Earth-science pioneer Don L. Anderson honored

This new GSA Special Paper is a memorial to Don L. Anderson, former director of the Seismological Laboratory at Caltech, recipient of the Crafoord Prize in Geosciences from the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, the U.S. National Medal of Science, and numerous other awards. A geophysicist extraordinaire, he contributed much to our understanding of the structure and dynamics of the interior of Earth.

Anderson is memorialized by his colleagues at the start of the book (which is co-published with the American Geophysical Union), and the remaining chapters, most written at Anderson's invitation, reflect his interdisciplinary career. It includes papers on anisotropy, the seismic structure of the mantle, mantle convection, the statistics of melting anomalies, planetary geology, tectonics, the thermal budget of Earth, lithospheric structure, geochemistry, and flood basalts.

The U.S. National Medal of Science was conferred to him by President Bill Clinton in 1998 for his "immeasurable influence on the advancement of earth sciences over the past three decades nationally and internationally."

Provided by Geological Society of America