Nicholas Shackleton

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Professor Sir Nicholas Shackleton

Born 23 June 1937
Died 24 January 2006
Nationality British
Fields geology
Known for Quaternary Period

Sir Nicholas John Shackleton FRS (23 June 1937—24 January 2006) was a British geologist and climatologist who specialised in the Quaternary Period. He was the son of the distinguished field geologist Robert Millner Shackleton FRS and great-nephew of the explorer Ernest Shackleton.

Educated at Cranbrook School, Kent, Shackleton studied natural sciences at Clare College, University of Cambridge, graduating with the BA degree in 1961, and in 1964 a MA degree. In 1967 he was awarded at the same university a PhD degree, with his thesis entitled 'The Measurement of Paleotemperatures in the Quaternary Era'.

Apart from periods abroad as visiting professor or research associate, Shackleton's entire scientific career was spent at Cambridge. He became Ad hominem Professor in 1991, in the Department of Earth Sciences, working in the Godwin Institute for Quaternary Research.

The Glacial effect describes the change of the oxygen isotope composition of sea water, due to growing ice sheets in high latitudes during glacials.

Shackleton was a key figure in the field of palaeoceanography, publishing over two hundred scientific papers. He was a pioneer in the use of mass spectrometry to determine changes in climate as recorded in the oxygen isotope composition of calcareous microfossils. He also found evidence that the Earth's last magnetic field reversal was 780,000 years ago. Shackleton became known, in 1976, with the publication of his paper, with James Hays and John Imbrie, in Science entitled 'Variations in the Earth's orbit: Pacemaker of the ice ages'. Using ocean sediment cores, the researchers demonstrated that oscillations in climate over the past few million years could be correlated with variations in the orbital and positional relationship between the Earth and the Sun (see Milankovitch cycles).

Much of Shackleton's later work focused on constructing precise timescales based on matching the periodic cycles in deep-sea sediment cores to calculations of incoming sunlight at particular latitudes over geological time, a method which allows a far greater level of stratigraphic precision than other dating methods, and also helped to clarify the rates and mechanisms of aspects of climate change.

In September 2000 he published an innovative study of the relationship between the oxygen isotope record of the oceans and isotope records obtained from the ice in Antarctica (glacial effect). This helped to pin down the relative contribution of deep water temperature changes and ice volume changes to the marine isotopic record, and also highlighted the close interdependency between carbon dioxide levels and temperature change over the last 400,000 years.

In 1995 Shackleton became the director of the Godwin Institute for Quaternary Research. In 1998, he was knighted for his services to earth sciences. From 1999 to 2003 he was president of the International Union for Quaternary Research (INQUA).

Shackleton was also an amateur clarinet player, and collector of woodwind instruments. During his lifetime he amassed the world's largest collection of clarinets, and his Cambridge home became a place of pilgrimage for many players and scholars. He was well known as an organologist, reflected in his many journal articles, as well as his contributions to the 1980 and 2001 editions of Grove's Dictionary of Music and Musicians. Most of Shackleton's substantial instrument collection, numbering over 700 specimens, was bequeathed to Edinburgh University together with an endowment. Part of the collection is now exhibited at the Reid Concert Hall Museum of Instruments in Edinburgh, and the collection has been described in a published catalogue[1].

Shackleton was highly respected by many musicians, and a friend to many who studied at Cambridge, including Christopher Hogwood. The fine copies, by Cambridge maker Daniel Bangham, of many clarinets in Shackleton's collection, had a significant impact on historical performance from the 1980s, and continue to be used by leading performers today.

[edit] Awards

[edit] References

  1. ^ "Wollaston Medal". Award Winners since 1831. Geological Society of London. http://www.geolsoc.org.uk/gsl/null/lang/en/page750.html. Retrieved 2009-02-25. 

[edit] External links

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