| Authorised form of name | Compston; William (1931-2025); geophysicist |
| Dates | 1931-2025 |
| Nationality | Australian |
| Place of birth | Western Australia, Australia |
| Date of birth | 19 February 1931 |
| Place of death | Australia |
| Date of death | 16 May 2025 |
| Occupation | Geophysicist |
| Research field | Geochronology |
| Physics |
| Geology |
| Isotope geochemistry |
| Geochemistry |
| Activity | Education:
University of Western Australia (UWA) BSc 1951; PhD 1957; DSc 1988
Career:
Lived in Perth at his father's butcher shop; on the death of his father the shop was sold and the family went to visit relatives in Melbourne, becoming trapped there by wartime restrictions on travel to Perth (1943); introduced to geology by one of his brothers and pursued the subject at higher education level; focused on the isotopic composition of carbon in rocks (1953); awarded a Fulbright Fellowship, California Institute of Technology, where he continued his work on stable isotopes in collaboration with Sam Epstein, using the isotopic composition of oxygen to infer the temperature at which fossil shells had grown; spent three months at the Carnegie Institute Department of Terrestrial Magnetism (DTM) where he was taught methods for dating rocks using the U-Pb, Rb-Sr and K-Ar decay schemes; returned to the University of Western Australia (UWA) as a lecturer in Physics; joined the Department of Geophysics at the ANU and in collaboration with the Bureau of Mineral Resources (BMR) set up the laboratory and mass spectrometer necessary for Rb-Sr dating and started on a program of dating Australian rocks (1960s); chosen by NASA to date rocks brought back by Apollo 11 astronauts (1969); worked with Steve Clement, designer of the high sensitivity mass spectrometer used for dating the lunar samples; Emeritus Professor, Research School of Earth Sciences, Australian National University.
Memberships:
FAA
FTSE
Awards/Medals:
Mawson Medal and Lecture of the Australian Academy of Science 1988
Matthew Flinders Medal and Lecture of the Australian Academy of Science 1998
Centenary Medal from the Government of Australia 2001 |
| Membership category | Fellow |
| Date of election | 19/03/1987 |
| Age at election | 56 |
| Relationships | Spouse: Elizabeth Compston |
| OtherInfo | Distinguished for his contributions to isotope geochemistry and geochronology.
A pioneer of the technique of total rock rubidium-strontium dating and has been responsible for much of the systematic geochronology of the Australian continent.
Made major contributions to cosmochemistry including successful Rb/Sr dating of the first Apollo 11 lunar mare basalts, the strontium isotope chemistry of mare basalts generally and discoveries of isotopic anomalies in magnesium and titanium from the Allende meteorite. These latter discoveries have important implications for the origin and evolution of the primordial solar nebula.
Recently he designed and constructed an ion-probe microanalyzer possessing unique resolution and sensitivity. This has been used successfully to measure lead/uranium ages on zircons and to characterize the ages and provenance of the source materials of granitic plutons. |
| Source | The Royal Society Fellows Directory, Professor William Compston FRS, [URL: https://royalsociety.org/people/william-compston-11255/; last accessed: 03/09/2025]
McCulloch, M., & Williams, I. (2025). William Compston FAA FTSE FRS (19 February 1931 – 16 May 2025). Journal of The Royal Society of Western Australia, 108, [URL: doi.org/10.70880/001c.140863; last accessed: 03/09/2025]
Australian National University, Research School of Earth Sciences, News & Events, Vale Bill Compston, Thursday 22 May 2025, Summarized by Ian Williams, RSES, [URL: https://earthsciences.anu.edu.au/news-events/news/vale-bill-compston; last accessed: 03/09/2025] |
| Code | NA3883 |
Archives associated with this Fellow
| RefNo | Title | Date |
| EC/1987/05 | Compston, William: certificate of election to the Royal Society | 1982 |