| David John Stevenson | |
| Birth Date: | 1948 9, df=yes |
| Birth Place: | New Zealand |
| Fields: | Planetary Science Earth Science Astrophysics Geophysics |
| Workplaces: | Caltech |
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| Thesis1 Url: | and |
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| Thesis1 Year: | and |
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| Doctoral Advisor: | Edwin Salpeter |
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David John Stevenson (born 2 September 1948) is a professor of planetary science at Caltech. Originally from New Zealand, he received his Ph.D. from Cornell University in physics, where he proposed a model for the interior of Jupiter. He is well known for applying fluid mechanics and magnetohydrodynamics to understand the internal structure and evolution of planets and moons.
Stevenson's tongue-in-cheek idea about sending a probe into the earth includes the use of nuclear weapons to crack the Earth's crust, simultaneously melting and filling the crack with molten iron containing a probe. The iron, by the action of its weight, will propagate a crack into the mantle and would subsequently sink and reach the Earth's core in weeks. Communication with the probe would be achieved with modulated acoustic waves.[1] [2] This idea was used in the book .
In 1984, he received the H. C. Urey Prize awarded by the Division for Planetary Sciences of the American Astronomical Society.
Stevenson is a fellow of the Royal Society and a member of the United States National Academy of Sciences.[3]
Minor planet 5211 Stevenson is named in his honor.[4]