WHO IS Dr. JOHN NYE?

      John F. Nye is a cryospheric science pioneer; currently professor emeritus in physics at the University of Bristol, in the UK. Nye planted intellectual seeds widely on topics in their infancy. Nye developed a new theory in the early 1950s that ice deformed irrecoverably. Nye applied this new ice rheology theory with success in predicting glacier behavior, including a new science of glacier surging. What is today commonly referred to as Glen's flow law is more appropriately named the Glen-Nye flow law; and remains in widespread use. Nye studied water flow in ice more than 50 years ago, a topic receiving critical attention today as melt water is now widely recognized as providing a rapid response mechanism of land ice to climate warming. Nye made other pioneering work investigating dynamics at the bed of glaciers. So-called, Nye-channels are those forming in the glacier bed, in contrast to Röthlisburger channels that form in the overlying ice.

(from Jason Box's introduction to the 2008 Nye Lecture)

2005 Nye Lecturer
Dr. Matthew Sturm

Snow Crystals, Shrubs, and the Changing Climate of the Arctic

(link to movie of Lecture)

2004 Nye Lecturer
Dr. Richard Alley

We're All Glaciologists Now:
Ice in the Climate System

(link to movie of lecture)

2003 Nye Lecturer
Dr. Kurt Cuffey

Stable Isotopes in Ice: Tracers of the Global Environment