Paul TAPPONNIER
Group Leader, Tectonics Group

Paul TAPPONNIER, who now heads the Tectonics/Earthquake research group at the Earth Observatory of Singapore, is one of the foremost scientists of his generation in the field of neotectonics. Early in his career, he transformed the scientific understanding of continental collision in Asia with his discovery of active faults in and around Tibet, providing a consistent model of large-scale crustal deformation processes between the Himalayas and Baykal, all the way to the East China Sea. The model was subsequently extended to include most of Southeast Asia, based on innovative analog experiments. Prof. Tapponnier’s pioneering use of satellite imagery strongly influenced modern methods of tectonic research.  During his previous tenure at Institut de Physique du Globe de Paris, he built a leading laboratory for tectonic science and trained a generation of younger scientists. 

Prof. Tapponnier, who received his Doctorat d’Etat (PhD) at the University of Montpellier in France, has been awarded, among other distinctions, the Alfred Wegener Medal of the European Union of Geosciences, the Charles Lyell Medal of the Geological Society of London, and the Friendship Medal of the People’s Republic of China. He was elected Einstein Professor of the Chinese Academy of Sciences for the year 2011. He is a member of both the French and US National Academy of Sciences, a fellow of the American Geophysical Union, the Geological Society of America, and the Geological Society of London, and “Chevalier de la Legion d’Honneur”.

His research interests include continental dynamics and tectonics, particularly in Asia and the Mediterranean; active faulting and seismotectonics, earthquake hazard assessment, quantitative geomorphology, rock mechanics and rock deformation physics.