Annual Campbell Lecture 2009
Date: 6th May 2009
3.00pm Tea (Shackleton Foyer)
3.30pm Talk – Shackleton Lecture Theatre
5.00pm reception
Mountains to Climb
Professor Jane Plant CBE DSc FRSE FRSM
Anglo American Professor of Geochemistry, Imperial College, London
Jane describes her career in the then male-dominated British Geological Survey (BGS) as the first woman to be appointed as a Scientific Officer rather than in a technical grade in 1967. She describes how she started work cataloguing other people’s scientific reports and performing routine X-ray fluorescence analysis on ground rock powders before embarking on a path that would see her become the Chief Geochemist and subsequently the Chief Scientist of the BGS.
Jane describes her early fascination with geology, especially plate tectonics which was dominating Earth Science thinking in the late 1960s and 1970s. She also describes how she developed the methods which enabled the BGS to prepare the first systematic high-resolution geochemical maps in the world – methods subsequently adopted to prepare a geochemical database of Europe and a Global Geochemical Database. She shows how such geochemical maps have been used, together with other systematic BGS databases such as gravity and magnetics, to understand the plate-tectonic evolution of the British Isles, with particular reference to the genesis of its mineral deposits including uranium and gold; and how such studies helped in turn to understand similar types of ore deposits worldwide.
Jane describes her work on the links between environmental geochemistry and human health, a topic that still fascinates her and which she continues to research as Anglo American Professor of Geochemistry at Imperial College, London. As examples of such links, she describes Keshan disease in China, which is related to Se deficiency; cancer caused by toxic amounts of arsenic in Bangladesh and China; and neurological degeneration caused by mercury in Japan. Finally, she describes her work on the Royal Commission for Environmental Pollution and on the UK Chemical Stakeholder Forum and as Chairman of the Advisory Committee on Hazardous Substances, helping to remove toxic man-made substances such as pesticides and industrial chemicals from use.