Everything about Francis Birch Geophysicist totally explained
Albert Francis Birch (22 August
1903-30 January
1992) was the Sturgis Hooper Professor of Geology at
Harvard University from
1949 to
1974. A
geophysicist best known for his experimental work on the properties of Earth-forming
minerals at high pressure and temperature, in
1952 he published a well-known paper in the
Journal of Geophysical Research,
where he demonstrated that the
mantle is chiefly composed of
silicate minerals, the upper and lower mantle are separated by a thin transition zone associated with silicate
phase transitions, and the inner and outer
core are alloys of crystalline and molten
iron. The most famous portion of the paper, however, is a humorous footnote he included in the introduction:
Unwary readers should take warning that ordinary language undergoes modification to a high-pressure form when applied to the interior of the Earth. A few examples of equivalents follow:
| High Pressure Form |
Ordinary Meaning |
| Certain |
Dubious |
| Undoubtedly |
Perhaps |
| Positive proof |
Vague suggestion |
| Unanswerable argument |
Trivial objection |
| Pure iron |
Uncertain mixture of all the elements |
In
1947, he adapted the isothermal
Murnaghan equation of state, which had been developed for infinitesimal strain, for
Eulerian finite strain, developing what is now known as the
Birch-Murnaghan equation of state.
In
1961, Birch published two papers
on
compressional wave velocities establishing a linear relation (now called Birch's law) of the compressional wave velocity V
p of rocks and minerals of a constant average
atomic weight .
Birch served as the president of the
Geological Society of America from 1963-64 and he received numerous honors in his career, including the GSA's
Arthur L. Day Medal (1950) and
Penrose Medal (1969), the
American Geophysical Union's William Bowie Medal (1960), the
National Medal of Science (1967), the
Vetlesen Prize (1968) (shared with Sir
Edward Bullard), the
Royal Astronomical Society's Gold Medal (1973), and
International Association for the Advancement of High Pressure Research's
Bridgman Medal (1983). Since 1992, the AGU's
Tectonophysics section has sponsored a Francis Birch Lecture, given at its annual meeting by a noted researcher in this field.
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