Pollard's Citation Response

On June 25, 2021 at the President's Day Awards Ceremony, Dr. Michael Daly, President of The Geological Society cited David Pollard as the 2021 Wollaston Medal recipient. The following is Pollard's response.

I am deeply honored to have been chosen the recipient of the Wollaston Medal. It is something of a tradition for recipients to call out a few names, well known to all, from the list of former medalists. Instead, I would like to call out the names of two medalists, perhaps less well known today, after whom I patterned my career.

William Hopkins, the Medalist in 1850, and Cambridge ‘senior-wrangler maker’, pioneered investigations in what he called Dynamical or Physical Geology. Hopkins used geometric laws to characterize geologic structures, and relied on mathematics to elevate the science from a level of indeterminate generalities to investigations founded on physical principles. Quantification, rather than mere verbal description, was the hallmark of Hopkins’ Physical Geology. (From Crosbie Smith, 1989)

Grove Karl Gilbert, the Medalist in 1900, and consummate field geologist, asked his horse Billy to carry the Manual of Applied Mechanics by Scottish Engineer William Rankine on expeditions to the Henry Mountains of southern Utah in 1875. There, Gilbert transformed observations of magmatic intrusions of different sizes into a temporal progression of their development, and then used the mechanics from Rankine’s manual to understand the physics of the transition from sill to laccolith. (From Stephen J. Pyne, 1978)

This is a career achievement award. In my opinion, one’s scientific career is largely measured by publications, so I would be remiss to not acknowledge the students with whom I have been fortunate to share the author line. They are listed in the menu item Graduate Students on the left. Each one of them deserves a piece of the Palladium making up the Wollaston Medal. As a tribute to them, and with a clear recognition of their contributions, I accept this medal.