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Professor Matthew England FAA, University of New South Wales

Professor Matthew England is recognised as one of the world’s foremost experts on the ocean’s role in climate, spanning time-scales from seasons to millennia. His field of research spans physical oceanography and climate dynamics, where he has written seminal papers on global water-mass formation, ocean-atmosphere-ice interactions, modes of climate variability, and ocean overturning processes. His work has afforded profound insights into the circulation of the Pacific, Indian, and Southern oceans and their role in global and regional climate. He has quantified the Southern Ocean overturning circulation and its impact on climate, in both present and past climates; he identified the critical importance of the Southern Annular Mode in driving trends and variability in the coupled ocean – ice – atmosphere system; and he has shed new light on the teleconnections between the tropics and Antarctica.

Professor John Church FAA FTSE, UNSW Sydney

Professor John Church is one of Australia’s leading oceanographers whose theoretical and observational work on the dynamics of the oceans has led to a deep understanding of the physics of recent sea-level change, both globally and for the Australia–Pacific region. He has played a leading role in establishing a consistent and robust record of sea level change—integrating the traditional tide gauge records with satellite radar altimetry data; identifying its temporal as well as regional variability; developing a deep understanding of the processes driving this change; and providing quantitative projections of future change under different climate scenarios that he has been able to observationally test. His work has contributed to the assessments of the science of climate change by the Intergovernmental Panel for Climate Change and to the World Climate Research Program, and in the public debate on the evidence and underlying science of climate change.

Professor Dietmar Müller FAA, University of Sydney

Professor Müller is internationally renowned for leading the construction of a Virtual Earth Laboratory to ‘see’ deep into Earth in four dimensions (space and time). This laboratory draws together custom software, workflows and data to produce open-access models of Earth’s dynamic history. It has been accessed by users from 183 countries and many disciplines. Novel applications led by Professor Müller include the development of a deep-time global sea level model and combined geodynamic, tectonic and surface topography models unravelling the origins and history of continental landscapes, environments and sedimentary basins. He showed how the uplift of the eastern Australian highlands is dominated by dynamic topography due to plate–mantle interaction. He recently developed an innovative approach for understanding the deep oceanic carbon cycle by showing how variations in ocean bottom water temperature and tectonic cycles drive fluctuations in seafloor weathering, crustal CO₂ storage and atmospheric CO₂ content.

2017

Emeritus Professor Ross William Griffiths FAA, Australian National University

Professor Griffiths’ influential research in fluid dynamics has focused on the fundamental physics of phenomena of importance in geophysics. He has contributed to the understanding of thermal and multi-component convection, the dynamics of rotating density-stratified flows, the instability of ocean currents, the formation and interactions of ocean eddies, and the global overturning circulation. He has influenced solid-earth geophysics through studies of convection in the Earth’s solid mantle and its interactions with the Earth’s surface, and provided dynamical insights in physical vulcanology through studies of cooling, solidifying lava flows. His contributions to oceanography, geophysics and geology have been made using careful theoretical and laboratory studies of the fluid dynamics and have involved collaboration across multiple disciplines.

2015

Professor Trevor J McDougall FAA FRS, University of New South Wales

Professor McDougall is internationally renowned for his ground-breaking work on ocean mixing processes and the thermodynamics of seawater. He has identified new mixing processes; defined neutral density surfaces along which mesoscale eddies mix; shown how lateral mixing processes should be included in ocean models; and redefined all the thermodynamic variables used in oceanography. His discoveries have improved ocean climate models and changed the way oceanographic data are analysed, increasing the accuracy of the science and confidence in models of the coupled atmosphere-ocean-ice climate system.

2013

Professor Roger Powell FAA, University of Melbourne

The continental crust is a patchwork of metamorphic rocks transformed deep beneath the Earth’s surface. Understanding the physical conditions in which such metamorphic rocks form is the main focus of Professor Roger Powell’s research. Through the application of the principles of equilibrium thermodynamics to mineral systems he has provided both the methodological framework and the computer software that allows metamorphic geologists to recover the formation conditions of metamorphic rocks. using equilibrium thermodynamics, mathematics and statistics

2011

Professor Ian Jackson, Australian National University

Ian Jackson’s research has centred on laboratory study of the physical properties of geological and analogue materials under conditions simulating those of the Earth's deep interior. This has involved the intensive development of novel methods for the measurement and analysis of elastic and near-elastic behaviour related to the speeds and attenuation of earthquake waves. Such laboratory-based insights find application in the interpretation of seismological models for the Earth’s internal structure in terms of temperature and chemical composition.

2009

Professor Malcolm McCulloch FAA, Australian National University

Malcolm McCulloch is a geochemist who has made major contributions to both the study of the solid Earth and environmental issues. He has had a major impact on studies of the evolution of the Earth’s crust. Recently he has studied sea-level changes and past ocean temperatures, the impacts of environmental change on coral reefs through nutrient fluxes into the ocean, and the effects of increasing ocean acidity associated with higher atmospheric carbon-dioxide. His work on material incorporated into the skeletons of corals on the Great Barrier Reef has demonstrated the way in which the progress of human settlement in Queensland has affected the nature of the waters reaching the reef and has already begun to influence water-catchment management.

2007

Professor Ian McDougall, Australian National University

Ian McDougall has an extraordinary record of scientific achievement in the fields of plate tectonics, geochronology, planetary noble gas evolution, and the origin and evolution of humans. In addition to making fundamental contributions to plate tectonics by precise dating of the large-scale movement of oceanic plates, his work provides the benchmark for our understanding of hominid evolution in East Africa. This is exemplified by his recent dating of the new species Australopithecus anamensis, a finding that provides new insights into our understanding of the genesis of our own species.

2005—B.L.N. Kennett
2003—A.J.W. Gleadow
2001—B.E. Hobbs
1998—J.R. Philip
1995—K. Lambeck
1993—A.E. Ringwood
1990—D.H. Green