Donald Lawson Turcotte (April 22, 1932 – February 4, 2025) was an American geophysicist most noted for his work on the boundary layer theory of

mantle convection Mantle convection is the very slow creep of Earth's solid silicate mantle as convection currents carry heat from the interior to the planet's surface. Mantle convection causes tectonic plates to move around the Earth's surface. The Earth's l ...

as part of the theory of

plate tectonics Plate tectonics (, ) is the scientific theory that the Earth's lithosphere comprises a number of large tectonic plates, which have been slowly moving since 3–4 billion years ago. The model builds on the concept of , an idea developed durin ...

. He worked at Cornell University then the

University of California, Davis The University of California, Davis (UC Davis, UCD, or Davis) is a Public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university in Davis, California, United States. It is the northernmost of the ten campuses of the University ...

Life and career

Donald Turcotte trained as an engineer, graduating with a PhD in aeronautics and physics from

Caltech The California Institute of Technology (branded as Caltech) is a private university, private research university in Pasadena, California, United States. The university is responsible for many modern scientific advancements and is among a small g ...

in 1958. After a year at the

Naval Postgraduate School Naval Postgraduate School (NPS) is a Naval command with a graduate university mission, operated by the United States Navy and located in Monterey, California. The NPS mission is to provide "defense-focused graduate education, including clas ...

in Monterey, Turcotte took up a position at

Cornell University Cornell University is a Private university, private Ivy League research university based in Ithaca, New York, United States. The university was co-founded by American philanthropist Ezra Cornell and historian and educator Andrew Dickson W ...

, in the graduate school of Aeronautical Engineering. In 1965, Turcotte took a sabbatical at the

University of Oxford The University of Oxford is a collegiate university, collegiate research university in Oxford, England. There is evidence of teaching as early as 1096, making it the oldest university in the English-speaking world and the List of oldest un ...

, in the engineering department. Here he met Ron Oxburgh, who had recently arrived in the Department of Geology, and they began a collaboration in which they developed ideas about convective flow in the Earth's mantle, and its links to the newly emerging ideas of

. In 1973, Turcotte moved to the geology department at Cornell where he worked for the next thirty years. After retiring from Cornell in 2003, Turcotte moved to

. He has won awards including the Arthur L. Day Medal of the

Geological Society of America The Geological Society of America (GSA) is a nonprofit organization dedicated to the advancement of the geosciences. History The society was founded in Ithaca, New York, in 1888 by Alexander Winchell, John J. Stevenson, Charles H. Hi ...

, the William Bowie Medal and the Charles A. Whitten Medal of the

American Geophysical Union The American Geophysical Union (AGU) is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization of Earth, Atmospheric science, atmospheric, Oceanography, ocean, Hydrology, hydrologic, Astronomy, space, and Planetary science, planetary scientists and enthusiasts that ...

. He was a member of the

National Academy of Sciences The National Academy of Sciences (NAS) is a United States nonprofit, NGO, non-governmental organization. NAS is part of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, along with the National Academy of Engineering (NAE) and the ...

. In 2008, the

's Nonlinear Geophysics committee established the Donald L. Turcotte Award, which is given annually to one honoree "in recognition of outstanding dissertation research that contributes directly to nonlinear geophysics." Turcotte died on February 4, 2025, at the age of 92.

Books

* Donald L. Turcotte and

Gerald Schubert Gerald Schubert (born 1939) is a geophysicist and Professor Emeritus of Earth, Planetary, and Space Sciences at UCLA. His research has broadly dealt with modeling the structure and dynamics of the interiors and atmospheres and Earth and other planet ...

, Geodynamics,

Cambridge University Press Cambridge University Press was the university press of the University of Cambridge. Granted a letters patent by King Henry VIII in 1534, it was the oldest university press in the world. Cambridge University Press merged with Cambridge Assessme ...

, Third Edition (2014), (Hardback) (Paperback) * Donald L. Turcotte, Fractals and chaos in geology and geophysics, Cambridge University Press, 1997 * Gerald Schubert, Donald L. Turcotte, and Peter Olson, Mantle convection in the Earth and planets, Cambridge University Press, 2001

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Turcotte, Donald L. 1932 births 2025 deaths American geophysicists California Institute of Technology alumni Cornell University faculty University of California, Davis faculty Members of the United States National Academy of Sciences People from Bellingham, Washington