Honorary fellowships
Prof Maureen E Raymo
Maureen Raymo was the first female recipient of the Wollaston Medal, the Society’s most senior medal (picture, in 2014 with President David Shilston). She is an outstandingly creative scientist who has been setting the agenda in the study of the history of the ocean, and the Earth as a whole. She is a world-class palaeoceanographer and one of the foremost and influential figures in the last 30 years during time which she has had a profound impact on Earth system science.
Prof Raymo’s reputation is based on three themes: development of the controversial uplift weathering hypothesis to explain Cenozoic cooling/onset of Antarctic glaciation; seminal stratigraphic research based on the deep sea oxygen isotope record, including production of the LR04 benthic stack, internationally regarded as the fundamental global stratigraphic template for the last 5 million years, and groundbreaking work on Plio-Pleistocene sea-levels, integrating geological observations with glacio-isostatic adjustment model predictions.
Prof John Walsh
John Walsh founded the Fault Analysis Group with Prof Juan Watterson at the Department of Earth & Ocean Sciences in the University of Liverpool, in 1985. He became Director in 1996 and oversaw the relocation of the Group to University College Dublin in 2000. It has published more than 120 articles in leading international journals and special publications, and is one of the most cited structural geology research groups in the world.
The Group is recognised as a leading international team in the study of the geometry, growth and hydraulic properties of faults and in applying its research outputs to solve practical problems encountered in hydrocarbon and mineral exploration and production activities. They have strategic research links with many key industrial companies and Prof Walsh has been Distinguished Lecturer for EAGE (2004) and AAPG (2007).
Prof Walsh takes a prominent role in Irish geosciences. He is a member of the Geosciences Committee of the Royal Irish Academy (although not himself a MRIA), a past Board Member of the Institute of Geologists of Ireland (which is linked to GSL) and is Director of the newly formed Irish Centre for Research in Applied Geosciences (iCRAG). He actively collaborates with and supports the work of the Geological Survey of Ireland and the Geological Survey of Northern Ireland.