Bowdoin physics department alumnus David Stegman ’96, an assistant professor at Scripps Institution of Oceanography, UC-San Diego, scored a “scientific hat-trick” by publishing three papers in the journal Nature within 12 months last year. He also published a paper in the journal Science just prior to his Nature trifecta.

The articles contained important new discoveries in the field of geophysics, including “evidence of historical irregularities in the motions of both the Indian and African tectonic plates bolsters the contention that plumes of hot rock rising from deep within Earth’s mantle can drive the planet’s tectonic plates” (Nature news); “Ancient giant eruptions in the Pacific Northwest may actually have been caused by the tearing of a titanic slab of rock and not the supervolcano underlying Yellowstone National Park” (ourAmazingplanet.com); and “like a stream of air shooting out of an airplane’s broken window to relieve cabin pressure…lava formations in eastern Oregon are the result of an outpouring of magma forced out of a breach in a massive slab of Earth” (TerraDaily.com).