Prof. Dr. Andrew Jackson

Andrew Jackson has been Professor of Geophysics since January 2006. He currently heads the Earth and Planetary Magnetism group within the Institute for Geophysics.

Born in Bridlington, England, Andy Jackson gained his Batchelor's degree in Natural Sciences at the University of Cambridge, majoring in Physics. He remained at Cambridge for his PhD, completed in collaboration with the British Geological Survey, Edinburgh. Jackson's first postdoctoral position was at Harvard University, from where, after two years, he returned to take up a Royal Society University Research Fellowship at Oxford University. Jackson subsequently moved to University of Leeds, where he became Lecturer, Reader and Professor of Mathematical Geophysics.

Jackson's interests are in the application of mathematical methods to problems in the geosciences. Although his work has been primarily focussed in geomagnetism (the study of the generation and evolution of the Earth's magnetic field), he has interests ranging from the use of gravity gradiometry in the search for minerals and hydrocarbons to methodologies for the solution of remote sensing problems ("inverse problems"). Work on the magnetic field encompasses the use of satellites, historical data and numerical simulations of magnetohydrodynamics.

Jackson is involved in the European Space Agency's Swarm magnetic mission to measure the Earth's magnetic field which successfully launched in 2013.  He was elected as a Fellow of the American Geophysical Union in 2007.