Princeton University. Honors Faculty Members Receiving Emeritus Status. June 2008

Transcription

1 Princeton University Honors Faculty Members Receiving Emeritus Status June 2008

2 The biographical sketches were written by colleagues in the epartments of those honore.

3 Contents Faculty Members Receiving Emeritus Status Robert Choate Darnton (2007) Page 1 Peter Raymon Grant Page 5 John Joseph Hopfiel Page 8 William Louis Howarth Page 10 Hisashi Kobayashi Page 14 Joseph John Kohn Page 18 Ralph Lerner Page 21 Eugene Perry Link Jr. Page 24 Guust Nolet Page 27 Giacinto Scoles Page 29 John Suppe (2007) Page 33 Abraham Labe Uovitch Page 36 Bastiaan Cornelius van Fraassen Page 40

4 John Suppe John Suppe arrive in Princeton in 1971 as a young man in the heyay of plate tectonics. He was assigne responsibility for teaching GEO 316, the unergrauate course Structural Geology an Tectonics, which largely ealt with the eformation that takes place along plate bounaries. Eventually he publishe a wiely influential textbook of the same name. From the beginning, GEO 316 was taught in the spring semester so that the course coul culminate in a fiel trip to Vermont uring reaing perio to examine on the groun evience of an ancient Orovician plate tectonic collision between an islan arc an North America. This annual trip continue until his eparture from Princeton 36 years later, even making it to Vermont an back in the o-even ays of gas rationing in the energy crisis of the late 70s. John was fon of asking his stuents in the fiel to imagine, arguing from the evience at han, what it woul be like to go back in time to the Orovician an witness these plate tectonic interactions in actuality. This was a serious, subtle, an many-facete question, especially because the remains of arc-continent collisions are extremely common in ancient mountain belts like the Appalachians, but these collisions occur with such geologic rapiity that there are only a few places where arc-continent collision can be observe on Earth toay, most notably Taiwan an Timor. John ha the opportunity to go back to the Orovician when he went to Taiwan in 1978 as a Guggenheim Fellow to investigate the present-ay collision between the Philippine-Sea plate an China, which prouces the mountainous islan of Taiwan. This prove to be exceeingly fruitful, not just for John but also for a number of Princeton stuents an a half-ozen faculty, as well as the larger international research community who eventually became involve in 33

5 research in Taiwan. When John began he was nearly the only foreigner working in Taiwan, but by now this small islan has become a well-instrumente international tectonic laboratory that is one of the prime sites for tectonic research in the worl. Many of the most talente geologists an geophysicists now work on active processes occurring in Taiwan an surrouning regions of the Far East. In summer 2007 John retire from Princeton to become the Distinguishe Chair Research Professor at the National Taiwan University in Taipei to take part in the current rapi growth in quality an quantity of science in the Far East. Taiwan was just one of John s research interests, but was the inspiration for a number of his funamental an highly cite contributions. One of his goals when he went to Taiwan in 1978 was to test an iea inspire by the senior thesis of Dan Davis 78 that the mechanics of mountain belts can be quantitatively treate as analogous to the weges of soil or snow that form in front of a moving bullozer or snow plow, with their tapers reflecting their internal strength an the frictional resistance of their basal sliing surfaces. This became the highly successful Davis-Suppe-Dahlen theory of critical-taper wege mechanics, also involving contributions from his late faculty colleague Tony Dahlen. Taiwan was also the initial inspiration in 1978 for the fiel of fault-relate foling that John foune, which is the theory that the large fols of the upper crust are prouce by propagation an isplacement of faults, commonly growing in large earthquakes. This theory, beyon its funamental insight into eformation of the crust, has significant applications in assessing earthquake hazars in areas of hien faults such as Los Angeles an in petroleum exploration an evelopment. Taiwan also was the inspiration for John s recognition of the existence of erosionally steay-state mountain belts that eroe as fast as they grow, which is a subject of much present research. John s important contributions have been at the interface between ata an theory, base on the belief that the richest insight is often inspire 34

6 by looking closely at the raw phenomena of nature with a theoretical minset. His contributions an those of his stuents an other collaborators have come from work in California, Spain, western China, Sumatra, the Philippines, the Gulf of Mexico, Japan, Nigeria, an the planet Venus. John has been a visiting professor at National Taiwan University, Caltech, the University of Barcelona, an the Luwigs Maximillian University, Munich, an is an honorary professor of Nanjing University. He is a member of the National Acaemy of Sciences, an was aware the Research Prize of Alexaner von Humbolt Founation an, most recently, the Wilbur Lucius Cross Meal for istinguishe alumni of the Grauate School of Yale University. He was the Blair Professor of Geosciences at Princeton from 1988 to As epartment chair, John ha the vision to steer the geosciences epartment to become one of the leaing centers for research in the new fiel of biogeochemistry an environmental geosciences, which is the application of microbiology an molecular biology to biologically meiate chemical processes in the Earth, such as global warming. As a result, Princeton grauates in biogeochemistry are now faculty in the leaing epartments nationwie, an the epartment is engage in cutting-ege science ranging from geophysics to climate change. 35