Lisa Tauxe

摘要

I am not an oceanographer. What has kept me occupied for nearly three decades is the magnetic properties of rocks and mud, sometimes at the bottom of the ocean, but also on land. In particular, I use the magnetism of rocks to address geological and geophysical problems. The applications are breathtakingly broad, from the direction of magma flow in a volcano, to how the ancient magnetic field behaved in the past, to the age of fossils lying in their muddy graves. I am also interested in how rocks get and stay magnetized and how to decipher their sometimes-cryptic recordings.