Nationality | British |
Alma mater | University of Cambridge |
Scientific career | |
Fields | Geophysics |
Doctoral advisor | Dan McKenzie |
James Anthony Jackson CBE FRS (born 12 December 1954) is Professor of Active Tectonics and head of Bullard Laboratories, Department of Earth Sciences, Cambridge University. He made his name in geophysics, using earthquake source seismology to examine how continents are deformed. His central research focus is to observe the active processes shaping our continents. [1]
Jackson was born and raised in India, which probably established his interest in all aspects of Asia, which is where much of his current research has been concentrated. He was sent back to boarding school in the UK for his education. [2]
Jackson attended the University of Cambridge from 1973 graduating with a 1st Class degree in geology in 1976. Then, under the tutelage of Dan McKenzie at the Bullard Laboratories, Cambridge, he received his PhD in 1980. His research was within geophysics and used earthquakes to study the processes that produce the major surface features of the continents, such as mountain belts and basins. It included field work with seismometers in Iran and with the Seismic Discrimination Group at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. [2] [3]
Between 1977 and 1981 he was a visiting scientist in the Seismic Discrimination Group at MIT before returning to Cambridge to take up a research fellow position in Queens' College, Cambridge, where he became Assistant Dean in 1983. In 1984, he was appointed as an assistant lecturer in the Department of Earth Sciences, Cambridge, lecturer in 1988 and reader in 1996. He was made Professor of Active Tectonics in the Department of Earth Sciences in 2003. [4]
Communicating about the implications of his research for resilience against earthquakes, and about geophysics and earthquakes, to both societies at large and organisations has been an important part of his work. In 1995 he gave the televised Royal Institution Christmas Lectures. In 2023 he was a guest on the BBC Radio 4 programme The Life Scientific. [3]
Using evidence from earthquakes, remote sensing, geodesy and geomorphology he is able to observe, quantitatively, the geometry and rates of deformation processes while they are active. [1] In addition to seismology, his current research uses space-based remote sensing (including radar interferometry, GPS measurements and optical imagery) combined with observations of the landscape in the field, to study the evolution and deformation of the continents on all scales, from the movement of individual faults in earthquakes to the evolution of mountain belts. [2]
Much of his work is carried out in collaboration with researchers from the COMET Project [5] where he is associate director.
Plate tectonics is the scientific theory that Earth's lithosphere comprises a number of large tectonic plates, which have been slowly moving since 3–4 billion years ago. The model builds on the concept of continental drift, an idea developed during the first decades of the 20th century. Plate tectonics came to be accepted by geoscientists after seafloor spreading was validated in the mid-to-late 1960s.
Geophysics is a subject of natural science concerned with the physical processes and physical properties of the Earth and its surrounding space environment, and the use of quantitative methods for their analysis. Geophysicists, who usually study geophysics, physics, or one of the Earth sciences at the graduate level, complete investigations across a wide range of scientific disciplines. The term geophysics classically refers to solid earth applications: Earth's shape; its gravitational, magnetic fields, and electromagnetic fields ; its internal structure and composition; its dynamics and their surface expression in plate tectonics, the generation of magmas, volcanism and rock formation. However, modern geophysics organizations and pure scientists use a broader definition that includes the water cycle including snow and ice; fluid dynamics of the oceans and the atmosphere; electricity and magnetism in the ionosphere and magnetosphere and solar-terrestrial physics; and analogous problems associated with the Moon and other planets.
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The Eurasian Plate is a tectonic plate that includes most of the continent of Eurasia, with the notable exceptions of the Indian subcontinent, the Arabian subcontinent and the area east of the Chersky Range in eastern Siberia. It also includes oceanic crust extending westward to the Mid-Atlantic Ridge and northward to the Gakkel Ridge.
Dan Peter McKenzie is a Professor of Geophysics at the University of Cambridge, and one-time head of the Bullard Laboratories of the Cambridge Department of Earth Sciences. He wrote the first paper defining the mathematical principles of plate tectonics on a sphere, and his early work on mantle convection created the modern discussion of planetary interiors.
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Mary Lou Zoback is an American geophysicist and seismologist. A specialist in tectonic stress and natural hazards risks, she spent most of her career as a research scientist with the United States Geological Survey. Zoback chaired the World Stress Map project of the International Lithosphere Program from 1986 to 1992. Zoback served on the U.S. Nuclear Waste Technical Review Board from 2012 to 2018.
Paul Gordon Silver was an American seismologist. A member of the research staff at the Department of Terrestrial Magnetism of the Carnegie Institution of Washington since 1982, Paul Silver made a series of important contributions to the investigation of seismic anisotropy and to earthquake research by observing the slow redistribution of stress and strain along fault zones.
The following outline is provided as an overview of and topical guide to geophysics:
Kathryn Anne "Kathy" Whaler OBE FRSE FAGU is a professor of geophysics at the University of Edinburgh School of GeoSciences, in the Research Institute of Earth and Planetary Science and is a member of the Solid Earth Geophysics and Natural Hazards Research Group.
Derek Keir has been an associate professor of geophysics at the University of Southampton since 2015. In 2013 he received the Bullerwell Lecture award from the British Geophysical Association (BGA) for significant contributions to geophysics.
Alik Ismail-Zadeh is a mathematical geophysicist known for his contribution to computational geodynamics and natural hazard studies, pioneering work on data assimilation in geodynamics as well as for outstanding service to the Earth and space science community. He is Senior Research Fellow at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology in Germany.
Éric Calais is a French geologist-geophysicist, born in 1964, internationally recognized practitioner of high-precision space geodesy and a pioneer in its applications to measure seismic deformations at the boundaries of tectonic plates and in their interiors. He has been a member of the French Academy of Sciences since 2017.
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The 1858 Prome earthquake occurred on August 24 at 15:38 local time in British Burma. The earthquake occurred with a magnitude of 7.6–8.3 on the moment magnitude scale. It had an epicenter in near the city of Pyay (Prome), Bago. The shock was felt with a maximum Modified Mercalli intensity of XI (Extreme) for about one minute. Severe damage was reported in Bago, and off the coast of Rakhine, an island sunk.
The 1957 Sangchal earthquake struck northern Iran's Mazandaran province on 2 July 1957. It had a moment magnitude of 6.6 or 7.1 (Mw ), focal depth of 15 km (9.3 mi), and maximum Modified Mercalli intensity of IX (Violent). It devastated many communities in the Alborz Mountains and caused an estimated 1,500 fatalities. Damage was estimated at US$25 million.
Susan Marian Ellis is a geophysicist based in New Zealand, who specialises in modelling the geodynamics of the Earth's crust deformation, at different scales. Ellis is a principal scientist at GNS Science and her main interests are in subduction, seismology, tectonics, crust and petrology. Ellis's current work focuses on the influence of faulting on stresses in the crust, and how this is related to geological hazard and the tectonic settings in New Zealand.
Juliet J. Biggs is a British geologist who is Professor of Earth Sciences at the University of Bristol. Her research uses satellite geodesy and interferometric synthetic-aperture radar (InSAR) to understand the physics of the Earth's crust. She was awarded the American Geophysical Union John Wahr Award in 2017 and a European Research Council (ERC) consolidator grant in 2020.
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