About Steve Sparks (volcanologist)
Sir Robert Stephen John Sparks, (born Harpenden, Hertfordshire, 15 May 1949) is Chaning Wills Professor of Geology in the School of Earth Sciences at the University of Bristol. He is one of the world's leading volcanologists and has been widely recognised his pioneering research into the physics of eruptions, volcanic geology, igneous petrology, volcanic hazards and risk assessment, and wider services to the science community. == Childhood and Career == Sparkes parents were Kenneth Grenfell Sparks and Ruth Joan Rugman. The family moved from Herpenden to Chester in 1954 where he attended Abbey Gate College, Chester Cathedral Choir School (1956-1961) and Wellington School, Bebington (1961-1966). After a family move to Baildon, Yorkshire he attended Bingley Grammar School (1967-1968). Sparks attended university at Imperial College, where he first completed a B.Sc. (1971), and then a PhD (1974) under the supervision of George P. L. Walker. He was subsequently a Research Fellow at Lancaster University (1976–1978), a NATO postdoctoral fellow at the Graduate School of Oceanography, University of Rhode Island, USA (1976–1978), and then lecturer at University of Cambridge Department of Earth Sciences (1978–1989), where he was also a Fellow of Trinity Hall, Cambridge. He took up the Chaning Wills Chair of Geology at the University of Bristol in 1989. Sparks has held a number of distinguished visiting positions at other universities, including a period as Sherman Fairchild Distinguished Scholar at California Institute of Technology in 1987, and as an Edward Bass Scholar at Yale University (2006–2007).
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