Jerry Mitrovica Named Professor of Geophysics at Harvard

Cambridge, Mass. May 7, 2009 - Theoretical geophysicist Jerry X. Mitrovica, whose studies of the Earth's structure and evolution have important implications for our understanding of climate and sea-level changes throughout Earth's history, has been named professor of geophysics in Harvard University's Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences, effective July 1, 2009. Mitrovica, 48, is currently professor of physics at the University of Toronto, where he has been on the faculty since 1993. He has also served since 2004 as director of the Earth Systems Evolution Program at the Canadian Institute for Advanced Research. "Professor Mitrovica's research is at the forefront of current efforts to understand the relationship between sea level and the melting of ice sheets and glaciers," says Jeremy Bloxham, dean of science in Harvard's Faculty of Arts and Sciences. "This work is of tremendous importance and interest not only to his colleagues who study the response of Greenland and Antarctica's ice sheets to global climate change, but also to society in general." Mitrovica is best known for his extensive work tying Earth's internal dynamics to surface changes associated with plate tectonics, glacial cycles, and climate change. His doctoral research demonstrated that the slow creep of mantle rocks responsible for continental drift and plate tectonics was also the cause of the intermittent flooding and uplift of continents through geological time.