Earth's Core

Vernon F. Cormier is a Professor of Physics and Geophysics at the University of Connecticut. He received a BS from the California Institute of Technology and a PhD from Columbia University. His research has specialized in seismic wave propagation and deep Earth structure. He has served as an editor for the Geophysical Journal International and Physics of the Earth’s Interior. Among services to professional societies he has served the Seismological Society of America as Vice President and the American Geophysical Union as Secretary of the Seismology Section and Chair of the Study of Earth’s Deep Interior (SEDI) focus group. Michael I. Bergman is the Emily H. Fisher Professor of Physics at Bard College at Simon’s Rock, where he teaches courses ranging from Introduction to Geology to Solid-state Physics to a field course in Volcanology on the island of Montserrrat. He earned a BA from Columbia University and a PhD from MIT. His research has focused on the solidification and deformation of metals, alloys, and aqueous solutions, with applications to Earth’s core and sea ice. He is the recipient of the Doornbos Prize for research on the deep Earth by a beginning investigator, has been the long-standing secretary of SEDI, and has served as guest editor for several journals. Peter L. Olson is an adjunct professor in the Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences at the University of New Mexico. He earned a BA from the University of Colorado and a PhD from the University of California Berkeley. His research focuses on the dynamics of Earth and other planets. He co-authored a book on convection in planetary mantles and served on editorial boards of numerous scientific journals. He was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the US National Academy of Sciences, and received the Petrus Peregrinus Medal from the European Geosciences Union and the Inge Lehmann Medal from the American Geophysical Union.

"If I were naming this volume, I would call it “From core to crust” because that is what it covers. I was very impressed by the breadth and depth of the different earth-science topics. I have rarely seen a volume that covers so many different elements of the earth sciences including gravity and magnetics, crystology, and seismology. I would recommend this volume to the broader earth-science community. The author’s approach is to cast a data net as wide as possible over the earth sciences and draw it into a planetary model for the earth’s core. There are nine high-quality chapters spanning 324 pages in this 11 × 8 inch volume,... color figures are well rendered.... Four chapters have an appendix, and some others have a further readings section." — Patrick Taylor, The Leading Edge, April 2024

• 1. Radial structure of Earth’s core2. Chemical and physical state of the core3. Geodynamo and geomagnetic basics4. Outer core dynamics5. Boundary regions 6. Inner core explored with seismology7. Inner core dynamics8. Formation and evolution of the core9. Future research goals