William Richard Peltier, Ph.D., D.Sc. (hc) [1] (born 1943), is a university professor of physics at the University of Toronto. He is director of the Centre for Global Change Science [2], principal investigator of the Polar Climate Stability Network [3], and the Scientific Director of Canada's largest supercomputer centre, SciNet [4]. He is a fellow of the Royal Society of Canada and of the American Geophysical Union.
His research interests include: atmospheric and oceanic waves and turbulence, geophysical fluid dynamics, physics of the planetary interior, and planetary climate.
He is notable for his involvement in global glacial reconstructions from the last glacial maximum to present. He has been a major (or the primary) contributor to the global reconstructions ICE-3G, ICE-4G, ICE-5G (VM2), and the upcoming ICE-6G (VM5) (in press). These models are important for the quantification of post-glacial rebound and late Pleistocene to Holocene variations in sea level.
1967 B.Sc., University of British Columbia
1969 M.Sc. in Physics, University of Toronto
1971 Ph.D. in Physics, University of Toronto
1971-72 Lecturer, Department of Physics, University of Toronto
1973-74 Visiting Assistant Professor, Department of Physics, University of Toronto
1974-77 Associate Professor, Department of Physics, University of Toronto
1978 Visiting Professor, Geophysics and Space Physics, U.C.L.A.
1978-79 Steacie Fellowship Leave, NCAR, Boulder, Colorado
1977-79 Associate Professor, Department of Physics, University of Toronto
1979-93 Full Professor, Department of Physics, University of Toronto
1987-88 Guggenheim Fellowship Leave, DAMTP and Bullard Laboratories, Cambridge University, U.K.
1993- University Professor, University of Toronto
2002-2003 Sabbatical Leave, Professeur Invité, Institute de Physique du Globe de Paris, Université Paris VII
2004 Professor Invité, Institut de Physique du Globe de Paris, Université Paris VII
2005–present Adjunct Professor, Dept. of Earth Sciences, University of Waterloo
Honours and awards
Distinguished Lecturer of the Canadian Geophysical Union, 1999–2000
Elected as Foreign Member to Fellowship in the Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters, 2004
Bancroft Award of the Royal Society of Canada, 2004
J. Tuzo Wilson Medal of the Canadian Geophysical Union, 2004
Vetlesen Prize, 2004
Leiv Erikson Fellow, Norwegian Research Council, Bjerknes Institute for Climate Research, Univ. of Bergen, 2006
Miroslaw Romanowski Medal of the Royal Society of Canada, 2006
Milutin Milankovic Medal of the European Geosciences Union, 2008 web announcement
Bower Award and Prize for Achievement in Science of The Franklin Institute, 2010
