Frank D. Stacey


Frank Donald Stacey is an English-born Australian geophysicist, known for his research on rock magnetism and application of thermodynamics to understanding the Earth's core and mantle.

Education and career

At the University of London, Stacey graduated with a B.Sc. in 1950 and a Ph.D. in 1953. As a postdoc, he was from 1953 to 1956 a research fellow at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver. From 1961 to 1964 he was a Royal Society Gassiot Fellow in Geomagnetism at the Meteorological Office Research Unit of the University of Cambridge. Near the beginning of his career he published several papers in The Philosophical Magazine. He was a Reader in Physics at the University of Queensland from 1964 to 1971 — during those years he wrote the first three editions of Physics of the Earth. In 1968 Stacey received his D.Sc. from the University of London. From 1971 to 1990 he was a professor of Applied Physics at the University of Queensland. He was appointed to visiting lectureships in several different countries. In 1997 he joined the Australian Government agency CSIRO Exploration and Mining.
Louis Néel’s 1955 paper Some theoretical aspects of rock-magnetism inspired Stacey to generalize Néel's single-domain theory for magnetic grains to multi-domained grains. In the theory of remanence for igneous rocks, Stacey introduced the concept of pseudo-single domain for magnetic grains which are small and multi-domained. He did research on scientifically describing rock fabric using magnetic anisotropy and predicting earthquakes and volcanic eruptions using piezomagnetism. With several colleagues, Stacey investigated possible failures of Newton's law of gravity.
Using a lattice dynamical formulation for the Grüneisen parameter, he developed a new equation of state for high pressures with applications to materials in the Earth's core and lower mantle. His book Physics of the Earth became a widely used, standard textbook and was the first geophysics textbook to comprehensively deal with solid Earth geophysics.
Stacey chaired from 1966 to 1967 the Australian Institute of Physics, Queensland branch. He was elected in 1979 a Fellow of the Australian Academy of Science and in 1986 a Fellow der American Geophysical Union. In 1994 he was awarded the Louis Néel Medal.

Selected publications

Articles

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Books

Physics of the Earth, Wiley 1969