Frederick John Vine (born June 17, 1939) is a British marine geologist and geophysicist and was a key contributor to the theory of plate tectonics.
Contents |
Vine was born in Chiswick, London, and educated at Latymer Upper School and St John's College, Cambridge[1] where he studied Natural Sciences (BA, 1962) and marine geophysics (PhD, 1965).[2]
As a graduate student Fred Vine's Ph.D was 'magnetism in the seafloor', on which he worked along with his supervisor Drummond Matthews. Having met Harry Hess he was fully aware of his theories on sea floor spreading where the ocean bed effectively acts as a 'conveyor belt' moving away from the central ridge.[3] Vine's work, along with that of Drummond Matthews and Lawrence Morley of the Geological Survey of Canada, helped put the variations in the magnetic properties of the ocean crust into proper context (Vine–Matthews–Morley hypothesis). Specifically Vine and Matthews supported Dietz’s (Nature 1961) idea that sea floor spreading was occurring at mid ocean ridges. Vine and Matthews showed that basalt created at a mid-ocean ridge records earth’s current magnetic field polarity (and strength), thus turning Hess's theoretical 'conveyor belt' into a 'tape recorder'.[3] Furthermore, they showed that magnetic reversals, suggested by Allan Cox (Nature 1963),[4] can be seen as parallel strips as you travel perpendicularly away from the ridge crest.[3]
Professor Vine had a distinguished career. He did important research with E.M. Moores on the Ophiolite within the Troodos mountains of southern Cyprus. He worked with R.A. Livermore and A.G.Smith on the history of Earth's magnetic field.[1] He then did groundbreaking work on the electrical conductivity of rocks from the lower continental crust with R. G. Ross. In 1967 he became assistant professor of geology and geophysics at Princeton University. In 1970 he worked at the School of Environmental Sciences at the University of East Anglia, U.K., firstly as a Reader, then as Professor in 1974, and was Dean from 1977–1980, and again from 1993–1998. Since 1998, Vine has been a Professorial Fellow of the University of East Anglia.[1] As of 2008 he remains at the university as Emeritus Professor.[2]
Professor Vine has received a number of honours including :