Anton Linder Hales 1911–2006

Abstract

Anton Linder Hales died in Canberra on 11 December 2006. He was a distinguished geophysicist of international renown who made major contributions to understanding the structure and evolution of the deep Earth through the combination of theoretical developments, field experimentation and laboratory measurements, including in whole-mantle convection, palaeomagnetism, geochronology and seismology. He was also a creative and highly successful builder of research institutions on three continents, in South Africa, the USA and Australia. The last of these was as Foundation Director of the Research School of Earth Sciences at the Australian National University, leaving behind one of the leading geoscience research institutions in the world. His career spanned a period in which earth science was undergoing rapid evolution—from a ‘fixist’ view of the planet to the ‘highly dynamic’ view that we have today, an evolution to which he made important contributions both through his own research and his scientific leadership at institutional and international level.