David Bercovici

David A. Bercovici (born in September 1960) is an American geophysicist. He is primarily known for his theoretical explanations of why planet Earth has plate tectonics. He is also known for his development of models of how the Earth's mantle recycles and stores water and how such hydrological processes are involved in Earth's geochemical history.

Biography
Although he was born in Rome, Italy, Bercovici is not Italian. He grew up in southern California. He graduated in 1982 from Harvey Mudd College with a B.S. in physics (with a minor in history). At the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), he graduated in geophysics and space physics with an M.S. in 1987 and an Ph.D. in 1989. His Ph.D. thesis A Numerical Investigation of Thermal Convection in Highly Viscous Spherical Shells with Applications to Mantle Dynamics in the Earth and Other Terrestrial Planets was supervised by Gerald Schubert. The thesis, which adapted a numerical code introduced by Gary Glatzmaier, was immediately recognized as a breakthrough in realistic modeling of convection in the Earth's mantle. For the academic year 1989–1990 Bercovici was a postdoc at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution. From 1990 to 2001 he was a faculty member in the department of geology and geophysics of the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa. In the department of geology and geophysics of Yale University, he became in 2001 a professor and was appointed in 2011 to the Frederick William Beinecke Professorship of Geophysics, the academic position which he currently holds. From 2006 to 2012, and again in 2018-2021, he chaired his department. From 2009 to 2012 he was the deputy director of the Yale Climate and Energy Institute, which closed in June 2016. He was a visiting researcher in 1998 at the Institut de Physique du Globe de Paris and a visiting professor in September in 2012 at the École normale supérieure de Lyon and in April 2013 at the University of Cambridge. He is currently the founding Co-Director of the Yale Center for Natural Carbon Capture.

Bercovici has an international reputation for his expertise in geological fluid dynamics and research on the geodynamics of Earth's mantle and lithosphere. He is the author or co-author of more than 130 scientific articles. His collaboration with Shun-Ichiro Karato is noteworthy. Of particular importances is their 2003 article Whole-mantle convection and the transition-zone water filter, proposing, in relation to the Earth's mantle, the transition-zone water-filter model. Bercovici's collaboration with Yanick Ricard and other colleagues concerning the geophysics of accumulation of weak plate boundaries is important for understanding plate tectonics. David Bercovici, Christoph F. Hieronymus, and other colleagues have also developed models explaining why hotspot volcanoes form discrete and sometimes parallel island chains and explaining why volcanoes oscillate prior to eruptions. As a member of a 19-member team in support of a NASA space mission, Bercovici investigated approaches to imaging and modeling the topography and geomorphology of the asteroid named 16 Psyche.

In 1996 Bercovici was awarded the James B. Macelwane Medal of the American Geophysical Union (AGU) and was also elected a Fellow of the AGU. In 2014 the AGU appointed him the Francis Birch Lecturer. He was elected in 2015 a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (AAAS), in 2018 a Member of the National Academy of Sciences, and in 2019 a Member of the Connecticut Academy of Science and Engineering (CASE). He was awarded in 2022 the Augustus Love Medal of the European Geosciences Union (EGU).

David Bercovici and his wife have two daughters.

Articles

 * 1990

Books

 * as contributor: Bercovici, D., "Chapter 1. Mantle dynamics past, present, and future: an introduction and overview." in Mantle Dynamics (2007): 1-30 abstract (with Gerald Schubert as editor-in-chief of the multi-volume series Treatise on Geophysics)
 * as contributor: Bercovici, D., "Chapter 1. Mantle dynamics past, present, and future: an introduction and overview." in Mantle Dynamics (2007): 1-30 abstract (with Gerald Schubert as editor-in-chief of the multi-volume series Treatise on Geophysics)
 * as contributor: Bercovici, D., "Chapter 1. Mantle dynamics past, present, and future: an introduction and overview." in Mantle Dynamics (2007): 1-30 abstract (with Gerald Schubert as editor-in-chief of the multi-volume series Treatise on Geophysics)
 * as contributor: Bercovici, D., "Chapter 1. Mantle dynamics past, present, and future: an introduction and overview." in Mantle Dynamics (2007): 1-30 abstract (with Gerald Schubert as editor-in-chief of the multi-volume series Treatise on Geophysics)