Francis Birch Lecture

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The Francis Birch Lecture is an annual lecture constituting the highest honor in tectonophysics from the American Geophysical Union (AGU). The lecture is named in honor of Francis Birch, famous as a pioneer of solid Earth geophysics. The Birch Lecture, inaugurated in 1992, is presented at the AGU autumn meeting by a recipient whose research has significantly contributed to tectonophysics "through observations, experiments, the development of analytical methods or modeling." [1]

Contents

The Birch Lecture forms part of the AGU's Bowie Lecture Series, established in 1989. The AGU's highest honor is the William Bowie Medal, named in honor of William Bowie — the AGU's first president [2] with an international reputation in geodesy, geophysics, and engineering. [3]

The AGU invites the Birch Lecturer and does not accept nominations for the Birch Lectureship. [2]

Birch Lecturers

Name [1] InstitutionYearLecture Title
Thomas A. Herring Massachusetts Institute of Technology 1992Space Geodetic Studies of the Earth's Interior
James R. Rice Harvard University 1993Problems in Earthquake Source Mechanics
no lecture1994
Harry W. Green II University of California, Davis 1995The mechanisms of Deep Earthquakes
Ross S. Stein United States Geological Survey, Menlo Park 1996Stress Triggering of Earthquakes, or Playing Prediction with Less than Half a Deck
Donald W. Forsyth Brown University 1997Melting and Mantle Flow Beneath Mid-Ocean Ridges: Constraints from the Seismological Component of the MELT Experiment
Richard G. Gordon Northwestern University 1998The Plate Tectonic Approximation: Plate Nonrigidity and Diffuse Plate Boundaries
Paul Tapponnier Institut de Physique du Globe de Paris 1999Localisation and Propagation of Lithospheric Shear Zones Behaviour of the Continental Mantle During Collision, and Growth of the Tibet Plateau
no lecture2000
Louise H. Kellogg University of California, Davis 2001Structure and Dynamics An Earth Odyssey
Gerald Schubert UCLA 2002A Geophysicist's Journey to the Center of the Earth
W. Roger Buck Lamont–Doherty Earth Observatory (LDEO)2003Splitting, Stretching and Spreading of Lithosphere
Shun-Ichiro Karato Yale University 2004Where on Earth is the Ocean?
Leigh Royden Massachusetts Institute of Technology 2005Uplift and Evolution of the Eastern Tibetan Plateau
Claude P. Jaupart Institut de Physique du Globe de Paris 2006The Deep Roots of Continents
Jean-Philippe Avouac California Institute of Technology 2007Mountain Ranges and the Deformation of Continents
Suzanne M. Carbotte Columbia University 2008Focusing in on Mid-Ocean Ridge Segmentation
Jerry X. Mitrovica Earth and Planetary Sciences, Harvard University 2009A Eulogy for Eustasy
Wang-Ping Chen University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign 2010Global Tectonics Ties Quakes, Rocks, and Volatiles in the Mantle Transition Zone
Michael Manga University of California, Berkeley 2011Hydrological Response to Earthquakes (and was the LUSI Mud Volcano Eruption in Indonesia Caused by an Earthquake?)
Richard H. Sibson Otago University 2012Inside a Crustal Earthquake — Signals from Field Geology
Roland Bürgmann University of California, Berkeley 2013M9 Megathrust Earthquake Cycles
David Bercovici Yale University 2014On the Origin of Plate Tectonics
Kelin Wang Pacific Geoscience Center, Geological Survey of Canada 2015Subduction Faults as We See Them in the 21st Century
Maya Tolstoy Lamont–Doherty Earth Observatory 2016Taking the Pulse of Mid-Ocean Ridges
Greg Hirth Brown University 2017Lithospheric Strength and Stress State: Persistent Challenges and New Directions in Geodynamics
Carolina R. Lithgow-Bertelloni UCLA 2018The inevitable control of Earth's deep interior on the surface
Claudio Faccenna Roma Tre University / University of Texas at Austin 2019Shaping the Mediterranean from the inside out
Christie D. Rowe McGill University 2020Walking the seismogenic zone: A field geology perspective on earthquakes
Taras Gerya ETH Zürich 2021New geodynamic processes and phenomena discovered with numerical modeling: examples and recipes
Demian M. Saffer University of Texas Institute for Geophysics 2022Fluids, Friction, and the Offshore Subduction Megathrust
Philippe Agard Sorbonne Université 2023

See also

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References

  1. 1 2 "Birch Lecture & Birch Lecturers, Awards - Tectonophysics". American Geophysical Union.
  2. 1 2 "Francis Birch Lecture, Recognizing Geophysics Scientists". American Geophysical Union.
  3. ↑ Soler, Tomás (2014). "William Bowie: Eminent Scientist and First Chairman (1926–1940) of ASCE's Surveying and Mapping Division". Journal of Surveying Engineering. 140: 2–11. doi:10.1061/(ASCE)SU.1943-5428.0000117.


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