Medalists and Awardees, 2008 (AGU)

2008 Medalists

Gerald J. Wasserburg: William Bowie Medal — For important contributions to earth and planetary sciences resulting from his developments in the field of radiogenic isotope geochemistry.
Mark D. Zoback: Walter H. Bucher Medal — For fundamental contributions to the fields of crustal mechanics, global crustal stress, stress transfer, and carbon sequestration.
Miriam Kastner: Maurice Ewing Medal — For major contributions to understanding marine sedimentation and ocean chemistry, leadership and service to the marine geoscience community, and selfless promotion of students.
Robert L. Parker: John Adam Fleming Medal — For his longstanding work in electromagnetic induction, resistivity sounding, and within the areas of seamount magnetism; statistical models of palaeosecular variation; numerical methods for potential field modeling applied to the crust and core; and rigorous theories for extremal inversions for magnetisation structure on Earth and on Mars.
H. Jay Melosh: Harry H. Hess Medal — For predictions, innovations, and contributions to our understanding of important phenomena in geophysics and planetary physics.
Vijay K. Gupta: Robert E. Horton Medal — For redefining frontiers of scientific hydrology under multi-scale hydrologic processes and multi-scale hydrologic phenomena.
James Badro, Emily E. Brodsky, and Diane E. Pataki: James B. Macelwane Medal — For significant contributions to the geophysical sciences by a young scientist of outstanding ability.
Michael L. Bender: Roger Revelle Medal — For seminal contributions to geochemistry and biogeochemistry, culminating in his work on O₂ and its isotopes that transformed the use of glacial ice cores in paleoclimate studies.
Harsh K. Gupta: Waldo E. Smith Medal — For major scientific contributions in seismology, tectonophysics, marine geophysics and geothermal resources and his eminent role in serving geosciences worldwide.
Charles C. Counselman III: Charles A. Whitten Medal — For development and use of systems to receive and combine Global Positioning System (GPS) satellite signals to determine positions on Earth’s surface of these receivers and the orbits of the satellites to extremely high accuracy.

2008 Awardees

Judy C. Holoviak: Edward A. Flinn III Award — For overseeing AGU's publications activities for many years, through the explosive growth of the latter part of the twentieth century and through the difficult transition to electronic publication. Her dedication to scientific publication in general and to AGU in particular has served us all very well.
The Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Program: Excellence in Geophysical Education Award — For founding, running, and continued participation in the Geophysical Fluid Dynamics program for 50 years, where over 500 student fellows and over 1000 visitors and staff have studied fundamental concepts of fluid dynamics in oceanography, meteorology, Earth science, and astrophysics.
Laike Mariam Asfaw: new international award — For selflessly devoting himself to running the Geophysical Observatory, Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, for 30 years, including through politically turbulent times, so that today it provides the highest-quality geomagnetic, seismological, and GPS data, and for promoting education, natural hazard mitigation and awareness, and the careers of his colleagues.
Daniel E. Irwin: Charles S. Falkenberg Award — For leadership in the application of Earth science information for sustainable development. Throughout his career he has been a pioneer in bringing space-based observations and associated model outputs to the people of South America.
Richard Smith: Walter Sullivan Award for Excellence in Science Journalism – Features — For the documentary film "Crude," which examines oil's ancient origins and the geology of its formation and explores the potential, unwelcome consequences of oil's prodigious use by industrial society as a fuel and raw material.
Margaret Munro: David Perlman Award for Excellence in Science Journalism – News — For the article "Ice Shelf Collapse Sends Chill," which chronicles the breakup in under an hour in August 2005 of a huge Arctic ice shelf, aptly portraying the monumental scale of the event, the suspicion that climate change was the cause, and the implications for the future.