The Francis Birch Lecture honors the life and work of the renowned geophysicist, whose work was concerned chiefly with elasticity, phase relations, thermal properties and heat flow, and the composition of the Earth’s interior.
This Tectonophysics section named lecture is presented annually at the AGU Fall Meeting, held in San Francisco, Calif. The Birch Lecture is webcast and made available as an archived presentation on the AGU website.
The Birch Lecture is also a part of the Bowie Lecture series, which was inaugurated in 1989 to commemorate the 50th presentation of the William Bowie medal, which is AGU’s highest honor and named for its first president. Birch is a past recipient of the William Bowie medal.
The Birch Lecture is by invitation only – nominations are not accepted.