PRESIDENTIAL LECTURE SERIES  
2004
 
presents
 

Professor Mark Ghiorso
Professor of Petrology
Department of Geophysical Sciences
University of Chicago
Chicago, IL 60637

Mark Ghiorso is a Professor of Geophysical Sciences at the University of Chicago. He is an elected fellow of the Mineralogical Society of America, the Geological Society of America and the American Geophysical Union. His honors include the Dana Medal from the Mineralogical Society of America, NSF’s Presidential Young Investigator Award. He also has been the distinguished lecturer of MSA. Ghiorso is currently associate editor of the American Journal of Science and formerly served as associate editor of American Mineralogist and Geochimica et Cosmochimica Acta. Ghiorso is a computational petrologist who developed MELTS, a globally used thermodynamically based model of rock formation from magma. His work has helped to predict several unexpected features of crystallization and melting of earth materials.

LECTURE

"What volcanic rocks tell us about the chemical evolution of the Earth"

Thursday, January 22nd
4.30 pm at the Wertheim Conservatory

Florida International University (FIU)
Wertheim Conservatory
11200 SW 8th Street, Miami, FL

(Enter FIU through SW 107th Avenue and SW 16th Street)

Arrive early, doors open at 3:30 p.m.
Seating is on a first-come, first-serve basis.
  The Earth has undergone chemical differentiation throughout its history due initially to core formation and continuously via mass transfer of molten material from the interior to the surface. At what depths is this molten material generated and what can it tell us about the physical conditions within the Earth? Petrologic modeling of melt production within the Earth sheds considerable light on these questions and provides us with a means of quantifying the chemical evolution of the Earth and illuminates the nature of chemical processes that accompany heat transfer from the earth’s interior to the surface.