At a ceremony in Rome this month, the International Balzan Foundation is presenting four Balzan Prizes for 2002. Each year, the foundation gives awards in two different categories within the sciences and two within the humanities. One of this year’s disciplines is geology.
Xavier Le Pichon, chair of geodynamics at the Collège de France, is being honored as “one of the pioneers of the plate tectonics theory and of the high-resolution exploration of plate boundaries by submersibles.” He will receive a cash prize of 1 million Swiss francs (approximately $662 000).
According to the citation, Le Pichon was the first to propose within plate tectonic theory a global quantitative model of the motions of plates at Earth’s surface. In 1968, he computed a global map of the relative movement of the six major plates. This map became the foundation for improved understanding of how earthquakes are distributed and for...
