Frank Donald Stacey (21 August 1929, Essex, UK - 24 June 2026 Brisbane, Australia) is an English-born Australian geophysicist, known for his research on rock magnetism and application of thermodynamics to understanding the Earth's core and mantle.
Education and career At the University of London, Stacey graduated with a B.Sc. in 1950 and a Ph.D. in 1953. As a postdoc, he was from 1953 to 1956 a research fellow at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver. From 1961 to 1964 he was a Royal Society Gassiot Fellow in Geomagnetism at the Meteorological Office Research Unit of the University of Cambridge. Near the beginning of his career he published several papers in The Philosophical Magazine. He was a Reader in Physics at the University of Queensland from 1964 to 1971 — during those years he wrote the first three editions of Physics of the Earth. (In 1988 a fourth edition was published with Paul McEwan Davis as co-author.) In 1968 Stacey received his D.Sc. from the University of London. From 1971 to 1990 he was a professor of Applied Physics at the University of Queensland. He was appointed to visiting lectureships in several different countries. In 1997 he joined the Australian Government agency CSIRO Exploration and Mining.
Louis Néel’s 1955 paper Some theoretical aspects of rock-magnetism inspired Stacey to generalize Néel's single-domain theory for magnetic grains to multi-domained grains. In the theory of remanence for igneous rocks, Stacey introduced the concept of pseudo-single domain for magnetic grains which are small and multi-domained. He did research on scientifically describing rock fabric using magnetic anisotropywith Subir K. Banerjee The high field torque-meter method of measuring magnetic anisotropy of rocks, in D. W. Collinson, K. M. Creer, S. K. Runcorn (eds.) Methods in Palaeomagnetism, Elsevier 1967, pp. 470–476 and predicting earthquakes and volcanic eruptions using piezomagnetism. With several colleagues, Stacey investigated possible failures of Newton's law of gravity.
Using a lattice dynamical formulation for the Grüneisen parameter, he developed a new equation of state for high pressures with applications to materials in the Earth's core and lower mantle. His book Physics of the Earth became a widely used, standard textbook and was the first geophysics textbook to comprehensively deal with solid Earth geophysics.
Stacey chaired from 1966 to 1967 the Australian Institute of Physics, Queensland branch. He was elected in 1979 a Fellow of the Australian Academy of Science and in 1986 a Fellow der American Geophysical Union. (Search on name="Stacey".) In 1994 he was awarded the Louis Néel Medal.
Selected publications Articles
Books Physics of the Earth, Wiley 1969 with Paul McEwan Davis: Physics of the Earth, Cambridge University Press, 4th edition 2008 (1st edition, Wiley, New York 1969) with Subir K. Banerjee The physical principles of rock magnetism, Elsevier 1974 book description from Elsevier as editor with M. S. Paterson and A. Nicolas Anelasticity in the Earth, Geodynamics Series, Vol. 4, American Geophysical Union/Geological Society of America 1981 with Jane H. Hodgkinson The Earth as a cradle of life, World Scientific 2013 with Jane H. Hodgkinson Practical handbook of Earth science, CRC Press 2017
References