Dr. Haraldur Sigurdsson

Haraldur Sigurdsson is a professor of oceanography and volcanology at the University of Rhode Island. He has carried out research on the Thera (Santorini) volcano since 1975, when the first Rhode Island expedition to this region took place. Haraldur is a native of Iceland, where he grew up in a very volcanic terrain. His volcanic research includes work on the famous eruption of Vesuvius in Italy in 79 AD, which buried Pompeii and Herculaneum. Lately he has focused on work on the Krakatau eruption that took place in Indonesia in 1883, as well as the great Tambora eruption in 1815, which is the largest volcanic eruption in historical time and even larger than the Minoan eruption of Thera. All of these explosive eruptions are interesting comparisons to the great Bronze Age eruption of Thera (Santorini).