Lisa Tauxe

Lisa Tauxe is a geophysicist, professor and former department chair at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography at UC San Diego. Tauxe is a researcher and international authority on the behavior of the ancient geomagnetic field and applications of paleomagnetism to geological problems.

Scripps Institution of Oceanography

Tauxe's contributions include the study of remnant magnetism in geological and archaeological materials, as well as co-founding a collaborative data system for compiling and sharing geological magnetic data from around the globe, the Magnetics Information Consortium (MagIC). To facilitate paleomagnetic measurements, Tauxe oversaw the creation in 1984 of potentially the world's largest demagnetized space in San Diego. Tauxe is the leader in research that estimates when the earth's magnetic poles will reverse. Because technology and electrical grids depend on the Earth's magnetic field to protect it from the sun's magnetic storms, Prof. Tauxe's work has global significance. She pioneered paleointensity analysis of undersea basaltic glasses and copper slag residues found in archaeological sites, fundamentally changing the process of collecting magnetic field data and the volume of data available to study.

Prof. Tauxe graduated from Columbia University with a Ph.D. in 1983.

In 2014, Prof. Tauxe was awarded the prestigious Ben Franklin Medal for Earth and Environmental Science "[f]or the development of observational techniques and theoretical models providing an improved understanding of the behavior of, and variations in intensity of, the Earth's magnetic field through geologic time." As of 2014, Tauxe was the general secretary of the American Geophysical Union.

Prof. Tauxe has authored two textbooks, over 150 academic papers, including 44 in AGU journals.

Advisory positions and distinctions

• Science advisory board of the Beijing Paleomagnetism and Geochronology Laboratory (2006 to present)
• Research Advisory Committee of the Institute for Rock Magnetism (2005–2007).
• Magnetics Information Consortium Database Team and Meta-data Committee (2005 to present).
• Fellow of American Geophysical Union
• Elected to the National Academy of Sciences, 2015
• Fellow at the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, 2016

Select awards

• Arthur L. Day Medal, 2014
• Benjamin Franklin Medal, 2014
• George P. Woollard Award,Geological Society of America, 2003
• The Antarctic Service Medal

Tauxe has a brother, Dr. Robert Tauxe, who works at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.