Sigurdsson, Haraldur
Haraldur Sigurdsson (1939- ) is an Icelandic volcanologist and a professor at the University of Rhode Island. He was leader of a research team that recently studied the evidence left by the volcanic eruption on Santorini (ancient Thera) in the 2nd millennium BC.*They found evidence that the eruption was greater than previously thought. “In 1991 Sigurdsson and his URI colleague Steven Carey had estimated that 39 cubic kilometers of magma and rock had erupted from the volcano around 1600 B.C., based on fallout they observed on land. The new evidence of the marine deposits resulted in an upward adjustment in their estimate to about 60 cubic kilometers.”(b) *
He appeared on the 2010 BBC Timewatch Special, Atlantis: The Evidence in which he supported the idea that the Theran eruption had probably inspired Plato’s Atlantis story and also saw traces of the event in Hesiod’s Theogony(a).
(a) https://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2006/08/060823-thera-volcano.html
(b) https://today.uri.edu/news/santorini-eruption-much-larger-than-originally-believed/