 | John Wettlaufer |
John Wettlaufer, the newly named Alan M. Batemen Professor of Geology and
Geophysics, is noted for research spanning many disciplines, from condensed
matter and geophysics to applied mathematics, while studying how objects freeze
and melt.
T H I S
John Wettlaufer appointed
the Alan M. Bateman Professor
He is particularly interested in the growth and properties of ice and explores
the implications in biological, climatological, extraterrestrial, pattern formation
and technological settings. His scales of interest range from atomic to astronomical.
His numerous publications have explored such topics as the symmetry of snow
crystals, premelting, quasi-liquids, ocean freezing, gravity currents, star
patterns on lake ice, supersolid helium, the function of biological antifreeze
proteins, the phenomenon of “finger rafting” (when colliding ice
sheets form a series of interlocking blocks), turbulent convection in subglacial
Lake Vostok and the reliability of simulated Arctic sea ice in global climate
models.
While his theoretical work is often inspired by natural patterns, as part of
his investigations of sea ice thermodynamics, Wettlaufer has conducted field
research that has included spending seven months on drifting sea ice. At Yale,
he is also a professor in the Department of Physics, director of graduate studies
in geology and geophysics, and runs the Ice Physics and Fluid Dynamics laboratories.
Wettlaufer has been a member of the Yale faculty since 2002. He is also an
affiliate professor in physics at the University of Washington in Seattle,
where he earned his Ph.D. He holds a B.S. from the University of Puget Sound.
In addition to teaching at the University of Washington, he served as a staff
physicist in the Applied Physics Laboratory there from 1993 to 1997 and was
senior physicist from 1997 to 2002.
Wettlaufer has been a visiting professor at the Norwegian Polar Research Institute
in Norway, a visiting fellow and professor at the University of Cambridge in
England and the 1999 Japan Society for Promotion of Science Visiting Professor
at Hokkaido University in Japan. He was also elected Visiting Fellow Commoner
at Trinity College, Cambridge, and was named the Houghton Lecturer at the Massachusetts
Institute of Technology last year. He regularly teachers in the Geophysical
Fluid Dynamics Summer Program at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution.
Wettlaufer’s other honors include being named a Wenner-Gren Foundation
Fellow this year. He was elected a fellow of the American Physical Society
in 2003.
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