Elizabeth Marchant Truswell (also known as Elizabeth Kemp) is a former Chief Scientist at the
Australian Geological Survey Organisation
Geoscience Australia is an agency of the Australian Government. It carries out geoscientific research. The agency is the government's technical adviser on all aspects of geoscience, and custodian of the geographic and geological data and knowle ...
and is known for her application of recycled
palynomorph
Palynology is the "study of dust" (from grc-gre, παλύνω, palynō, "strew, sprinkle" and ''-logy'') or of "particles that are strewn". A classic palynologist analyses particulate samples collected from the air, from water, or from deposit ...
distribution as an indicator of sub-ice geology.
Early life and education
Truswell was born in
Kalgoorlie, Western Australia and completed a BSc (Hons) at the
University of Western Australia
The University of Western Australia (UWA) is a public research university in the Australian state of Western Australia. The university's main campus is in Perth, the state capital, with a secondary campus in Albany and various other facilitie ...
in 1962.
In 1963 she received a British Commonwealth Scholarship to undertake a PhD at
Cambridge University
The University of Cambridge is a Public university, public collegiate university, collegiate research university in Cambridge, England. Founded in 1209 and granted a royal charter by Henry III of England, Henry III in 1231, Cambridge is the world' ...
, UK.
She was awarded her PhD in 1966 on the geological history of flowering plants as demonstrated by the pollen record.
In 2000, she completed a Visual Arts degree with Honours at the School of Art,
Australian National University
The Australian National University (ANU) is a public research university located in Canberra, the capital of Australia. Its main campus in Acton encompasses seven teaching and research colleges, in addition to several national academies an ...
(ANU), focusing on the role of the artists who accompanied the early explorers to Antarctica.
Career and impact
Research
Truswell's career has focused on the field of
palynology
Palynology is the "study of dust" (from grc-gre, παλύνω, palynō, "strew, sprinkle" and ''-logy'') or of "particles that are strewn". A classic palynologist analyses particulate samples collected from the air, from water, or from deposit ...
, with a large part devoted to understanding
Antarctica
Antarctica () is Earth's southernmost and least-populated continent. Situated almost entirely south of the Antarctic Circle and surrounded by the Southern Ocean, it contains the geographic South Pole. Antarctica is the fifth-largest cont ...
's floral history. She developed several novel methods for investigating sub-ice geology via the distribution of recycled pollen spores, leading to her election as a
Fellow of the Australian Academy of Science
The Fellowship of the Australian Academy of Science is made up of about 500 Australian scientists.
Scientists judged by their peers to have made an exceptional contribution to knowledge in their field may be elected to Fellowship of the Academy ...
in 1985.
As a postdoctoral researcher at
Florida State University, US (1971–1973), Truswell participated in the first Deep Sea Drilling Program (DSDP) voyages to Antarctica, which still holds the record for the furthest south of such drilling. This voyage contributed to a new understanding of the age of the Antarctic ice sheet and the development of an early version of the
Antarctic Convergence
The Antarctic Convergence or Antarctic Polar Front is a marine belt encircling Antarctica, varying in latitude seasonally, where cold, northward-flowing Antarctic waters meet the relatively warmer waters of the sub-Antarctic. Antarctic waters pr ...
. She was one of the only women on the voyage, and one of just a handful of women to participate in these early DSDP voyages. She recently published a book about the expedition -
A Memory of Ice. Subsequent work on
Ocean Drilling Program
The Ocean Drilling Program (ODP) was a multinational effort to explore and study the composition and structure of the Earth's oceanic basins. ODP, which began in 1985, was the successor to the Deep Sea Drilling Project initiated in 1968 by th ...
material led her, along with M.K. Macphail, to decipher an unparalleled pollen record from
Prydz Bay
Prydz Bay is a deep embayment of Antarctica between the Lars Christensen Coast and Ingrid Christensen Coast. The Bay is at the downstream end of a giant glacial drainage system that originates in the East Antarctic interior. The Lambert Glacie ...
, revealing the composition of terrestrial plant communities during the earliest stages of ice-cap formation during the Late Eocene preglacial-glacial transition.
Truswell returned to Australia in 1973 to begin a career with the Bureau of Mineral Resources (now
Geoscience Australia
Geoscience Australia is an agency of the Australian Government. It carries out geoscientific research. The agency is the government's technical adviser on all aspects of geoscience, and custodian of the geographic and geological data and knowle ...
)
holding the position of Chief Research Scientist from 1990 to 1997. During this time her work focused not only on the evolutionary and geological history of the Antarctic continent, but also on the past climatic conditions of Australia and applying the geological record to inform understanding of modern climate change. She was also a member of Australia's Antarctic Advisory Committee (1992–1998) and a board member of the first Antarctic Cooperative Research Centre in Hobart, the Antarctic Climate & Ecosystems Cooperative Research Centre.
Truswell has been involved in several
UNESCO
The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization is a specialized agency of the United Nations (UN) aimed at promoting world peace and security through international cooperation in education, arts, sciences and culture. It ...
projects. Her first involvement was with the UNESCO Earth Science program (1991–1999), which aimed to help young Australian scientists take part in projects with people from developing countries. Since 2006 she has served on the Australian National Committee for the International Geoscience Co-operation (IGCP), which is part of the UNESCO
International Geosciences Programme.
Artwork
In 2000 Truswell shifted her emphasis towards the interface between science and the arts, with particular reference to Antarctica. During her time as a visiting fellow in the Research School of Earth Sciences at the Australia National University, she undertook a degree in visual arts at the School of Art.
Her artworks are held in a number of collections in Australia and Europe, including, in Canberra, at the ANU and at Geoscience Australia. She has exhibited in solo exhibitions at the ANCA Gallery in Canberra, CSIRO Discovery Centre, the Goldfields Regional Gallery, Kalgoorlie, and the ANU School of Art Gallery. Her public outreach has included talks and radio broadcasts (e.g. ABC Radio National, ''The Science Show''),
U3A lectures on Art and Science in Early Antarctic Exploration, and published papers in academic and popular literature.
Awards and honours
* Elected to Fellowship,
Australian Academy of Science
The Australian Academy of Science was founded in 1954 by a group of distinguished Australians, including Australian Fellows of the Royal Society of London. The first president was Sir Mark Oliphant. The academy is modelled after the Royal Soc ...
, 1985.
* Elected Fellow,
Geological Society of Australia
The Geological Society of Australia (GSA) was established as a non-profit organisation in 1952 to promote, advance and support earth sciences in Australia. The founding Chairperson was Edwin Sherbon Hills.
William Rowan Browne was a founder of th ...
, 2009.
Selected works
*Kemp, Elizabeth M (1978) Tertiary climatic evolution and vegetation history in the southeast Indian Ocean region. ''Palaeogeography'', Palaeoclimatology, Palaeoecology 24: 3,169–208.
*Macphail, MK; Alley, NF; Truswell, EM; Sluiter, IRK (1994) 10 Early Tertiary vegetation: evidence from spores and pollen, ''History of the Australian vegetation: Cretaceous to Recent''.189 Cambridge University Press
*Galloway, Robert William; Kemp, EM (1977) Late cainozoic environments in Australia. Bureau of Mineral Resources, Geology and Geophysics
*Frakes, Lawrence A; Kemp, Elizabeth M (1972) Influence of continental positions on early Tertiary climates. ''Nature'' 240: 97–100.
References
External links
Elizabeth Truswellon
Google scholar
Google Scholar is a freely accessible web search engine that indexes the full text or metadata of scholarly literature across an array of publishing formats and disciplines. Released in beta in November 2004, the Google Scholar index includes ...
*
{{DEFAULTSORT:Truswell, Elizabeth
Australian geologists
Australian Antarctic scientists
1941 births
Living people
People from Kalgoorlie
University of Western Australia alumni
Alumni of the University of Cambridge
Women Antarctic scientists
Fellows of the Australian Academy of Science
20th-century women scientists
21st-century women scientists
Australian women geologists
Australian National University alumni
Scientists from Western Australia