Herbert Huppert

Herbert Eric Huppert (* November 26, 1943 in Sydney) is an Australian geophysicist. He is since 1989 the founding director of the Institute of Theoretical Geophysics at the University of Cambridge and a professor of theoretical geophysics.

He is known for work on geophysical hydrodynamics, both in atmosphere, ocean as well as in turbidites, pyroclastic flows and landslides, flows in porous media, dynamics of volcanic eruptions. He is concerned with phase transitions from liquid to solid phase and the formation of ice in the Antarctic and Arctic.

Huppert studied applied mathematics at the University of Sydney with a Bachelor 's degree in 1963, was in 1964 at the Australian National University and from 1965 at the University of California, San Diego, where he received his doctorate in 1968. After that, he was at the University of Cambridge at DAMTP ( Department of Applied Mathematics and Theoretical Physics ). First, in 1968/69 as ICI Research Fellow, from 1970 as Assistant Director of Research, from 1981 as a University Lecturer and in 1988 as Reader in Geophysical dynamics and from 1989 as Professor of Theoretical Geophysics. Huppert was from 1991 to 1996 also professor of mathematics at the University of New South Wales, where he also is a professor since 2012.

In 1987 he became a Fellow of the Royal Society and he was from 2001 to 2003 in the Council and since 2002 in the working group on bioterrorism. In 2011 he held the Bakerian Lecture of the Royal Society and in 2006 he was awarded the Wolfson Merit Award. Since 1970 he is a Fellow of King's College, Cambridge. In 2005 he received the Arthur L. Day Prize. He is a Fellow of the American Geophysical Union and the American Physical Society. In 2007 he received the Murchison Medal.

Huppert was 1994-1999 co-editor of Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society A, 1997-2000 Reports on Progress in Physics, and 1971-1990 of the Journal of Fluid Mechanics. He received an honorary doctorate ( Sc.D. ) in Cambridge.

His wife Felicia Huppert ( Marriage 1966) is professor of psychology at Cambridge. He has two sons, one of whom ( Julian ) is Member of Parliament for Cambridge.