Robert Stephen John Sparks

Sir Steve Sparks CBE FRS
Born	15 May 1949 (1949-05-15) (age 75) Harpenden, Hertfordshire, England[1]
Alma mater	Imperial College London
Awards	Bigsby Medal (1985) Murchison Medal (1998) Arthur Holmes Medal (2005) Thorarinsson Medal (2008) Wollaston Medal (2011) Vetlesen Prize (2015) Royal Medal (2018)
Scientific career
Institutions	University of Bristol
Doctoral advisor	George P. L. Walker
Notable students	Jonathan Blundy, Claire Horwell, Jenni Barclay

Sir Robert Stephen John Sparks, CBE, FRS (born 15 May 1949) is Chaning Wills Professor of Geology in the Department of Earth Sciences at the University of Bristol. He is one of the world's leading volcanologists and has been widely recognised for his work in this field.

Career

Steve Sparks^[2] is a graduate of Imperial College, where he first completed a B.Sc. (1971), and then a PhD (1974) under the supervision of George P. L. Walker. He was subsequently a Research Fellow at Lancaster University (1976–1978), a NATO postdoctoral fellow at the Graduate school of oceanography, University of Rhode Island, USA (1976–1978), and then lecturer at University of Cambridge Department of Earth Sciences (1978–1989), where he was also a Fellow of Trinity Hall, Cambridge. He took up the Chaning Wills Chair of Geology at the University of Bristol in 1989. Steve has held a number of distinguished visiting positions at other universities, including a period as Sherman Fairchild Distinguished Scholar at California Institute of Technology in 1987, and as an Edward Bass Scholar^[3] at Yale University (2006–2007).

Steve Sparks has been hugely influential in the fields of both volcanology and igneous petrology. He has published over 300 papers, which have been cited more than 10,000 times, and is an ISI Highly Cited Researcher.^[4] He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1988 and a Fellow of the American Geophysical Union in 1998.

Steve Sparks has a distinguished record of service to the geological community. He was President of the Geological Society of London from 1994 to 1996,^[5] President of IAVCEI from 1999 to 2003,^[6] and is President-elect of the VGP section of the American Geophysical Union for 2009. Steve Sparks was chair of the 2008 UK Research Assessment Exercise Panel for Earth Sciences.^[7]

He became chair of ACME in 2012.

Sparks was appointed a Commander of the Order of the British Empire in the 2010 Birthday Honours for services to Environmental Sciences and a Knight Bachelor in the 2018 New Year Honours for services to Volcanology and Geology.^[8][9] In 2018 he received the Royal Medal.^[10]

External links

• Steve Sparks' webpage at the University of Bristol

References

1. "Index entry". FreeBMD. ONS. Retrieved 30 December 2017.
2. "Archived copy". Archived from the original on 12 October 2014. Retrieved 14 May 2009.
3. "Institute for Biospheric Studies". www.yale.edu. Retrieved 15 May 2009.
4. "Archived copy". Archived from the original on 14 February 2012. Retrieved 14 May 2009.
5. "Geological Society – Past Presidents". Archived from the original on 21 April 2009. Retrieved 31 March 2011. Retrieved on 2009-05-14
6. "IAVCEI-International Association of Volcanology and Chemistry of the Earth's Interior". Archived from the original on 6 May 2009. Retrieved 14 May 2009.
7. "UK Government Web Archive". www.rae.ac.uk. Archived from the original on 1 April 2009. Retrieved 15 May 2009.^{[title missing]}
8. "No. 59446". The London Gazette (Supplement). 12 June 2010. p. 8.
9. "No. 62150". The London Gazette (Supplement). 30 December 2017. p. N2.
10. Royal Medal 2018