The Jardetzky lecture in geophysics honors the late Wenceslas S. Jardetzky, a renowned researcher and educator whose flourishing scientific career in Europe was halted by World War II and revived after he emigrated to the United States. From 1949 until his death in 1962, he was a research associate at Lamont-Doherty, where he collaborated with Frank Press, former president of the National Academy of Sciences, and Maurice Ewing, Lamont- Doherty's founder, on a well-known and widely used scientific book, Elastic Waves in Layered Media.
Dr. Jardetzky's broad scope of scientific interests also included celestial mechanics, fluid dynamics, theoretical physics, seismology and the migration of the poles. A principal contribution to science was his mathematical theory on zonal rotation, which provided a mechanism for the migration of continents.
The Jardetzky lecture was established in 1992 by Dr. Jardetzky's son Oleg, who was the founder of the Magnetic Resonance Laboratory and professor of molecular pharmacology at Stanford University. In endowing the lectureship, Dr. Jardetzky said he hoped it would "help enrich the outstanding tradition of the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, which provided a much cherished intellectual home to my father after he emigrated to this country."
2017 LECTURE
Date: April 21, 2017
Lecturer: Kenneth A. Farley, California Institute of Technology
Title: Geology on Mars: Ongoing Results from Curiosity and Planning for the Next Mars Rover
2016 LECTURE
Date: May 6, 2016
Lecturer: Peter Molnar, University of Colorado, Boulder
2015 LECTURE
Date: February 13, 2015
Lecturer: Roger G. Bilham, Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences (CIRES), University of Colorado, Boulder
Title: The Southern Edge of the Eurasian plate: A Fatal Blend of Earthquakes and Corruption
2014 LECTURE
Date: March 7, 2014
Lecturer: Jerry X. Mitrovica, Harvard University; Canadian Institute for Advanced Research (CIFAR)
Title: Postmodern Geophysics and Ice Age Climate
2013 LECTURE
Date: May 9, 2013
Lecturer: John P. Grotzinger, California Institute of Technology
Title: Curiosity's Mission at Gale Crater, Mars
2012 LECTURE
Date: April 5, 2013
Lecturer: Ellen Mosley-Thompson, The Ohio State University
Title: Past and Contemporary Climate Change:
Evidence from Earth’s Ice Cover
2010 LECTURE
Date: October 22, 2010
Lecturer: Stephen R. Rintoul, CSIRO Marine and Atmospheric Research
Title: The Global Influence of the Southern Ocean
2009 LECTURE
Date: October 2, 2009
Lecturer: Sallie W. Chisholm, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Title: Too Small to See, Too Big to Ignore: What Prochlorococcus Has Taught Me About Life and
the Ocean
2008 LECTURE
Date: May 16, 2008
Lecturer: Donald Forsyth, Brown University
Title: Seismological Observations of Small-scale Convection in the Mantle from the East Pacific Rise to California
2007 LECTURE
Date: May 11, 2007
Lecturer: Inez Fung, University of California, Berkeley
Title: Changing Carbon Cycle and Accelerating Climate Change
2006 LECTURE
Date: September 22, 2006
Lecturer: Barbara Romanowicz, University of California, Berkeley
Title: The Origin of the Earth's "Hum": Bridging the Gap between Seismology and Oceanography
2005 LECTURE
Date: May 12, 2005
Lecturer: Nicolas Gruber, University of California, Los Angeles
Title: Recent Insights into the Anthropogenic Perturbation of the Global Carbon Cycle
2003 LECTURE
Date: September 5, 2003
Lecturer: Alan Levander, Rice University
Title: Imag(in)ing the Continental Lithosphere
2002 LECTURE
Date: February 2, 2002
Lecturer: David Karl, University of Hawaii
Title: A Sea of Change: Decade-scale Biogeochemical Variability in the North Pacific Subtropical Gyre
2000 LECTURE
Date: November 3, 2000
Lecturer: Veerabhadran Ramanathan, University of California, San Diego
Title: A Climate: Do We Really Understand How We Are Changing It?
1999 LECTURE
Date: November 18, 1999
Lecturer: John Delaney, University of Washington
Title: Submarine Research in the 21st Century: A Fiber Optic Telescope to Inner Space
1998 LECTURE
Date: March 30, 1998
Lecturer: Peter Raven, Director, Missouri Botanical Gardens
Title: Biogeography, Biodiversity and Human Futures
1996 LECTURE
Date: November 18, 1996
Lecturer: Nick Shackleton, Godwin Laboratory, University of Cambridge
Title: Climate Cyclicity on Geological Timescales
1995 LECTURE
Date: November 16, 1995
Lecturer: Dan McKenzie, Bullard Laboratories, University of Cambridge
Title: Thirty Years as a Geophysicist, or Why We Now All Have to Become Geochemists
1994 LECTURE
Date: November 17, 1994
Lecturer: Sean Solomon, Director, Department of Terrestrial Magnetism, Carnegie Institution for Science
Title: The Geophysical Evolution of Venus: Why Does Earth's Sister Planet Bear So Little Family Resemblance?
1993 LECTURE
Date: September 24, 1993
Lecturer: Ted Irving, University of Victoria
Title: Rhododendrons, Plate Tectonics and Global Climate Change
1992 LECTURE
Date: December 1, 1992
Lecturer: Frank Press, President, National Academy of Sciences
Title: Can Scientists Provide Credible Advice In Washington?