Bio-bibliography

Australia/The Netherlands

Kurt Lambeck

2012 Balzan Prize for Solid Earth Sciences, with Emphasis on Interdisciplinary Research

For his exceptional contribution to the understanding of the relationship between post-glacial rebound and sea level changes. His findings have radically modified climate science.

Kurt Lambeck, born in Utrecht, The Netherlands, on 20 September 1941, is since 1956 an Australian citizen.
Emeritus Professor at the Australian National University since 2008; Plaise Pascal Professor at the École Normale Supérieure, Paris (2011-2012); President of the Federation of Asian Science Academies and Associations (since 2009); former President of the Australian Academy of Science (2006-2010).
He obtained a B.Surv. (Hons. 1, University Medal) from the Faculty of Engineering, University of New South Wales, Australia in 1963, a D.Phil. from the University of Oxford in 1967 and a D.Sc. from the University of Oxford in 1976. He worked as a Geodesist at the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory and at Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA, from 1967 to 1970. From 1970 to 1973 he was Directeur scientifique du Groupe de Recherche de Géodésie spatiale, Observatoire de Paris, and from 1973 to 1977 Professeur Associé, Département des Sciences de la Terre, University of Paris VII, and Institut de Physique du Globe, University of Paris IV. From 1977 to 2007 he was Professor of Geophysics at the Research School of Earth Sciences at The Australian National University, including ten years as Director of the Research School of Earth Sciences. He has held visiting appointments in Belgium, Britain, Canada, France, Greece, The Netherlands, Norway and Sweden.
He has been a member of the Australian Academy of Science since 1984, Fellow of the Royal Society of London since 1994 and of the Royal Society of New South Wales, Australia since 2010, and a Foreign Member of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences since 1993, of the Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters since 1994, of the Academia Europaea since 1999, of the Académie des Sciences, Institut de France since 2005, the US National Academy of Sciences since 2009, and of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences since 2010.

He has published more than 250 papers on subjects in geophysics, geology, geodesy, space science, celestial mechanics, environmental geoscience and glaciology, as well as the following two books:
– The Earth’s Variable Rotation: Geophysical Causes and Consequences. Cambridge University Press, 1980, 2005.
– Geophysical Geodesy: The Slow Deformations of the Earth. Oxford University Press, USA , 1988; Cambridge University Press Virtual Publishing.

(September 2012)