Prof. Albrecht W. Hofmann gave a report in ESE

At the invitation of Prof. Li-Hui Chen, one of the most famous geochemists, Prof. Albrecht W. Hofmann visited School of Earth Science and Engineering, NJU and gave a report titled “Where did all the subducted sediments go?” on October 11, 2016. The report started at 2:00 p.m. in Room A125, Zhugongshan Building.

Prof. Albrecht W. Hofmann is recognized as the pioneer of geochemistry and the foreign associate of the US National Academy of Sciences. During his academic career, he has ever held the leadership of European Geosciences Union (EUG), European Association of Geochemistry, The Association of Geochemists and American Geophysical Union (AGU) and received many awards such as Harry H. Hess Medal of the American Geophysical Union (2001), V.M. Goldschmidt Medal of the Geochemical Society (1996) and Franco-German Humboldt Award (1996). After hisretirement from Max-Planck-Institut für Chemie, Mainz, he continued his research upon geochemistry with the posts of the senior visiting scholar in Columbia University and the part-time professor in Nanjing University.

Prof. Albrecht W. Hofmann ’s contributions to geochemistry are numerous, and the major parts are the hypothesis about the significant role of recycled oceanic crust in mantle plumes, which is widely accepted by academic community, and the relative abundance of some elements, especially the ones of Nb and Pb, which could be used to distinguish the recycles oceanic crust and continental crust. Another major contribution could be described as the retrieval method of using the compositions of igneous rocks to rebuild the composition of mantle sources. His current research projects are mainly located in the Hawaiian mantle plumes, the volcanic rocks with the research in highest degree.