Rate My Professor Graham Pearson

Professor Graham Pearson is a faculty member in the Department of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences at the University of Alberta. He joined the university in 2010 as Canada Excellence Research Chair Laureate in Arctic Resources and holds the Henry Marshall Tory Chair. His research focuses on mantle geochemistry, with particular emphasis on the origin and evolution of the continental lithospheric mantle and its diamond cargo, using radiogenic isotope systems such as Re-Os and Pt-Os, trace element geochemistry, and petrology of mantle xenoliths and diamonds. Pearson earned a BSc in geology from Imperial College London and a PhD in isotope geochemistry from the University of Leeds. Prior to his appointment at Alberta, he held research positions at the Carnegie Institution of Washington and the Open University, followed by fifteen years at Durham University in the United Kingdom.

Pearson has received numerous honors, including the Lindgren Medal from the Society of Economic Geologists in 1999, the Robert Wilhelm Bunsen Medal from the European Geosciences Union in 2017, the Bowen Award from the American Geophysical Union in 2019, and the Murchison Medal from the Geological Society of London in 2021. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 2023 and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada. He established the Arctic Resources Geochemistry Laboratory at the University of Alberta and serves as chair of the Diamonds and Mantle Geodynamics Group of the Deep Carbon Observatory. Pearson has contributed to expert committees on conflict diamonds for the Kimberley Process, the European Science Foundation, and the National Security Council (USA). A mineral, grahampearsonite, was named in recognition of his contributions to diamond research.