Derek Vance
EAG Past-President
Derek Vance is Professor of Geochemistry in the Department of Earth Science at ETH Zürich, Switzerland. In the past he has worked on mantle geochemistry and has used geochronology and metamorphic petrology to understand mountain belts such as the Alps and Himalaya. For the past 10-15 years, however, he has focussed on understanding the geochemistry of the surface Earth. This has involved the quantification of the global cycles of trace elements through investigations of the inputs to the dissolved pool of the oceans, and outputs to various kinds of sediments. An important long-term objective is to use this effort, targeted at understanding modern budgets, to understand the chemical evolution of the surface Earth in the past.
Derek obtained his Ph.D. in geochemistry at the University of Cambridge, UK. He has previously served in various capacities with the Geochemical Society and the EAG, and in particular, was co-chair for the Goldschmidt meeting in Barcelona in 2019. He has also acted as a co-editor in chief for Earth and Planetary Science Letters, as editor of Geochemistry, Geophysics, Geosystems and as an Associate Editor for Geochimica et Cosmochimica Acta.