Richard G. Gordon (born 1953) is an American geophysicist, known for his research on global tectonics, including global plate motions and palaeomagnetism. He is noteworthy for leading two global plate motion projects: NUVEL (Northwestern University Velocity) and MORVEL (Mid-Ocean Ridge Velocity).[1][2][3][4][5] In the geosciences, NUVEL and MORVEL are standard models for global plate motions.[1]
Education and career
Richard G. Gordon was born in California and grew up in east San Jose in the Diablo Range foothills.[6] He graduated in 1975 from the University of California, Santa Cruz with a B.A. in geophysics. At Stanford University he graduated in geophysics with an M.S. in 1977 with a Ph.D. in 1979.[7] His Ph.D. thesis was supervised by Allan V. Cox. For the academic year 1978–1979 Seth Stein was a postdoc at Stanford University. Stein and Gordon began a collaboration on global plate motions — their collaboration lasted over a number of years. In 1979 Stein joined the faculty of geological sciences of Northwestern University. After a postdoctoral year of teaching and research at Stanford, Gordon also joined Northwestern University faculty of geological sciences. He spent 15 years on Northwestern's faculty.[6] Two of Gordon's former doctoral students Charles "Chuck" DeMets (Ph.D. 1988)[8] and Donald Argus (Ph.D. 1990)[9] at Northwestern University were eventually elected Fellows of the American Geophysical Union (AGU)[1] (DeMets in 2011[8] and Argus in 2018[9]). Gordon, Stein, DeMets, and Argus collaborated extensively.[10][11][12] In 1995 Gordon joined the faculty of Rice University,[6] where he is currently W. M. Keck Foundation Professor in Geophysics, Earth, Environmental and Planetary Sciences.[13] In 2020 he gave a lecture at Beijing's China University of Geosciences (CUG).[14]
Gordon's research on global tectonics, tectonophysics, and paleomagnetism has earned him an international reputation.[1] In 1984 Gordon coauthored, with Allan V. Cox and Scott O'Hare, an important paper on palaeomagnetic Euler poles.[15][1] Gordon's research in tectonophysics has made use of marine geophysics, space geodesy, geodynamics, and numerical modeling.[6][13] The research of Gordon and his colleagues have quantified relative motions within major tectonic plates and thereby identified at least three major problems with the original theory of plate tectonics. First, the global plate interiors are less rigid than originally hypothesized. Second, the earliest models of plate tectonics need the incorporation of diffuse boundaries among oceanic plates. Third, global plate reconstructions sometimes need the incorporation of effects of horizontal thermal contractions found in geologically young oceanic lithosphere — such thermal contractions are relevant to understanding relative motions among hot spots.[1]
Gordon, Richard G. (1998). "The Plate Tectonic Approximation: Plate Nonrigidity, Diffuse Plate Boundaries, and Global Plate Reconstructions". Annual Review of Earth and Planetary Sciences. 26: 615–642. Bibcode:1998AREPS..26..615G. doi:10.1146/annurev.earth.26.1.615.
^Gripp, Alice E.; Gordon, Richard G. (1990). "Current plate velocities relative to the hotspots incorporating the NUVEL-1 global plate motion model". Geophysical Research Letters. 17 (8): 1109–1112. Bibcode:1990GeoRL..17.1109G. doi:10.1029/GL017i008p01109.
