Donald B. Dingwell

Donald Bruce Dingwell (born 1958 in Corner Brook, Newfoundland, Canada) is the director of the Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences^[1] and Ordinarius for Mineralogy and Petrology of the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich. He is also currently President of the International Association of Volcanology and Chemistry of the Earth´s Interior (IAVCEI), founded in 1919 and Vice-President of the Academia Europaea. From September 2011 to December 2013 he was the 3rd and last Secretary General of the European Research Council (ERC)^[2] where he embarked on a global participation campaign for the ERC.^[3] He is also a past-President of the European Geosciences Union.^[4] His research area is in geosciences. His approach is experimental. His research output has impacted geophysical, geochemical and petrological science and his most recent emphasis has been in the field of volcanic eruptions and their role in the Earth System. His work has been transformational in the way experimental and materials sciences are applied to volcanic phenomena. He is one of the world´s most productive geoscientists with ca. 400 publications and ca. 19000 google scholar citations.^[5] Prof. Dingwell is also the initiator of the first Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) in Volcanism entitled Volcanic Eruptions: a material science^[6] which has attracted over 20,000 participants since its inception in 2013.

Education

Dingwell received his B.Sc. (Hons.) in Geology/Geophysics from the Memorial University of Newfoundland in 1980 under the supervision of Hugh Miller and Dave Strong , his PhD. in Geology from the University of Alberta in 1984 under the supervision of Chris Scarfe, and his Dr. rer. nat. habil. in Geochemistry from the University of Bayreuth in 1992. He holds honorary degrees (D.Sc.) from the University of Alberta^[7] and University College London^[8]

Career

Dingwell began his research career at the Carnegie Institution of Washington (now Carnegie Institution for Science) where he was a Carnegie Fellow from 1984 to 1986 working at the Geophysical Laboratory. His first permanent (tenure-track) appointment was to the University of Toronto as Assistant professor. In 1987 he moved to the newly-founded Bavarian Institute of Experimental Geochemistry and Geophysics (Bavarian Geo-institute) at the University of Bayreuth where he served as assistant to the founding Director Friedrich Seifert. Dingwell has been based at his present position as Professor of Mineralogy and Petrology in the Faculty of Geosciences of the Ludwig Maximilian University (LMU) since 2000. He has also served as the Director of the Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences,^[9] since its founding in 2002. He has held visiting professorships at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech), Stanford University and Institut de Physique du Globe de Paris (Paris Sorbonne Cité).

Awards and Honours

Dingwell has been awarded the Arthur L. Day Medal ^[10] of the Geological Society of America, the Martin A. Peacock Medal of the Mineralogical Association of Canada,^[11] the Norman L. Bowen Award^[12] of the American Geophysical Union, the MSA Award of the Mineralogical Society of America,^[13] the Viktor-Moritz-Goldschmidt Prize of the German Mineralogical Society , the Robert Wilhelm Bunsen Medal^[14] of the European Geosciences Union and the Otto Schott Research Award of the Ernst Abbé Fund.^[15] In 2009 he was awarded an Advanced Researcher Grant from the European Research Council^[16]

Dingwell is a member of national academies in Germany (Leopoldina & acatech), Canada (Royal Society of Canada) and Europe (Academia Europaea). He is a Fellow of the Geological Association of Canada, the Mineralogical Society of America, the American Geophysical Union, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the Gutenberg Research College of the University of Mainz and the Center of Advanced Studies of the Ludwig Maximilians University of Munich as well as an Honorary Fellow of the Societá Italiana di Mineralogia e Petrologia.

In 2013 he was bestowed with the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany (Bundesverdienstkreuz am Bande) by the President of Germany Dr. Joachim Gauck.

References