Abbreviation | BGA |
---|---|
Purpose | Promotion of geophysics |
Region | United Kingdom |
President | Prof. Andrew Curtis (University of Edinburgh) |
Secretary | Dr. Andy Nowacki (University of Leeds) |
Parent organization | |
Website | geophysics |
The British Geophysical Association (BGA) is a joint association of the Royal Astronomical Society and the Geological Society of London, which advances the interests of geophysics and geophysicists within the UK. It aims to promote the subject of geophysics and strengthen the ties between the geological and geophysical communities within the UK by holding meetings and courses, by encouraging the publication geophysical research, and by such other means as are deemed appropriate to an Association by its parent societies.
Membership of the society is open to fellows of either the Royal Astronomical Society or The Geological Society who inform their respective membership secretaries of their interest in geophysics. Following this, fellows will automatically be considered to be members of the BGA with no subscription required. [1]
The BGA is managed by a committee of up to eighteen members with eight directly elected members including a president, secretary, meetings secretary, and treasurer. The committee also includes one member appointed by each of the parent societies, to ensure adequate communication between themselves and the BGA. A school and industry representative may also be co-opted onto the committee, neither of whom needs to be a fellow of either society. The committee had in the past included members from five affiliated groups (Education, Environmental and Industrial Geophysics, Geodesy, Geomagnetism and Palaeomagnetism, Seismology and Physics of the Earth’s Interior), however leading up to the 2009 AGM these positions have been removed and an Education Secretary position created. The committee vote when awarding the prestigious Bullerwell Lecture prize each year.
In July 2006 BGA published a review of geophysics education in the UK. In the report it noted that:
the growing demands of industry and government service are facing a severe shortage of trained UK graduates with geophysics skills.
The paper predicted that, at current rates, there would be no undergraduates by 2030. [2] As such the review was undertaken with the aims of properly assessing the current state of geophysical education within the UK and consequently identifying problems and recommending further action to take.
Ultimately the paper concluded that there is a need to increase awareness of geophysics in post-16 education environments by including geophysics topics in secondary school examinations. It also suggested that there is an urgent need to develop geophysics courses for physics teachers, such as the Teacher Scientist Network at the Norwich Research Park and the Seismology in Schools project.
The Royal Astronomical Society (RAS) is a learned society and charity that encourages and promotes the study of astronomy, solar-system science, geophysics and closely related branches of science. Its headquarters are in Burlington House, on Piccadilly in London. The society has over 4,000 members ("Fellows"), most of them professional researchers or postgraduate students. Around a quarter of Fellows live outside the UK.
The American Geophysical Union (AGU) is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization of Earth, atmospheric, ocean, hydrologic, space, and planetary scientists and enthusiasts that according to their website includes 130,000 people. AGU's activities are focused on the organization and dissemination of scientific information in the interdisciplinary and international fields within the Earth and space sciences. The geophysical sciences involve four fundamental areas: atmospheric and ocean sciences; solid-Earth sciences; hydrologic sciences; and space sciences. The organization's headquarters is located on Florida Avenue in Washington, D.C.
Sir Harold Jeffreys, FRS was a British geophysicist who made significant contributions to mathematics and statistics. His book, Theory of Probability, which was first published in 1939, played an important role in the revival of the objective Bayesian view of probability.
Don Lynn Anderson was an American geophysicist who made significant contributions to the understanding of the origin, evolution, structure, and composition of Earth and other planets. An expert in numerous scientific disciplines, Anderson's work combined seismology, solid state physics, geochemistry and petrology to explain how the Earth works. Anderson was best known for his contributions to the understanding of the Earth's deep interior, and more recently, for the plate theory hypothesis that hotspots are the product of plate tectonics rather than narrow plumes emanating from the deep Earth. Anderson was Professor (Emeritus) of Geophysics in the Division of Geological and Planetary Sciences at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech). He received numerous awards from geophysical, geological and astronomical societies. In 1998 he was awarded the Crafoord Prize by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences along with Adam Dziewonski. Later that year, Anderson received the National Medal of Science. He held honorary doctorates from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and the University of Paris (Sorbonne), and served on numerous university advisory committees, including those at Harvard, Princeton, Yale, University of Chicago, Stanford, University of Paris, Purdue University, and Rice University. Anderson's wide-ranging research resulted in hundreds of published papers in the fields of planetary science, seismology, mineral physics, petrology, geochemistry, tectonics and the philosophy of science.
Keith Edward Bullen FAA FRS was a New Zealand-born mathematician and geophysicist. He is noted for his seismological interpretation of the deep structure of the Earth's mantle and core. He was Professor of Applied Mathematics at the University of Sydney in Australia from 1945 until 1971.
The International Union of Geodesy and Geophysics is an international non-governmental organization dedicated to the scientific study of Earth and its space environment using geophysical and geodetic techniques.
Leon Knopoff was an American geophysicist and musicologist. He received his education at Caltech, graduating in 1949 with a PhD in physics, and came to UCLA the following year. He served on the UCLA faculty for 60 years. His research interests spanned a wide variety of fields and included the physics and statistics of earthquakes, earthquake prediction, the interior structure of the Earth, plate tectonics, pattern recognition, non-linear earthquake dynamics and several other areas of solid Earth geophysics. He also made contributions to the fields of musical perception and archaeology.
Liviu Constantinescu was a Romanian geophysicist, professor of geophysics, member of the Romanian Academy. He was the cofounder, together with Sabba S. Ștefănescu, of the Romanian school of geophysics.
The historical development of geophysics has been motivated by two factors. One of these is the research curiosity of humankind related to planet Earth and its several components, its events and its problems. The second is economical usage of Earth's resources and Earth-related hazards such as earthquakes, volcanoes, tsunamis, tides, and floods.
James Anthony Jackson CBE FRS 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.
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.
Walter D. Mooney is a research seismologist and geophysicist at the United States Geological Survey (USGS), Menlo Park, California (1978–present). He was Chief of the USGS Branch of Seismology from 1994 to 1997.
Janardan Ganpatrao Negi was an Indian theoretical geophysicist and emeritus scientist at National Geophysical Research Institute. He is known for his studies on geoelectromagnetics and geomagnetism and is an elected fellow of the Royal Astronomical Society, London and the National Academy of Sciences, India. The Council of Scientific and Industrial Research, the apex agency of the Government of India for scientific research, awarded him the Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar Prize for Science and Technology, one of the highest Indian science awards for his contributions to Earth, Atmosphere, Ocean and Planetary Sciences in 1980.
Hrvoje Tkalčić is Australian and Croatian scientist (geophysicist) and Professor at the Australian National University in Canberra.
David Gubbins is a British former geophysicist concerned with the mechanism of the Earth's magnetic field and theoretical geophysics. He is Emeritus Professor of Earth Sciences at Leeds University.
Brian Leslie Norman Kennett is a mathematical physicist and seismologist. He is now a professor emeritus at the Australian National University.
John-Michael Kendall is a Geophysicist and Professor in the Department of Earth Sciences at the University of Oxford.
Catherine G. Constable is an Australian earth scientist who is a professor at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography. Her research considers palaeo- and geo-magnetism. Constable was awarded the American Geophysical Union William Gilbert Award in 2013 and elected Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in 2017.