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Lionel Wilson

Lionel Wilson

Emeritus Professor, Lancaster Environment Centre, Lancaster University
By background Lionel is a physicist; his doctoral thesis was concerned with the load-bearing properties of the surface of the Moon just prior to the Apollo landings. When ancient lava flows were detected on the Moon in images taken by the astronauts he was amazed to find that there was essentially no literature on the physics of volcanic eruptions that he could use to analyse these flows; as a result he has spent the last 50 years developing mathematical physical models of all types of volcanic eruption.

Spacecraft data have shown that all of the silicate planets - Venus, Mars, Mercury, our Moon, Jupiter's satellite Io, and even some asteroids - have been volcanically active at some point in their lives. Comparing eruption deposits on these bodies, which differ as a result of differences in the acceleration due to gravity and the presence or absence of an atmosphere, has been a major spur to Lionel's research. He has been involved in the analysis of data from virtually all of the spacecraft that have visited the inner planets and asteroids, as a Principal Investigator in the Nasa Planetology Program, and as a Visiting Professor at two U.S. institutions, Brown University and the University of Hawai'i. His contributions to planetary volcanology have been recognized by the American Geophysical Union, with the N.I. Bowen Award in 1983, and by the Geological Society of America, with the G K Gilbert Award in 2005.

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