Kenneth C. Macdonald

Kenneth C. Macdonald
Macdonald and map of East Pacific Rise crest at 9°N
Born	1947 (age 76–77)
Nationality	American
Alma mater	UC Berkeley MIT
Known for	ocean spreading centers deep sea hydrothermal vents
Awards	Fellow Geological Soc. America Fellow Amer. Geophys. Union Fellow Amer. Assoc. Adv. Science Member, American Academy of Arts and Sciences Cody Medal Newcomb Cleveland Prize of Amer. Assoc. Adv. Science
Scientific career
Institutions	Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution Scripps Institution of Oceanography; UC Santa Barbara
Doctoral advisor	Bruce Luyendyk, Tanya Atwater
Website	www.geol.ucsb.edu/faculty/macdonald/index.php

Kenneth Craig Macdonald is an American oceanographer and marine geophysicist born in San Francisco, California, in 1947. As of 2018 he is professor emeritus at the Department of Earth Science and the Marine Sciences Institute at the University of California, Santa Barbara (UCSB). His work focuses on the tectonics and geophysics of the global mid-oceanic ridge including its spreading centers and transform faults, two of the three types of plate boundaries central to the theory of plate tectonics. His work has taken him to the north and south Atlantic oceans, the north and south Pacific oceans, the Indian Ocean, the Red Sea and the Sea of Cortez, as well as to the deep seafloor on over 50 dives in the research submersible ALVIN. Macdonald has participated in over 40 deep sea expeditions, and was chief- or co-chief scientist on 31 expeditions.