Dr Richard Palin awarded the Max Hey Medal of the Mineralogical Society for 2023

Congratulations to Oxford Earth Sciences faculty member Dr Richard Palin for being awarded the Max Hey Medal of the Mineralogical Society for 2023.

The Max Hey Medal was founded in 1993 and named in honour of the eminent British mineralogist Dr M.H. Hey (1904–1984). It has been established by the Council of the Mineralogical Society of Great Britain and Ireland and is awarded:

“To recognise existing and ongoing research of excellence carried out by young workers, within the fields of either Mineralogy, Crystallography, Petrology or Geochemistry. Evidence of excellence should be in the form of work published in highly-regarded, international scientific journals.”

Dr Palin’s research involves field- and laboratory-based studies combining metamorphic geology, isotope geochronology, geochemistry, and thermodynamic phase equilibrium modelling, which are used to investigate the evolution of the lithosphere in space and time. Recently completed projects have considered the physico-chemical effects of fluid–rock and melt–rock interactions in different geological environments (e.g. devolatilization in subduction zones and hydration of middle-/lower-continental crust), and comparative studies of the early Earth with other rocky bodies in our solar system, with a view to quantifying the extent of secular change in metamorphic processes and products though geological time. He has participated in numerous multidisciplinary and international collaborations during his career, and has published 78 papers on these themes, including contributions in Nature, Nature Geoscience, Nature Communications, and Geology.