Donald L. Turcotte

Donald L. Turcotte is an American geophysicist, most famous for his work on the boundary layer theory of mantle convection as part of the theory of plate tectonics.

He has won awards including the Arthur L. Day Medal of the Geological Society of America, the William Bowie Medal and the Charles A. Whitten Medal of the American Geophysical Union. He is a member of the National Academy of Sciences.

In 2008, the American Geophysical Union's Nonlinear Geophysics committee established the Donald L. Turcotte Award, which is given annually to one honoree "in recognition of outstanding dissertation research that contributes directly to nonlinear geophysics."

• Donald L. Turcotte and Gerald Schubert, Geodynamics, Cambridge University Press, Third Edition (2014), ISBN 978-1-107-00653-9 (Hardback) ISBN 978-0-521-18623-0 (Paperback)
• Donald L. Turcotte, Fractals and chaos in geology and geophysics, Cambridge University Press, 1997
• Gerald Schubert, Donald L. Turcotte, and Peter Olson, Mantle convection in the Earth and planets, Cambridge University Press, 2001