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Jon Blundy | |
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| Born | Jonathan David Blundy 7 August 1961 |
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| Scientific career | |
| Fields | Petrology |
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| Thesis | The geology of the Southern Adamello Massif, Italy (1989) |
| Academic advisors | Robert Stephen John Sparks |
Jonathan David Blundy FRS (born 7 August 1961) is Royal Society Research Professor at the School of Earth Sciences at the University of Oxford and honorary professor at the University of Bristol. [1] [2] [3] [4] [5]
He is a graduate of University College, Oxford (B.A., 1983) and Trinity Hall, Cambridge, (PhD, 1989) and a former Kennedy Scholar at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (1985). [6] He was educated at St Paul's School, Brazil, Giggleswick School and Leeds Grammar School,[ citation needed ] where petrologists Keith Cox and Lawrence Wager also studied.[ citation needed ]
Blundy is most noted for advancing the understanding of how magmas are generated in the Earth's crust and mantle and of the processes that occur in volcanoes before they erupt. He undertook his PhD research at the University of Cambridge under the supervision of Professor Robert Stephen John Sparks on the granites of Adamello-Presanella in the Italian Alps. In a series of papers with the notable Bernard Wood in the 1990s, Blundy popularized a theory of elastic strain originally developed by Onuma [7] to describe the uptake of trace elements into the crystal lattices of igneous minerals. The theory was based on high temperature and pressure experiments on molten rocks, and is now widely used to predict crystal-melt partition coefficients for use in modelling magmatic processes.
Blundy subsequently collaborated with Katharine Cashman at the University of Oregon on Mount St. Helens volcano in the Cascade Range of northwestern USA. Blundy and Cashman demonstrated the importance of degassing in driving the crystallisation of volatile-bearing magmas, a process that can occur without any attendant cooling. In fact, because of the release of latent heat of fusion, magmas that crystallise by decompression can actually get hotter in the process.[ citation needed ]
Blundy is a recipient of the F.W. Clarke Medal of the Geochemical Society (1997), and Murchison Fund (1998) and the Bigsby Medal of the Geological Society of London (2005). He was a Fulbright Scholar at University of Oregon in 1998, guest professor at Nagoya University in 2007 and elected as a Fellow of the Royal Society (FRS) in 2008. His nomination reads:
Jon Blundy has made fundamental contributions to understanding the generation and movement of magma within the earth. The breadth of his work is impressive, ranging from field studies of the emplacement mechanisms of granites and volcanic rocks, through experimental petrology and thermodynamics applied to igneous systems, to study of the oxidation state of the mantle. His most recent programme has combined a wide range of field, analytical, and laboratory skills to quantifying the pressure-temperature paths followed by magmas as they ascend beneath volcanoes, and has cast important new light on the evolution of magmas immediately before major eruptions. [8]
Blundy was also awarded the Royal Society Wolfson Research Merit Award in 2011. [9]
Gabbro is a phaneritic (coarse-grained), mafic intrusive igneous rock formed from the slow cooling of magnesium-rich and iron-rich magma into a holocrystalline mass deep beneath the Earth's surface. Slow-cooling, coarse-grained gabbro is chemically equivalent to rapid-cooling, fine-grained basalt. Much of the Earth's oceanic crust is made of gabbro, formed at mid-ocean ridges. Gabbro is also found as plutons associated with continental volcanism. Due to its variant nature, the term gabbro may be applied loosely to a wide range of intrusive rocks, many of which are merely "gabbroic". By rough analogy, gabbro is to basalt as granite is to rhyolite.
A mafic mineral or rock is a silicate mineral or igneous rock rich in magnesium and iron. Most mafic minerals are dark in color, and common rock-forming mafic minerals include olivine, pyroxene, amphibole, and biotite. Common mafic rocks include basalt, diabase and gabbro. Mafic rocks often also contain calcium-rich varieties of plagioclase feldspar. Mafic materials can also be described as ferromagnesian.
Andesite is a volcanic rock of intermediate composition. In a general sense, it is the intermediate type between silica-poor basalt and silica-rich rhyolite. It is fine-grained (aphanitic) to porphyritic in texture, and is composed predominantly of sodium-rich plagioclase plus pyroxene or hornblende.
A magma chamber is a large pool of liquid rock beneath the surface of the Earth. The molten rock, or magma, in such a chamber is less dense than the surrounding country rock, which produces buoyant forces on the magma that tend to drive it upwards. If the magma finds a path to the surface, then the result will be a volcanic eruption; consequently, many volcanoes are situated over magma chambers. These chambers are hard to detect deep within the Earth, and therefore most of those known are close to the surface, commonly between 1 km and 10 km down.
A xenolith is a rock fragment that becomes enveloped in a larger rock during the latter's development and solidification. In geology, the term xenolith is almost exclusively used to describe inclusions in igneous rock entrained during magma ascent, emplacement and eruption. Xenoliths may be engulfed along the margins of a magma chamber, torn loose from the walls of an erupting lava conduit or explosive diatreme or picked up along the base of a flowing body of lava on the Earth's surface. A xenocryst is an individual foreign crystal included within an igneous body. Examples of xenocrysts are quartz crystals in a silica-deficient lava and diamonds within kimberlite diatremes. Xenoliths can be non-uniform within individual locations, even in areas which are spatially limited, e.g. rhyolite-dominated lava of Niijima volcano (Japan) contains two types of gabbroic xenoliths which are of different origin - they were formed in different temperature and pressure conditions.
Komatiite is a type of ultramafic mantle-derived volcanic rock defined as having crystallised from a lava of at least 18 wt% magnesium oxide (MgO). It is classified as a 'picritic rock'. Komatiites have low silicon, potassium and aluminium, and high to extremely high magnesium content. Komatiite was named for its type locality along the Komati River in South Africa, and frequently displays spinifex texture composed of large dendritic plates of olivine and pyroxene.
Cumulate rocks are igneous rocks formed by the accumulation of crystals from a magma either by settling or floating. Cumulate rocks are named according to their texture; cumulate texture is diagnostic of the conditions of formation of this group of igneous rocks. Cumulates can be deposited on top of other older cumulates of different composition and colour, typically giving the cumulate rock a layered or banded appearance.
In geology, igneous differentiation, or magmatic differentiation, is an umbrella term for the various processes by which magmas undergo bulk chemical change during the partial melting process, cooling, emplacement, or eruption. The sequence of magmas produced by igneous differentiation is known as a magma series.
The endmember hornblende tschermakite (☐Ca2(Mg3Al2)(Si6Al2)O22(OH)2) is a calcium rich monoclinic amphibole mineral. It is frequently synthesized along with its ternary solid solution series members tremolite and cummingtonite so that the thermodynamic properties of its assemblage can be applied to solving other solid solution series from a variety of amphibole minerals.
Igneous rock, or magmatic rock, is one of the three main rock types, the others being sedimentary and metamorphic. Igneous rocks are formed through the cooling and solidification of magma or lava.
Trachybasalt is a volcanic rock with a composition between trachyte and basalt. It resembles basalt but has a high content of alkali metal oxides. Minerals in trachybasalt include alkali feldspar, calcic plagioclase, olivine, clinopyroxene and likely very small amounts of leucite or analcime.
Basaltic andesite is a volcanic rock that is intermediate in composition between basalt and andesite. It is composed predominantly of augite and plagioclase. Basaltic andesite can be found in volcanoes around the world, including in Central America and the Andes of South America.
Bernard Elgey Leake is an English geologist. He is Emeritus Professor of Geology at the University of Glasgow, was Leverhulme Emeritus Fellow at Cardiff University 2000-2002 and has been an Honorary Research Fellow at Cardiff University since 1997.
Bernard (Bernie) Wood is a British geologist, and professor of mineralogy and senior research fellow at the University of Oxford. He specializes in the thermodynamics of geological systems, using experimental techniques. He is a prominent figure in the field of experimental petrology, having received multiple awards throughout his career and taught at several universities worldwide.
Timothy John Barrington Holland is a petrologist and Emeritus Professor in the Department of Earth Sciences at the University of Cambridge.
Katharine Venable Cashman is an American volcanologist, professor of volcanology at the University of Bristol and former Philip H. Knight Professor of Natural Science at the University of Oregon.
Tonalite–trondhjemite–granodiorite (TTG) rocks are intrusive rocks with typical granitic composition but containing only a small portion of potassium feldspar. Tonalite, trondhjemite, and granodiorite often occur together in geological records, indicating similar petrogenetic processes. Post Archean TTG rocks are present in arc-related batholiths, as well as in ophiolites, while Archean TTG rocks are major components of Archean cratons.
Kenzō Yagi was a Japanese mineralogist and petrologist who specialized in experimental mineralogy and petrology. Yagiite, a new mineral found in the Colomera meteorite, was named after him for its contribution to the petrology.
The Red Hill Syenite is a layered igneous rock complex in central New Hampshire, about 20 mi (32 km) east of Plymouth. The Red Hill Syenite is part of the White Mountain magma series, which underlays the White Mountains of New Hampshire. Red Hill is roughly oval-shaped, covers just under 7.7 square miles (20 km2), and has a summit elevation of 2,028 feet (618 m).
Catherine Jeanne Annen is a French geologist at the Czech Academy of Sciences. Her research considers igneous bodies, volcanic eruptions. and exploration for geothermal energy. She was awarded the 2022 Geological Society of London Bigsby Medal.
