Professor of Geophysics
President, Australian Academy of Science

Professional Background

Professor Lambeck has been at the Australian National University since 1977, including ten years as Director of the Research School of Earth Sciences. He is currently also President of the Australian Academy of Science, strategic science advisor to National Geospatial Reference System of Geoscience Australia , and a member of the Antarctic Ecosystem and Environment CRC. Before returning to Australia he was Professor at the University of Paris . He has also worked at the Smithsonian and Harvard Observatories in Cambridge , USA . He has studied at the University of New South Wales , the Technical University of Delft, Netherlands, the National Technical University of Athens and Oxford University from which he obtained DPhil and DSc degrees. He has held visiting appointments in Belgium , Britain , Canada , France , Netherlands , Norway and Sweden .

He was elected to the Australian Academy of Science in 1984 and to the Royal Society in 1994. He is a foreign member of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences (1993), Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters (1994), Academia Europaea (1999), and the Académie des Sciences, Institut de France (2005). He has received a number of international prizes and awards including the Tage Erlander Prize from the Swedish Research Council (2001), the Prix George Lemaître from the Université catholique de Louvain (2001), and the Eminent Scientist Award from the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (2004).

Research and Teaching Interests

My research interests range through the disciplines of geophysics, geodesy and geology with a focus on the deformations of the Earth on intermediate and long time scales and on the interactions between surface processes and the solid earth. Past research areas have included the determination of the Earth's gravity field from satellite tracking data, the tidal deformations and rotational motion of the Earth, the evolution of the Earth-Moon orbital system, lithospheric and crustal deformation processes. My recent work has focussed on aspects of sea level change and the history of the Earth's ice sheets during past glacial cycles, including field and laboratory work and numerical modelling.

Notable publications

Church, J.A., White, N.J., Aarup, T., Wilson, W.S., Woodworth, P.L., Domingues, C.M., Hunter, J.R., and Lambeck, K., 2008. Understanding global sea levels: past, present and future. Sustainability Science, DOI 10.1007/s11625-008-0042-4

 

Antonioli, F., Anzidei, M., Lambeck, K., Auriemma, R., Gaddi, D., Furlani, S., Orrù, P., Solinas, E., Gaspari, A., Karinja, S., Kovačić, V. and Surace, L., 2007. Sea-level change during the Holocene in Sardinia and in the northeastern Adriatic (central Mediterranean Sea) from archaeological and geomorphological data. Quaternary Science Reviews, 26(19-21), 2463-2486.

 

Bailey, G.N., Flemming, N.C., King, G.C.P., Lambeck, K., Momber, G., Moran, L.J., Al-Sharekh, A. and Vita-Finzi, C., 2007. Coastlines, Submerged Landscapes, and Human Evolution: The Red Sea Basin and the Farasan Islands. Journal of Island and Coastal Archaeology, 2(2), 127-160.

 

Lambeck, K. and Purcell, A., 2007. Palaeogeographic reconstructions of the Aegean for the past 20,000 years: Was Atlantis on Athens’ doorstep? In The Atlantis Hypothesis: Searching for a Lost Land, (S. P. Papamarinopoulos, Ed.), Heliotopos Publications, 241-257.

Yu, S-Y., Berglund, B.E., Sandgren, P. and Lambeck, K., 2007. Evidence for a rapid sea-level rise 7600 yr ago. Geology, 35(10), 891-894.