Jerry X. Mitrovica


Jerry X. Mitrovica is the Frank Baird Jr. Professor of Science in the Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences at Harvard University. He did important early work showing that tectonic plates heave, tilt, and fall in addition to drifting across the surface of the planet. He is known for his work on modeling past and predicting future uneven rises and falls in sea level due to the interactions between melting ice caps, local gravitational forces, and plate tectonics, which yield what some might find to be counterintuitive results.

Awards

In 2000 he was a recipient of a Rutherford Memorial Medal from the Royal Society of Canada. In 2007 he was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship for his work on polar wander. In 2015 he gained the Arthur L. Day Medal from the Geological Society of America. In 2019 he was awarded the so-called "Genius Grant", a MacArthur Fellowship.