Steve Sparks (volcanologist)

Robert Stephen John Sparks ( born May 15, 1949 in Harpenden, Hertfordshire), FRS, CBE, is a British volcanologist. He is the holder of by Sir Edward Chaning Wills, 2nd Baronet ( 1861-1921 ), named geology professor at the Faculty of Geosciences at the University of Bristol.

Life

Steve Sparks studied at Imperial College under George PL Walker, and graduated after B.Sc. (1971), graduating with a doctorate degree (Ph.D. ) in 1974. From 1974 - 1976 he was a visiting researcher at Lancaster University before working for another two years, funded by a NATO grant, a postdoctoral fellow at the Graduate School of Oceanography, University of Rhode Iceland. From 1978 to 1989 he taught at the Institute of Geosciences of the University of Cambridge, where he was also a Fellow of Trinity Hall. In 1987 he spent a year as a Sherman Fairchild Distinguished Scholar at the California Institute of Technology. He was appointed to the Chair of Geology Chaning Wills of the University of Bristol in 1989. 2006/2007 he was Edward Bass Scholar at Yale University.

Work

Sparks has achieved more than 300 publications that were influential especially in the field of volcanology and petrology of igneous rocks, including important work on the stability of eruption clouds or the facies of ignimbrites. His research areas are also in the field of geohazards and their assessment as well as the application of mechanical principles to geological fluid flow processes, such as in the convection of magma in magma chambers or the turbulent flow of molten rock during ascent in the volcanic vent.

Offices, honors and awards

Sparks was from 1994 - 1996 President of the Geological Society of London, President of IAVCEI 1999 to 2003, and since 2010 Chairman of the Department of Volcanology, Geochemistry and Petrology ( VGP ) of the American Geophysical Union.

In the Research Assessment Exercise 2008, which is usually every five -yearly review of the higher education institutions in the UK, Sparks was chairman of the Department of Geosciences.

In 1988 he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society, 1998 Fellow of the American Geophysical Union, and was since 2000 Honorary Member of the Geological Society of America. He received, among other things, the Arthur L. Day Medal of the Geological Society of America ( 2000), 1998 awarded the Murchison Medal of the Geological Society of London, and in 2011 with its Wollaston medal.