Brian Luckman
Brian was born on the Isle of Man, grew up in Lancashire and was educated at Chadderton Grammar School, Manchester University, where he completed B.A. and M.A. degrees, University of Liverpool, where he tutored in physical geography, before coming to McMaster to complete a Ph.D. with Brian McCann. He was appointed full time at Western in 1974 and promoted to full professor in 1987.
In 1988, as one of the first researchers in an emerging field of dendro-paleoclimatology, Dr. Luckman was seconded as Global Change Coordinator, Terrain Sciences Division, Geological Survey of Canada (GSC). He subsequently developed a comprehensive approach to dendrochronology-based climate change in Canada, now expanded into a research network extending from Alaska to Tierra del Fuego. Based on numerous field seasons with a tightly-knit graduate research group, and collaboration with other researchers throughout North and South America, Dr. Luckman has been a prime mover in establishing some of the longest, and regionally extensive, proxy dendroclimate records in the world and has made a major contribution to the scientific underpinnings of global climate change in Canada and internationally.
Dr.Luckman's expertise has been widely recognized and supported by major grants from NSERC and the Inter-American Institute (IAI) for Global Change. At the present time he is coordinating 14 other Principal Investigators in an IAI Collaborative Research Network (CRN03), as well as engaging in a major project on a 300 year Proxy Climate Data base for the whole Canadian Cordillera.
Despite a full teaching load, twice that of NSERC colleagues in the Science Faculty at Western, his research output has been prodigious, and is currently in full flow. He has 70 publications in refereed journals, including a major review in The Canadian Geographer. He has contributed 18 original chapters to major works on glacial geomorphology and North American and global climate change, and has given over 90 invited lectures on similar topics, as well as contributing over 180 conference papers and abstracts. In similar vein, he is on the editorial advisory boards of The Holocene, Arctic, Antarctic & Alpine Research, Geomorphology, and Dendrochronologia, just four of the 34 national and international journals for which he has reviewed.
Brian Luckman has long been active in the IGU. In addition to organizing major international conferences in the USA, Mexico, Argentina, Switzerland, he has been a consistent and active mover in Canadian organizations, as President of both the Canadian Geomorphological Research Group and the Ontario Association of Geomorphologists. His expertise has been recognized by the GSC, and the Royal Society of Canada. Last, but by no means least, and reinforcing his commitment to Canadian Geography, Professor Luckman has been a CAG Councilor, and its representative on the Canadian Geoscience Council.
Notwithstanding his wide ranging research activity and responsibilities, Brian remains the essence of collegiality, never shirking his ‘duty', whether in the class room, where he is an enthusiastic teacher of systematic and Canadian physical geography and environmental change, or on numerous committees, and as an expert in the local community. He has twice been nominated for Western's Helmuth Prize for its outstanding researcher.
Few Canadian geographers are more respected internationally or more deeply engaged in professional geography at home. As such, Professor Brian Luckman is a worthy recipient of the 2005 CAG Award for Scholarly Distinction in Geography.
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