Frank Donald Stacey (21 August 1929, Essex, UK) is an English-born Australian geophysicist, known for his research on rock magnetism [1] and application of thermodynamics to understanding the Earth's core and mantle. [2] [3] [1]
At the University of London, Stacey graduated with a B.Sc. in 1950 and a Ph.D. in 1953. As a postdoc, he was from 1953 to 1956 a research fellow at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver. From 1961 to 1964 he was a Royal Society Gassiot Fellow in Geomagnetism at the Meteorological Office Research Unit of the University of Cambridge. [4] Near the beginning of his career he published several papers in The Philosophical Magazine . [5] [6] [7] [8] He was a Reader in Physics at the University of Queensland from 1964 to 1971 [4] — during those years he wrote the first three editions of Physics of the Earth. [9] (In 1988 a fourth edition was published with Paul McEwan Davis as co-author. [9] ) In 1968 Stacey received his D.Sc. from the University of London. From 1971 to 1990 he was a professor of Applied Physics at the University of Queensland. [4] He was appointed to visiting lectureships in several different countries. In 1997 he joined the Australian Government agency CSIRO Exploration and Mining. [9]
Louis Néel’s 1955 paper Some theoretical aspects of rock-magnetism [10] inspired Stacey to generalize Néel's single-domain theory for magnetic grains to multi-domained grains. In the theory of remanence for igneous rocks, Stacey introduced the concept of pseudo-single domain for magnetic grains which are small and multi-domained. [1] [11] He did research on scientifically describing rock fabric using magnetic anisotropy [1] [12] and predicting earthquakes and volcanic eruptions using piezomagnetism. [1] [13] [14] With several colleagues, Stacey investigated possible failures of Newton's law of gravity. [15] [16] [17] [18] [19] [20]
Using a lattice dynamical formulation for the Grüneisen parameter, he developed a new equation of state for high pressures with applications to materials in the Earth's core and lower mantle. [1] [21] His book Physics of the Earth became a widely used, standard textbook and was the first geophysics textbook to comprehensively deal with solid Earth geophysics. [1]
Stacey chaired from 1966 to 1967 the Australian Institute of Physics, Queensland branch. He was elected in 1979 a Fellow of the Australian Academy of Science [4] and in 1986 a Fellow der American Geophysical Union. [22] In 1994 he was awarded the Louis Néel Medal. [1]