Timothy Michael Kusky - Biography#

Prof. Timothy Michael Kusky was born in 1961 in Glen Cove, New York. He received his Bachelor's degree as magna cum laude from the best geology department in North America at the time, namely Department of Geological Sciences of the State University of New York at Albany. in 1982. He obtained from the same institution his master's degree (MSc) and a further MA from The Johns Hopkins University, where he also obtained his PhD. He did a post-doctoral term in mechanical engineering in UC Santa Barbara. He worked as a geologist in various US Institutions, rising to an endowed chair at Saint Louis University in 2003. In 2009, Kusky accepted a position as Distinguished Professor and Chanjiang scholar in the China University of Geosciences in Wuhan because of the much greater research possibilities. In China he continued his rise participating in various programmes with a view to furthering geology in China, while at the same time accepting a position as adjunct professor in the Middle East Technical University in Ankara, Turkey. Since moving to China, he has received numerous honors and awards in addition to being elected to Academia Europaea, including being elected as Fellow of Geological Society of America, Geological Society of London, and being awarded the Friendship Award and Medal Laureate from China Central Committee, the highest award to foreigners in China.

Kusky's main work has so far concentrated on Precambrian tectonics both in North America and in China, to which field he has made significant contributions by discovering the earliest high pressure/low temperature metamorphics, eclogites and nappes in Archaean terrains, thus firmly establishing the reality of plate tectonics during the Archaean. He also has taken an active role in editorial positions internationally. For this work, he has been continuously rated as highly cited scientist by Elsevier since 2015, and listed in Stanford's Top 2% Scientists since 2022.