Mathilde Cannat | |
---|---|
Born | 1962 |
Alma mater | Université de Nantes |
Awards | Murchison Medal (2023) |
Scientific career | |
Institutions | Institut de Physique du Globe de Paris |
Thesis | Cinématique de charriages ophiolitiques (Klamath, Semail, Groix) et convergence océanique (1983) |
Mathilde Cannat is a French geologist known for her research on the formation of oceanic crust and the tectonic and magmatic changes of mid-ocean ridges.
Cannat earned her Ph.D. in 1983 from University of Nantes where she worked on ophiolites and tectonic processes. [1] Following her Ph.D., she was a postdoc at Durham University and then she joined the French National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS) in 1986. [2] In 1992 she obtained a position at the Pierre and Marie Curie University (University of Paris 6) where she remained until she moved to a position at the Institut de Physique du Globe de Paris in 2001. [3]
In 2014, Cannat was elected a fellow of the American Geophysical Union who cited her "for fundamental contributions to understanding the accretion of the oceanic lithosphere and crust". [4]
Cannat's research centers on magmatism, changes in the oceanic crust, particularly at mid-ocean ridges. Her early research was on ophiolites in California and western Alps, and she used her research on ophiolotes to understand processes on the seafloor. [5] [6] [7] In the mid-1990s, Cannat described the formation of the seafloor at slow-spreading mid-ocean ridges, a model posing that new seafloor is formed from rocks that have been tectonically uplifted from the mantle. [8] [9] [10] This idea differed from the processes described for fast-spreading mid-ocean ridges [11] and, in a 2018 interview, she described this as her greatest achievement. [3] Cannat's research can rely on in situ observations, and she has made seventeen deep-sea dives aboard the Nautile. [2]