Approximately 30 former students and colleagues of Karl K. Turekian will gather for a symposium in honor of the Yale geochemist being held on campus Friday and Saturday, Oct. 24 and 25. The event celebrates the scientist's 70th birthday on Oct. 25.
Titled "Global Change: The Broad View," the symposium will include a session beginning at 8:30 a.m. on Friday in the auditorium of the Peabody Museum of Natural History, 170 Whitney Ave. The remaining sessions will take place at 1 p.m. on Friday and at 8:30 a.m. and 1 p.m. on Saturday in Rm. 123 of Kline Geology Laboratory, 210 Whitney Ave.
Among the many topics that will be examined are conditions on the ocean floor and in the atmosphere, government grants for research, the use of isotopes and the "business" of geochemistry.
Admission to the symposium sessions is free, and the public is welcome. For further information or a complete schedule, contact Gwyneth Williams by phone at 432-3185 or by email at gwyneth.williams@yale.edu.
Professor Turekian holds the Silliman chair in geology and geophysics and is director of the Center for the Study of Global Change. He is also editor of the journal Geochimica et Cosmoschimica Acta and curator of meteorites for the Peabody Museum.
The Yale scientist's major fields of research are planetary evolution, marine and atmospheric geochemistry, and trace element geochemistry. His work laid the foundation for the widespread use of isotopes in uncovering the earth's environmental history; he helped discover the rules governing the distribution of trace metals in the ocean; and he revealed for the first time the fundamental distribution of chemical properties in the ocean.
A member of the Yale faculty since 1956, Professor Turekian was educated at Wheaton College and Columbia University. During his career, he has received many honors for his work, including election to the National Academy of Sciences and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
A past recipient of the Victor M. Goldschmidt Award, the highest medal of the Geochemical Society, Professor Turekian was awarded the Maurice Ewing Medal
by the U.S. Navy and the American Geophysical Union last spring for his "significant, original contributions to understanding physical, geophysical and geological processes in the ocean." The citation for that medal described the Yale scientist as "one of the world's most productive, widely known, and best-loved geochemists ... [who] has laid the foundation for a vast array of geochemical topics in the Earth and ocean sciences through research carried out with unsurpassed insight, originality, dedication and selflessness."