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For the past 19 years, the Department of Geology has been extremely fortunate to have hosted a wide variety of speakers for the annual Osgood Lecture. On March 2, 2000, the Nineteenth Annual Osgood Lecture took a slightly different twist from the usual rock-based paleontological/stratigraphical subject matter when we hosted Dr. Paul A. Mayweski from the Climate Change Research Center at The University of New Hampshire in Durham. His presentation was entitled, "The Ice Core Time Machine." Paul Mayewski has given more than 250 presentations worldwide since 1973 on a variety of subjects related to polar ice, ice cores, and changing climates around the Earth. Having completed his undergraduate work at the State University of New York at Buffalo, he received his Ph.D. from The Ohio State University Institute of Polar Studies. Currently, he is the Founding Director of the Climate Change Research Center at the Institute for the Study of Earth, Oceans, and Space and Professor of Glaciology in the Department of Earth Sciences at the University of New Hampshire in Durham. He has led over 30 scientific expeditions to a variety of places, including the Antarctic (where Mayewski Peak is named for him), the Arctic (where his team recovered the longest ice core in the northern hemisphere), and the Himalayas/Tibetan Plateau (where he led the first United States expedition into Ladakh, Himalayas). His extensive publications have been instrumental in understanding acid rain, the Antarctic ozone hole, the global distribution of the Chernobyl nuclear accident, the history of volcanic activity, and major atmospheric phenomena. As Director of the Glacier Research Group, which he founded in 1980, Paul is currently organizing a multidisciplinary research effort to under-stand climate change in the Himalayas and the International Transantarctic Scientific Expedition to provide a 200-year record of environmental conditions in the Antarctic. His expeditionary and scientific achievements have been highlighted in various publications, on the radio, and in films, including Discover, Harper's Magazine, The New York Times, National Public Radio's "Fresh Air," "Good Morning America," as well as various NOVA and BBC productions. The Richard G. Osgood, Jr., Memorial Lectureship in Geology was endowed in 1981 by his three sons in memory of their father, an internationally-known paleontologist who taught at Wooster from 1967 until 1981. Funds from the endowment are used to bring a well-known geologist interested in paleontology and stratigraphy - It really was stratigraphy! - to the Wooster campus each year to lecture and meet with students. The 2001 Osgood Lecture will be presented by Dr. Carleton E. Brett of the Department of Geology at The University of Cincinnati.
Osgood Lecturers:
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