Tanya Atwater (born 1942) is an American geophysicist and Marine geology who specializes in plate tectonics. She is particularly renowned for her early research on the plate tectonic history of western North America.
Early life and education
Atwater was born in
Los Angeles,
California in 1942.
Her father was an engineer and her mother was a botanist. Atwater was one of the first women to research the
Seabed in terms of its
geology.
Atwater began her education in 1960 at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, then received her B.A. in geophysics from the University of California, Berkeley in 1965.
Career
Atwater was a professor of
tectonics, in the Department of Geological Sciences, now the Department of Earth science, at the University of California, Santa Barbara before retiring. She authored and co-authored 50 articles in international journals, professional volumes, and major reports. Seven of these papers were published in the journals
Nature or
Science. In 1975, she became a Fellow of the American Geophysical Union for her work in
tectonophysics.
From 1975 to 1977, Atwater was a Sloan Postdoctoral Fellowship Recipient in Physics.
In 1984, she won the Encouragement Award from the Association for Women Geoscientists.
Atwater is a member of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences
elected for her contributions to marine geophysics and tectonics. In 2019 she received the highest award of the Geological Society of America, the Penrose Medal.
In 2022 she received the Wollaston medal from the Geological Society of London, its highest award.
Scientific discoveries
Atwater was involved in oceanographic expeditions using deep towed instruments to explore the ocean floor. To date, she has participated in 12 deep water dives in the deep-ocean submersible
DSV Alvin. She researched the volcano-tectonic processes responsible for creating new oceanic crust at
Mid-ocean ridge. In 1968, she co-authored a research paper featuring groundbreaking work into the faulted nature of spreading centers.
With
Jack Corliss,
Fred Spiess, and Kenneth Macdonald, she played key roles in expeditions that uncovered the distinct biology of ocean floor warm springs, which led to the discovery during the
RISE project of the high temperature black smokers, undersea hydrothermal vents.
In Atwater's research on near the Galapagos Islands,
Atwater is perhaps best known for her work on the plate tectonic history of western North America.
She also studied geometric evolution, integrating and comparing the global plate motion records with the regional continental geologic records. She found emerging relationships that revealed the origins of many large-scale geologic features (e.g. Rocky Mountains, Yellowstone, Death Valley, Cascade volcanoes, California Coast Ranges).
Atwater's research paper, "Implications of Plate Tectonics for the Cenozoic Tectonic Evolution of Western North America",[Atwater, T. M. 1989. "Plate tectonic history of the northeast Pacific and western North America". In The geology of North America: The northeastern Pacific Ocean and Hawaii, Edited by: Winterer, E. L., Hussong, D. M. and Decker, R. W. Vol. N, 21–72. Boulder, CO: Geol. Soc. Amer.]
Atwater is interested in communication and education at all levels. She has developed electronic multi-media (Educational Multimedia Visualization Center at UCSB) to enhance geologic visualization and understanding, particularly related to the histories of tectonic plates.
Awards and honors
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1975, Fellow, American Geophysical Union
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1980, AAAS Newcomb Cleveland Prize for top research article in the journal Science
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1997, elected to the National Academy of Sciences
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2002, National Science Foundation Director's Award for Distinguished Teaching Scholars. This award, of $300,000 over four years, is given to help and honor distinguished scientists who are working out ways to translate research into education. The money is meant to provide teaching scholars the opportunity to expand their work beyond their home institutions.
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Leopold von Buch Medal, German Geosciences Society
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2005 Gold Medal, Society of Woman Geographers
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2019 Penrose Medal of the Geological Society of America.
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2022 Wollaston Medal of the Geological Society of London.
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2023 Elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
Selected works
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Atwater, Tanya, and P. Molnar, 1973, Relative motion of the Pacific and North American plates deduced from seafloor spreading in the Atlantic, Indian and South Pacific Oceans. R. L. Kovach and A. Nur, eds., Proc. of the Conf. on Tectonic Problems of the San Andreas Fault, Geological Sciences, v. XIII, Stanford Univ., p. 136-148. Reprinted in U.C.S.D., Scripps Inst. Oceanography., Contributions, Vol. 44, Part 2, p. 1362–1374, 1974.
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Atwater, T., 1991, Tectonics of the Northeast Pacific, Transactions of the Royal Society of Canada, Series I, v. I, pp. 295–318.
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Atwater, T., 1998, Plate Tectonic History of Southern California with emphasis on the Western Transverse Ranges and Santa Rosa Island, in Weigand, P. W., ed., Contributions to the geology of the Northern Channel Islands, Southern California: American Association of Petroleum Geologists, Pacific Section, MP 45, p. 1-8.
See also
Further reading
External links
