Group - Steve Sparks volcanologist

Professor Robert Stephen John Sparks FRS (b. 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. Steve Sparks 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 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 . The numereous awards that he has received include the Bigsby and Murchison Medals of the Geological Society of London in 1985, and 1998; the Wager and Thorarinsson Medals of the International Association of Volcanology and Chemistry of the Earth's Interior (IAVCEI) in 1978, and 2008. In 2004, Steve was awarded the Arthur Holmes medal of the European Geosciences Union . He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1988 and a Fellow of the American Geophysical Union in 1998.