Páll Einarsson

An Icelandic cellist and geophysicist, born in Reykjavík in 1947. He studied music at Tónlistarskólinn í Reykjavík in his youth and plays both the cello and the double bass, and has for many years chaired Sinfóníuhljómsveit áhugamanna, the amateur symphony orchestra, and led its cello section. Páll is professor emeritus of geophysics at the University of Iceland and has had a long and productive career of research and teaching on crustal movements, earthquakes, plate motion and volcanic eruptions. He took the first part of his physics degree at the University of Göttingen in 1970 and his MPhil and PhD at Columbia University in New York in 1974 and 1975. After his studies he joined the Science Institute of the University of Iceland, where he set up and ran the national seismic network, and he served as professor of geophysics from 1994 to 1997 and again from 1999 until his retirement in 2017. He was made a Knight of the Order of the Falcon in 2015, received the Nordic Earth Sciences Prize in 2018, and in 2024 became the first Icelander to be awarded the Swedish Rossby Prize in geophysics.