Home , Go Back to faculty page SUBIR KUMAR BANERJEE I.T. Distinguished Professor and Director, Institute for Rock Magnetism PhD, 1963 / ScD, 1983, Cambridge University Research Group Web Site: Institute for Rock Magnetism Office: 207 Pillsbury Hall Phone: (612) 624-5722 Fax: (612) 625-3819 Email: banerjee@...

        My research interest is in fundamental rock magnetism, as well as paleomagnetism and geomagnetism. One of my newest interests is magnetism applied to the environmental and climatic change records. New techniques have been developed for rapid magnetic analysis of soil stratigraphy leading to models of pedogenesis, relative dating of soil horizons and paleoclimatic change for the last 150,000 years in the northern hemisphere. An offshoot of the above research is the ability to recognize abrupt high resolution climatic reversals within glacial epochs through a magnetic proxy of sharp grain-size changes. The glacial loess in Alaska, Illinois, Czech Republic, and Bulgaria is being studied to obtain a world-wide picture of abrupt climate changes.

        In collaboration with a colleague in archeology, with start-up funds from the university and NSF, my students, my post-docs and I have just begun a cooperative study into the monsoon history of southern Yemen. Rock magnetic proxies of rainfall variations will be correlated with botanical evidence of early agriculture to test the role of climate change in the development of agriculture in Yemen during the last 6000 years.

        At the moment, I am the Principal Investigator of several research grants awarded by the National Science Foundation and the graduate school of the University of Minnesota. My research group includes five professionals, one postdoctoral research associate, two graduate and two undergraduate research assistants. With the help of my colleagues, and financial support from the University of Minnesota, the W.M. Keck foundation (Los Angeles) and the National Science Foundation, I established in 1990 the Institute for Rock Magnetism (IRM), a national facility for state-of-the-art instrumentation and research in rock magnetism. Through a Visiting Fellowship Program the IRM provides cost-free access and training to established scientists and graduate students mainly from the U.S. and Canada, but also from Europe and Asia. Contact with these visitors is a bonus for graduate students and post-doctoral fellows working at our institute. It is the only such comprehensive facility in the world today for fundamental and applied research in rock magnetism.

Professional Society Memberships

• American Geophysical Union (Fellow)
• American Academy of Arts and Sciences

• 2006 John Adam Fleming Medal, American Geophysical Union
• 2004, Louis Néel Medal, European Geosciences Union
• 2003, William Gilbert Award, American Geophysical Union, Geomagnetism and Paleomagnetism
• 2000, Distinguished Visiting Speaker Series, Hawaii Institute of Geophysics and Planetary Physics
• Fellow, American Geophysical Union
• 1999-2000 Co-Convenor, Climatic And Human Changes in Latin America (CAHCILA), Buenos Aires, Argentina

• Freshman Seminar: Ubrupt Climate Change
• Geodynamics I (Solid Earth)
• Advanced Rock Magnetism (occasionally)

• Liu Qingsong, Ph.D., 2004. “Pedogenesis and its effects on the natural remanent magnetization acquisition history of the Chinese loess.”
• France Lagroix, Ph.D., 2004. “Contributions from rock magnetism to Central Alaskan loess deposits and titanium-rich compositions of the hematite-ilmenite solid solution series.”
• Brian Carter-Stiglitz, Ph.D., 2003. “Rock Magnetism: Studies in theory, data manipulation, and application.”
• Jana Sharpe, M.A., 1996. "Environmental archaelogy in central Alaska: A magneto-stratigraphic correlation of Tanana Valley archaeological sites with global climatic change." (Department of Anthropology)

• Berquó, T. S., S. K. Banerjee, R. G. Ford, R. L. Penn, and T. Pichler (2007), High crystallinity Si-ferrihydrite: An insight into its Néel temperature and size dependence of magnetic properties, J. Geophys. Res., 112, B02102, doi:10.1029/2006JB004583.
• Carter-Stiglitz, B., Banerjee, S.K., Gourlan, A., and E. Oches. 2006. A multi-proxy study of Argentina loess: Marine oxygen isotope stage 4 and 5 environmental record from pedogenic hematite. Paleo. Paleo. Paleo., vol. 239. 45-62.
• Guyodo, Y., LaPara, T.M., Anschutz, A.J., Penn, R.L., Banerjee, S.K., Geiss, C.E. and W. Zanner. 2006. Rock magnetic, chemical and bacterial community analysis of a modern soil from Nebraska. Earth Planet. Sci. Lett. vol. 251. 168-178.
• Guyodo, Y., Banerjee, S.K., Penn, R.L., Burleson, D., Berquó, T.S., Seda, T. and P. Solheid. 2006. Magnetic properties of synthetic 6-line ferrihydrite nanoparticles. Phys. Earth Planet. Int.; doi: 10.1016/j.pepi.2005-05-009.
• Banerjee, S.K. 2006. Environmental Magnetism of Nanophase Iron Minerals: Testing the Biomineralization Pathway. Phys. Earth Planet. Int.; doi: 10.1016/j.pepi.2005.04.014.
• Liu, Q., Banerjee, S.K., Jackson, M.J., Deng, C., Pan, Y., and R. Zhu. 2005. Inter-profile correlation of the Chinese loess/paleosol sequences during Marine Oxygen Isotope Stage 5 and indications of pedogenesis. Quat. Sci. Rev. 24, 195-210.
• Lagroix, F., Banerjee, S.K. and B.M. Moskowitz. 2005. Revisiting the mechanism of reversed thermoremanent magnetization based on observations from synthetic ilmenite (y = 0.7). J. Geophys. Res. 110; doi: 10.1029/2004JB003076.
• Geiss, C.E., Banerjee, S.K., Camill, P. and C.E. Umbanhowar Jr. 2004. Sediment-magnetic signature of land-use and drought as recorded in lake sediment from south-central Minnesota, U.S.A. Quaternary Research 62 (2), 117-125.
• Lagroix, F. and S.K. Banerjee. 2004. Cryptic post-depositional reworking in aeolian sediments revealed by the anisotropy of magnetic susceptibility. Earth Planet. Sci. Lett. 224(3-4), 453-459; doi: 10.1016/j.epsl.2004.05.029.
• Williamson, D., Jackson, M.J., Banerjee, S.K. and Petit-Maire, N. 2004. The magnetism of a glacial aeolianite sequence from Lanzarote (Canary Islands): coupling between luvic calcisol formation and Saharan dust trapping processes during wet deposition events off northwestern Sahara. Geophys. J. Int. 157, 1090-1104; doi: 10.1111/j.1365-246X.2004.02258.x.

• 5/2005 to 8/2007, NSF, Sediment Nanomagnetism and Environmental Change: the Microbial Mineral Link
• 9/2003 to 8/2007, NSF, Facility Support: Development and Maintenance of the Magnetics Information Consortium (MagIC)
• 8/2002 to 7/2007, NSF, Continuation of a Facility: Institute for Rock Magnetism