Earth and Life Science
Earth and Life Science
Earth and Life Science
PEOPLE/PERSONALITIES
EXIT
WHO CONTRIBUTES IN
UNDERSTANDING THE EARTH
SYSTEM
Hywel Williams
Work on various topics related to
ecology, evolution and the natural
environment. Most of this involves
modelling and simulation, from a complex
systems perspective. Recently he have
been focusing on marine viruses,
coevolution, and behavioural economics
related to climate change.
JAMES CLARK
JAMES CLARK
a researcher at Plymouth Marine
Laboratory, and an Honorary Fellow at the
University of Exeter. He have a general interest in
marine ecology, and in controls on marine
biogeochemical cycles. In particular, he’s interested
in developing more mechanistic models of organism
physiology, which may better constrain the likely
response of the marine ecosystem to environmental
change.
He works in the Palaeo Fire Lab and
will be running experiments for the
ECOFLAM project. He have also
worked on a range of other projects,
mostly using lake sediments to
reconstruct environmental history.
Alexandra Navrotsky is a physical chemist in the
field of nanogeoscience. She is an elected member
of the United States National Academy of Sciences
(NAS). She was a board member of the Earth
Sciences and Resources division of the NAS from
1995 until 2000. In 2005, she was awarded the Urey
Medal,by the European Association of Geochemistry.
In 2006, she was awarded the Harry H. Hess Medal,
by the American Geophysical Union.She is currently
the director of NEAT ORU (Nanomaterials in
Environment, Agriculture, and Technology Organized
Research Unit), a primary program in
nanogeoscience. She is Distinguished Professor at
University of California, Davis.
Since 1997, she has built a unique high
temperature calorimetry facility. She has also
designed and enhanced the instrumentation.
Navrotsky introduced and applied the method for
measuring the energetics of crystalline oxides of
glasses, amorphous, nanophase material, porous
materials of hydrous phases and carbonates also
more recently nitrides and oxynitrides. Obtaining
the thermo chemical data is used to understand
the compatibility and reactivity of materials in
technological and geological application. The
energetics provides insight into chemical bonding,
order-disorder reactions, and phase transitions.
Navrotsky's calorimetry has also been
used in providing thermo chemical data for
a variety of perovskite-related phases which
has major consequences for convection and
evolution on a planetary scale. One of
Navrotsky's works has shown that many
zeolitic and mesoporous phases have
energies only slightly higher than those of
their stable dense polymorphs. The energy
is associated with the presence or absence
of strained bond angles not with the
density.
CLAIRE BELCHER