A press release from the University of California, San Diego

SCRIPPS GEOLOGIST AWARDED BALZAN PRIZE


        Harmon Craig, a professor of oceanography and geochemistry at the
Scripps Institution of Oceanography, University of California, San Diego,
has
been awarded the Balzan Prize for his fundamental contributions to the field
of geochemistry.  The Balzan Prize of the International Balzan Foundation of
Milan, Italy, has several times been given in astrophysics and geophysics,
but
this is the first award in geochemistry.

        Craig will be presented with the award by the President of Italy  at
a ceremony to be held in the Palazzo del Quirinale  in Rome on Nov. 23, 1998.

        The Balzan Prize is considered the equivalent of the Nobel Prize in
the fields of natural sciences, humanities, social sciences and
international
affairs that are not in Nobel awards categories. The Balzan Prize was
established in 1961 by the late Italian heiress Lina Balzan in memory of her
father, publisher Eugenio Balzan. Three awards were made this year. Andrzej
Walicki of Poland and the United States was awarded the prize for history
and
Sir Robert May of Australia and the United Kingdom received the award for
his
work in biodiversity.

        Craig was recognized by the Balzan Foundation for his work as "a
pioneer in earth sciences who uses the varied tools of isotope geochemistry
to
solve problems of fundamental scientific importance and immediate relevance
in the atmosphere, hydrosphere and solid earth."

        A faculty member at Scripps since 1955, Craig has ventured to some of
the remotest spots on Earth in search of elusive gases, rocks and other
materials that provide clues to the composition of the Earth's interior. In
his quest, he has descended into the crater of an active underwater volcano,
led the first dives into the 2-mile-deep Mariana Trough, and sailed atop an
erupting undersea volcano to collect rock and gas samples.  He has led 28
deep-sea oceanographic expeditions and has made 17 dives to the bottom of
the
ocean in the ALVIN submersible.

        His daresome adventures have yielded a host of significant scientific
findings that have greatly enriched our understanding of the workings of the
oceans, atmosphere and deep Earth. In 1969, he and colleagues from McMaster
University in Canada demonstrated for the first time that helium 3, a rare
isotope of helium that was trapped in Earth's interior at the time of its
formation 4.5 billion years ago, is being released from mid-ocean volcanoes
by
a process called "degassing" that played a key role in the evolution of the
atmosphere. Craig went on to use the helium 3 injected into the deep sea to
track ocean currents, leading him to discover that the Pacific ocean deep
water circulates in the opposite direction to what scientists had theorized.

        In 1970, Craig joined forces with colleagues at Scripps, Columbia
University's Lamont-Doherty Geological Observatory, and the Woods Hole
Oceanographic Institution to direct an international project called the
Geochemical Ocean Sections Study (GEOSECS) for a global investigation of
chemical and isotopic properties of the world's oceans. Results from this
program represent the most complete set of ocean chemistry data ever
collected
and contributed significantly to the advancement of chemical oceanography.
One of Craig's discoveries during this program was that lead is rapidly
scavenged from the deep sea by particulate material, which turned out to be
the major route by which many trace metals are removed from the ocean.
Later
Craig led two expeditions on Lake Tanganyika, using the GEOSECS methodology
to
study the geochemistry and limnology of this 4600-foot-deep lake.

        Craig and colleagues went on to discover the existence of submarine
hydrothermal vents in the Galapagos seafloor spreading center, using the
Scripps "Deep-Tow" vehicle to measure helium 3 and radon along the axis
where
the tectonic plates are rifting apart.  Using the submersible ALVIN, he
discovered similar vents in the caldera of an active volcano called Loihi,
located 3,000 feet below the sea surface, that is erupting to form the next
Hawaiian island.  Another journey aboard ALVIN, into the Mariana Trough,
discovered hydrothermal vents nearly 12,000 feet deep.

        Craig also analyzed gases trapped in Greenland ice cores and showed
that the methane content of the atmosphere has doubled over the past three
hundred years, a finding which is important for studies of the atmospheric
greenhouse effect.  He is currently measuring temperatures of past
glaciations, using his discovery of gravitational enrichment of heavy noble
gases in the air trapped in polar ice cores.

        Other projects have taken Craig to sample volcanic rocks and gases
throughout the East African Rift Valley from Northern Ethiopia to Lake
Nyasa,
and to the Dead Sea, Tibet, and Yunnan, China.  He has made field
expeditions
to all the major volcanic island chains of the Pacific and Indian Oceans
collecting lava samples.  Craig's goal was to delineate mantle hotspots
where
volcanic "plumes" are rising from the earth's core through the deep mantle
and
can be identified by their primordial helium 3 content.  He has identified
sixteen such hotspots where the helium 3 to helium 4 ratio is much higher
than
in the upper mantle and crust of the earth, fourteen in oceanic islands, and
two on the continents, in Ethiopia and Yellowstone Park.

        In 1972, Craig and his wife Valerie showed that carbon and oxygen
isotopes can be used to determine the provenance of marbles used in ancient
Greek sculptures and temples, a study that is still continuing.

        Born in New York City on March 15, 1926, Craig did his thesis on
carbon isotope geochemistry under Nobel Laureate Harold Urey. After
receiving
a Ph.D. in geology-geochemistry from the University of Chicago in 1951,
Craig
stayed on as a research associate at  the Enrico Fermi Institute for Nuclear
Studies at the University of Chicago.  During this time he and Urey
discovered
that meteorites fall into discrete groups based on their oxidation states
and
content of iron.  He went on to study the distribution of heavy hydrogen
(deuterium) and oxygen isotopes in natural waters, establishing the "Global
Meteoric Water" relationship of these isotopes which has become fundamental
for studies in hydrology and climatology.

        In recognition of his scientific achievements, Craig has received
many honors. He was elected to membership in the  National Academy of
Sciences
in 1979.  He received the V.M. Goldschmidt Medal of the Geochemical Society
in 1979, the National Science Foundation "Special Creativity" Award in
Oceanography in 1982, the Arthur L. Day Medal of the Geological Society of
America in 1983, and the honorary degree of Docteur (Honoris Causa) of the
University de Paris (Pierre et Marie Curie) in 1983.  In 1987, he was
awarded
the Arthur L. Day Prize of the National Academy of Sciences and was
co-recipient of the Vetlesen Prize from Columbia University.  In 1991, he
was
awarded an honorary doctorate degree from the University of Chicago, and in
1993 he was named an honorary fellow of the European Union of Geosciences.


                                ###


More information on the Balzan Prize can be found at www.balzan.it/newsgb.htm
Scripps Institution of Oceanography on the World Wide Web:
http://sio.ucsd.edu





James R. O'Neil
Institute for Geochemistry
University of Tuebingen
Wilhelmstr. 56
D-72074 Tuebingen
Germany

Tel: (0)7071 29 72602
Fax: (0)7071 29 5713