David Price (British academic)

G. David Price (* 1955 ) is a British geophysicist, crystallographer and mineralogist, Professor at University College London ( UCL).

Price graduated from the University of Cambridge with a Bachelor 's degree in 1977, the master's degree and doctorate in 1981 and was subsequently a Fulbright -Hayes Scholar at the University of Chicago and at Clare College, Cambridge. In 1983, he came as a Royal Society Research Fellow at the UCL. He was Professor of Mineral Physics, Executive Dean of the Faculty of Mathematics and Natural Sciences and Vice Provost for Research.

He used quantum mechanical molecular dynamics methods to determine the behavior of minerals in the Earth's mantle and of iron in the Earth's core. Ab initio calculations of his group supported, for example, the explanation of the D "layer in the lower mantle as a transition from perovskite to post- perovskite.

When examining meteorites that were exposed to shock waves in the transmission electron microscope he identified high-pressure variants of olivine, among other things, called by him wadsleyite form, which is blamed for the 410 - km discontinuity.

Are also his important contributions to the elucidation of the crystal structure of zeolites such as in petroleum processing important as catalysts ZSM-5.

In 2006 he received the Louis Néel Medal for establishing the importance of numerical calculation in the physics of minerals and outstanding contributions to the physics of the Earth's core. In 1999 he received the Schlumberger Medal from the Mineralogical Society of Great Britain and Ireland, 2002, the Murchison Medal. He is a member of the Academia Europaea, a Fellow of the American Geophysical Union and the Mineralogical Society of America.

2005 to 2008 he was editor of Earth and Planetary Science Letters. 2004 to 2006 he was president of the Mineralogical Society of Great Britain and Ireland.