Acceptance of the Wollaston Medal

Abstract

The President presented the Wollaston Medal to Professor Peter John Wyllie and said: When you enrolled as a student at St Andrews you intended to graduate in Physics or Chemistry. We owe it to the attractions of field trips and, more importantly, to the influence of the late Harald Drever that you were lured into Geology. Whilst you were still an undergraduate he enlisted you on two Greenland expeditions and, when you left St Andrews, he arranged for you to become a research assistant to O. F. Tuttle at Penn. State. From there you held two consecutive 1-year appointments at Leeds, first as research fellow in Chemistry, then as lecturer in Experimental Petrology in my own Department where you are still remembered as a prodigious and highly organised worker. Returning in the early 1960's to Penn. State as Associate Professor in Petrology, you became acting Head of Department of Geochemistry and Mineralogy before you moved on to become Professor of Petrology and Geochemistry at Chicago. More recently, you have become Chairman there of the Department of Geophysical Sciences.

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