Richard Arculus

Richard John Arculus (born 20 January 1949) is an Australian petrologist and volcanologist. He is Emeritus Professor of the School of Earth Sciences at the Australian National University.

His research interests and areas of expertise include inorganic geochemistry, igneous petrology, metamorphic petrology, volcanology, and chemical oceanography.

Early life and education Arculus was born in Calcutta, India. He graduated with a first-class degree in Geology from Durham University in 1970. He then earned a PhD from the same institution in 1973. He was an assistant professor at Rice University in Houston, Texas from 1975 to 1976, and then spent six years as a research fellow at the Australian National University (ANU), before moving to the University of Michigan as assistant and later associate professor. He was also elected a Fellow of the American Geophysical Union.

In 2017 he argued that volcanic eruptions could take place in Melbourne or Auckland and suggested that volcanic eruptions may have contributed to the outbreak of war in ancient Egypt.

Selected publications Books

Journal articles