Haraldur Sigurdsson

Haraldur Sigurdsson was born May 31, 1939 and grew up in Iceland where he developed an interest in volcanoes and their activity.

He studied geology and geochemistry in the United Kingdom, where he obtained a PhD degree from the University of Durham in 1970. He worked on monitoring and research of the volcanoes of the Caribbean until 1974, when he was appointed professor at the Graduate School of Oceanography, University of Rhode Island. He is best known for his work on the eruption of Vesuvius in Italy in AD 79 and on the destruction of the Roman cities of Pompeii and Herculaneum. In 1991 he discovered tektite glass spherules at the Cretaceous/Tertiary (K/T) boundary in Haiti, providing proof for a meteorite impact at the time of the extinction of the dinosaurs. In 2004 he discovered the lost town of Tambora in Indonesia, which was buried by the colossal 1815 explosive eruption of Tambora volcano.