Stolper Elected to Great Britain’s Royal Society
PASADENA, Calif.—Edward M. Stolper, provost of the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) and William E. Leonard Professor of Geology, has been named a Foreign Member of Great Britain's Royal Society. He is one of eight scientists elected in 2011. Stolper's election brings to six the number of foreign members of the Royal Society currently on the Caltech faculty. Membership in the Royal Society is bestowed each year on a small number of the world's scientists. The oldest scientific academy in existence, the Royal Society was established in 1660 under the patronage of King Charles II for the purpose of "improving natural knowledge," and helped usher in the age of modern science. Today, the Society seeks to promote science leaders who champion innovation for the benefit of humanity and the planet. The Society cited Stolper for his "experimental and theoretical work on melting and igneous processes on the Earth, Mars, and asteroids." The citation noted Stolper's development of the so-called sandwich method for determining the phase equilibria that control melting in the mantles of Earth and other planets and his development of the first quantitative model of water speciation in glasses and silicate melts, which showed that H2O dissolves in magmas as both hydroxyl groups and as molecular water.
