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Scientist Honoured

Richard Walcott, Professor of Geology at Victoria University, has been elected a Fellow of the Royal Society. He is one of only five resident New Zealanders to hold this distinction.

The Royal Society is the world's oldest national academy, and was founded by Charles II. It publishes a significant body of science and plays a major role in the promotion of science.

Walcott's main field of research is tectonics. He has used remarkably accurate measurements going back more than 100 years to demonstrate deformation in New Zealand's landscape.

Walcott has also shown that the east coast of New Zealand has rotated 40^o or 50^o over the last 10 million years.

"New Zealand is an unusually mobile country," Walcott says. "That's what makes it so interesting. It's one of the few places in the world where you can go from one tectonic plate to another in a short distance."