Gerald R. Dickens

Gerald R. Dickens is Professor of Earth Science at Trinity College Dublin, and researches the history of the world’s oceans, with respect to the changing patterns of their geology, chemistry and biology.

'Jerry' Dickens's degrees are a PhD from the University of Michigan in Oceanography (1996), M.S. from the University of Michigan in Oceanography (1993), and a B.S. from the University of California, Davis 1989. Dickens was chief editor for several major earth science journals, notably ''Geology'', and GSA Today, published by the Geological Society of America, but he was also past Editor in Chief of ''Paleoceanography''. In 2013 and 2017 he became a fellow of the Geological Society of America and the American Geophysical Union.

Dickens was Lecturer and Senior Lecturer in the Department of Earth Sciences at James Cook University in Australia from 1997 to 2001. He was appointed an associate professor at Rice University in August 2001, becoming a full Professor in June 2008. Since 2020, he is the 1843 Chair of Geology at Trinity College Dublin. In 2003 Dickens was the 2002/2003 Distinguished Lecturer Award from the Joint Oceanographic Institutions, and in 2008 the Distinguished Lecturer Award of the American Association of Petroleum Geologists (AAPG). From 2005 to 2010, he served as Master of Martel College at Rice University. MBYM.

Dickens was interviewed for the BBC's ''Horizon'' documentary series in 2002 in a programme called 'The Day the Earth Nearly Died'. He was also interviewed on the History Channel's 'Mega Disasters' which focused on eruptions of methane gas deep in the ocean. The one-hour programme aired on October 9 and 10 2008. In the interview Dickens claimed that Methane had been identified as a cause for catastrophic disasters at the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum, about 55 million years ago. Provided by Wikipedia