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Frank D. Stacey

English-born Australian geophysicist From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

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Frank Donald Stacey (21 August 1929, Essex, UK) is an English-born Australian geophysicist, known for his research on rock magnetism[1] and application of thermodynamics to understanding the Earth's core and mantle.[2][3][1]

Education and career

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At the University of London, Stacey graduated with a B.Sc. in 1950 and a Ph.D. in 1953. As a postdoc, he was from 1953 to 1956 a research fellow at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver. From 1961 to 1964 he was a Royal Society Gassiot Fellow in Geomagnetism at the Meteorological Office Research Unit of the University of Cambridge.[4] Near the beginning of his career he published several papers in The Philosophical Magazine.[5][6][7][8] He was a Reader in Physics at the University of Queensland from 1964 to 1971[4] — during those years he wrote the first three editions of Physics of the Earth.[9] (In 1988 a fourth edition was published with Paul McEwan Davis as co-author.[9]) In 1968 Stacey received his D.Sc. from the University of London. From 1971 to 1990 he was a professor of Applied Physics at the University of Queensland.[4] He was appointed to visiting lectureships in several different countries. In 1997 he joined the Australian Government agency CSIRO Exploration and Mining.[9]

Louis Néel’s 1955 paper Some theoretical aspects of rock-magnetism[10] inspired Stacey to generalize Néel's single-domain theory for magnetic grains to multi-domained grains. In the theory of remanence for igneous rocks, Stacey introduced the concept of pseudo-single domain for magnetic grains which are small and multi-domained.[1][11] He did research on scientifically describing rock fabric using magnetic anisotropy[1][12] and predicting earthquakes and volcanic eruptions using piezomagnetism.[1][13][14] With several colleagues, Stacey investigated possible failures of Newton's law of gravity.[15][16][17][18][19][20]

Using a lattice dynamical formulation for the Grüneisen parameter, he developed a new equation of state for high pressures with applications to materials in the Earth's core and lower mantle.[1][21] His book Physics of the Earth became a widely used, standard textbook and was the first geophysics textbook to comprehensively deal with solid Earth geophysics.[1]

Stacey chaired from 1966 to 1967 the Australian Institute of Physics, Queensland branch. He was elected in 1979 a Fellow of the Australian Academy of Science[4] and in 1986 a Fellow der American Geophysical Union.[22] In 1994 he was awarded the Louis Néel Medal.[1]

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