Biography

Download CV: PDF

Catherine G. Constable

Catherine Constable is a professor of geophysics in Scripps’s Cecil H. and Ida M. Green Institute of Geophysics and Planetary Physics, and served as Interim Vice Chancellor for Marine Sciences, Director of the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, and Dean of the Graduate School of Marine Sciences at the University of California, San Diego from 2012-2013. She is currently the Vice-Chair of the Department, and beginning July 1, 2017, she will become the Department Chair and Deputy Director for Education.

Constable’s research is concerned with Earth’s magnetic field. She is particularly interested in decadal to million year variations in the geomagnetic field and how the changing structure of the magnetic field and events like geomagnetic reversals can inform scientists about processes in Earth’s deep interior. Constable also uses recent satellite magnetic field observations to study the electrical conductivity of Earth’s mantle. She is an active proponent of the development of databases allowing electronic access to paleomagnetic and rock magnetic data and the author of about 90 peer-reviewed scientific articles.

Born in St. Andrews, Scotland, she grew up in Australia. She holds a B.Sc. in physics, with honours, from the University of Western Australia (1978), M.Sc. in geophysics from Australian National University (1983); and a Ph.D. in geophysics from Scripps (1987). Constable has spent her career at Scripps, with research and professorial positions following her 1987 appointment as a postgraduate researcher. She has served as Head of Scripps’ Earth Section (2006-2009) and Director of Cecil H. and Ida M. Green Institute of Geophysics and Planetary Physics (2007-2009). From 2009-2012 she was Deputy Director for Research and Associate Vice Chancellor for Marine Sciences at Scripps Institution of Oceanography.

Constable is a fellow of the American Geophysical Union, a member of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and of the Royal Astronomical Society, which awarded her its Price Medal for Geomagnetism and Aeronomy in 1997. In April 2012 she became a Research Awardee of the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation. In 2013 she received the William Gilbert Award, from the Geomagnetism & Paleomagnetism Section, of the American Geophysical Union. Ӭ

 

Updated June 21,2017