27 November 2013 13:40

A Lancaster University Environmental Scientist has been recognised for her ‘world-leading’ research using magnetism to shed new light on climate change.

Professor Barbara Maher of the Lancaster Environment Centre has been awarded the Mineralogical Society-Schlumberger Award (2014) for her work. The annual award was founded in 1990 to recognize scientific excellence in mineralogy and its applications.

Professor Maher is an expert in the area of Environmental Magnetism & Palaeomagnetism.

Her nomination letter described her as ‘an outstanding scientist, a true pioneer of environmental magnetism, the world leader in her field and one of few people who has the confidence and intellectual weight to challenge established thinking on climate and environmental change’.

As a result of Professor Maher’s work exploring, testing and applying magnetic methods to environmental problems, environmental magnetism is now used internationally by environmental scientists, in a range of areas from climate change and climate modelling to pollution monitoring and soil science.

Dr Richard Harrison, Department of Earth Sciences, at Cambridge University, said: “She has single-handedly developed the field of environmental magnetism into the rigorously quantitative analytical discipline that we have today, and she has done more than any other scientist to demonstrate that environmental magnetism offers a completely new window on environmental processes.”