Gordon J. F. MacDonald

Gordon James MacDonald Fraser ( born July 30, 1929 in Mexico; † 14 May 2002) was an American geophysicist.

MacDonald was born in Mexico and grew up in San Luis Potosí, the son of a Scottish immigrant there and a U.S. citizen on. As a child he had polio, but struggled in his subsequent career, to demonstrate to the world that this is not a handicap by about himself competed at Harvard with a football scholarship. He studied at Harvard University, where he in 1949 summa cum laude earned his bachelor 's degree. At first he studied chemical engineering, but later switched to geology. He was Harvard Junior Fellow and used this for a stay in Europe ( among other climbs in the Alps). In 1954 he received his doctorate in geology at Harvard and was then Assistant Professor in Geophysics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. In 1958 he became a professor at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA ), 1968 at the University of California, Santa Barbara, 1972 at Dartmouth College, and in 1990 at the University of California, San Diego, at 1996, he retired.

With Walter Munk, he examined the rotation of the earth, what they published a book. MacDonald had heard lectures by Munk on this subject and this was doing a critic of open questions.

In the 1960s he focused on the current in the United States at that time since the 1940s discussion of artificial weather modification ( by vaccination of clouds) and was from 1964 to 1967 in an advisory committee to the National Science Foundation ( NSF) on these issues ( and 1961-1970 issues of the atmosphere ), which came in a report in 1966 to the conclusion that climate and weather changes by human hands would be possible in the Committee of the NSF, which was then heavily criticized.

He represented on important issues the mainstream opposing scientific views, such as opponent of plate tectonics in their early years in the early 1960s ( he suggested to interpret paleomagnetic data instead polar wandering before ) or in search of astronomical causes of global warming ( climate skeptics ).

From 1970 to 1972 he was an advisor of U.S. President Richard Nixon in environmental issues. From 1993 to 1996 he was Chairman of Medea Committee of the CIA, who decided how secret data from U.S. satellites provided information on global environmental issues. In 1994 he received the Seal Medal of the CIA. From 1983 to 1990 he was Chief Scientist and Vice President of the Mitre Corporation and was a member of the JASON Defense Advisory Group.

MacDonald was a member of the National Academy of Sciences (1961 ), the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the American Philosophical Society. In 1965 he received the James B. Macelwane Medal of the American Geophysical Union.

One of his hobbies was bird watching.

Writings

  • With Walter Munk: Rotation of the earth: a geophysical discussion, Cambridge University Press 1960
  • Sandra Claflin - Chalton sound and light phenomena: a study of historical and modern occurrences, Mitre Corporation 1978
  • Climate change and acid rain, Mitre Corporation 1986
  • A study of the free oscillations of the earth, NASA 1962
  • Publisher Luigi Sertorio: Global climate and ecosystem change, Plenum Press 1990 (NATO Advanced Study Workshop, Maratea, Italy, 1989)
  • Spectrum of hydro- magnetic waves in the exosphere, NASA 1963
  • Publisher: The Long -term impacts of Increasing atmospheric carbon dioxide levels, Ballinger, Cambridge / Massachusetts 1982
  • Editor Daniel Nielson, Marc Stern: Latin American environmental policy in international perspective, Boulder, Colorado, Westview Press 1997
May 14 Central Intelligence Agency Richard A. Muller Harold Jeffreys Integrated Authority File
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