John Henry Woodhouse is an English geophysicist, Emeritus Professor in the Department of Earth Sciences at the

University of Oxford , mottoeng = The Lord is my light , established = , endowment = £6.1 billion (including colleges) (2019) , budget = £2.145 billion (2019–20) , chancellor ...

. He earned a Ph.D in 1975 in the Department of Applied Mathematics and Theoretical Physics at Cambridge University. After 2 years at Scripps and Cambridge, he joined the Harvard faculty in 1978 as an assistant professor. He was promoted to full professor 4 years later, returning to England in 1990 to take up the appointment as professor at Oxford University. He has researched the variation of seismic wave speed in three dimensions inside the Earth, developing techniques to map the Earth’s interior. He discovered wave speed anomalies associated with plate motion and undertook the first global study of shear velocity in the lower mantle. He was elected a

Fellow of the Royal Society Fellowship of the Royal Society (FRS, ForMemRS and HonFRS) is an award granted by the judges of the Royal Society of London to individuals who have made a "substantial contribution to the improvement of natural science, natural knowledge, incl ...

in 2000. In 2010 he was the recipient of the

Gold Medal A gold medal is a medal awarded for highest achievement in a non-military field. Its name derives from the use of at least a fraction of gold in form of plating or alloying in its manufacture. Since the eighteenth century, gold medals have bee ...

of the

Royal Astronomical Society (Whatever shines should be observed) , predecessor = , successor = , formation = , founder = , extinction = , merger = , merged = , type = NGO ...

for

geophysics Geophysics () is a subject of natural science concerned with the physical processes and physical properties of the Earth and its surrounding space environment, and the use of quantitative methods for their analysis. The term ''geophysics'' som ...

. The medal honoured his lifetime of work understanding the Earth's interior, and in particular, his development of a computational algorithm which is now a standard tool in

seismology Seismology (; from Ancient Greek σεισμός (''seismós'') meaning "earthquake" and -λογία (''-logía'') meaning "study of") is the scientific study of earthquakes and the propagation of elastic waves through the Earth or through other ...

. He has also been the recipient of both the

James B. Macelwane Medal The James B. Macelwane Medal is awarded annually by the American Geophysical Union to three to five early career scientists (no more than 10 years beyond having received their Ph.D.). It is named after James B. Macelwane, a Jesuit priest and one of ...

(1984) and the

Inge Lehmann Medal The Inge Lehmann Medal is given out by the American Geophysical Union to recognize "outstanding contributions to the understanding of the structure, composition, and dynamics of the Earth's mantle and core". The award was created in 1995 and named a ...

(2001) from the

American Geophysical Union The American Geophysical Union (AGU) is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization of Earth, atmospheric, ocean, hydrologic, space, and planetary scientists and enthusiasts that according to their website includes 130,000 people (not members). AGU's act ...

References

Year of birth missing (living people) Living people Fellows of the Royal Society Fellows of Worcester College, Oxford Recipients of the Gold Medal of the Royal Astronomical Society Geophysicists {{geophysics-stub