Don Turcotte
Don Turcotte, the former Maxwell Upson Professor of Engineering in the Department of Geological Sciences who brought his aeronautic research roots into pioneering collaborations in the study of mantle dynamics and plate tectonics, died Feb. 4 in Davis, California. He was 92.
Turcotte retired from Cornell in 2002 after 43 years on faculty, then continued his work as a part-time distinguished professor at the University of California, Davis. Turcotte’s prolific career included more than 400 academic papers, and he is remembered by his peers on both sides of the continent as an ever-curious intellect who co-wrote the definitive book on understanding the physical processes working inside the Earth, the undergraduate and graduate-level standard, “Geodynamics.”
“Coming into earth sciences from his very mechanics-based perspective, he just saw so many unexplored areas of large-scale phenomenon, and he would look at them from a different perspective with great innovation and analysis,” said Teresa Jordan, a postdoctoral researcher-turned-colleague at Cornell, and now the J. Preston Levis Professor of Engineering Emerita. “He kept saying, ‘You guys aren’t getting the big picture. Here is the big picture.’”
Turcotte was born April 22, 1932, in Bellingham, Washington. He earned a Ph.D. in aeronautics and physics in 1958 from the California Institute of Technology, graduating with both a budding career at the Naval Postgraduate School and a new bride, Joan.
A year later, Turcotte accepted an appointment in the Graduate School of Aerospace Engineering at Cornell. He quickly became known for his level-headed approach in the classroom, his passion for encouraging graduate student research, and his and Joan’s willingness to host, entertain and engage faculty from a broad range of disciplines and institutions.
Early in his career at Cornell, Turcotte began to lead a faculty luncheon group – regular but informal gatherings that included colleagues from multiple fields reflecting on their work, their lives or the news of the day. Earth and Atmospheric Sciences Professor Emeritus Larry Cathles, who took part in many of those chats, said it was that style of leadership – a willingness to engage with peers and understand their work, their views and their personalities – that was at the heart of Turcotte’s ability to be an unusually effective faculty leader.
“You’d go into his office with some horrible problem that you just couldn’t get around or solve, and by the time you left, it was just not a problem at all,” Cathles said. “He had this ability to turn mountains into molehills, rather than the other way around.”
In 1965, Turcotte took a sabbatical from East Hill and headed to Oxford University, a trip that proved transformational. There he met the future Lord Ronald Oxburgh, then an emerging scholar in the novel field of plate tectonics. Turcotte partnered with Oxburgh on 24 papers over the next decade, applying complex mathematics and new depth to the understanding of the mechanics behind continental motion.
“He went on sabbatical to Oxford, and returned an earth scientist,” Cathles wrote in 2003 when his Turcotte was awarded the Bowie Medal by the American Geophysical Union (AGU).
After returning to Ithaca, Turcotte shifted to the Department of Geological Sciences, becoming its chair in 1981. Jordan, Cathles and other Cornell colleagues lauded Turcotte’s 10-year chairmanship, recalling how he helped keep the department distinct during a period in which university leaders considered folding it into Astronomy. Jordan noted that it was Turcotte’s skill in identifying rising research fields and advocating new research methodologies that set the department on a strong path toward the 21st century.
During this time, Turcotte continued his research into the forces that drive the Earth, culminating in the groundbreaking “Geodynamics” in 1982. The text, written in collaboration with former Cornell graduate student and UCLA Professor Gerald Schubert, describes and quantifies the forces driving geology at a planetary level. Now in its third edition, it remains an essential for new and advancing students in the field.
According to Cathles, Turcotte’s focus and passion could lead to unexpected outcomes. One time when Joan asked him to help his two sons get their bath, Cathles recalled, Turcotte’s mental focus on his next academic paper led to him carefully getting his boys into the tub – shoes and all.
“In some ways he had a kind of absent-minded-professor thing about him,” said son Stephen Turcotte ’82, who earned a B.S. in applied and engineering physics at Cornell and is now on the physics faculty at Brigham Young University-Idaho. “It was just focus.”
Turcotte co-authored his final paper, part of his effort to quantify and predict seismic activity, in 2022, more than 64 years after his scientific career began.
Turcotte received numerous academic awards, including the AGU’s Bowie and Whitten medals, the Day Medal from the Geological Society of America, and election in 1986 to the National Academy of Sciences. In 2008, the AGU named an award after him, dedicated to emerging researchers whose early work promises to advance the field of nonlinear geophysics. Turcotte worked with NASA exploring the geology of other planets, and consulted with industry leaders as varied as Monsanto, Corning Glass and the Department of Defense.
“He loved what he did,” Stephen Turcotte said. “He was very passionate about his work and who he worked with. He just loved it.”