.png)
Departmental homepageProfessor Tipper was an undergraduate and postgraduate at the University of Cambridge. He then worked at IPGP Paris, ETH Zurich and lectured at the University of St Andrews before returning to Cambridge and joining St John's College in 2014.
He supervises Part IA and Part IB Earth Sciences. He is also currently Director of Teaching for Earth Sciences, giving lectures to Part IA, IB and Part III. He runs two of the Department's field trips, to the Isle of Arran and to the South of France.
One of the biggest scientific challenges of the 21st century is understanding climate change. Broadly Professor Tipper's research aims to understand the linkages in the carbon cycle between rocks, the hydrosphere and the atmosphere. There are at least three orders of magnitude more carbon stored in rocks than in the oceans and atmosphere, and over long timescales carbon from the Earth's surface will be stored in rocks. Professor Tipper's research aim's to understand how these carbon transfers work, studying waters and sediments. He regularly conducts major field expeditions to various places such as Southeast Asia, the Himalaya and Arctic Canada. The samples are analysed in our state-of-the-art labs in Cambridge, for both simple chemical components and sophisticated isotope ratios to feed into models of carbon cycling.
