Clive Oppenheimer

One of the world’s most outstanding vulcanologists, he has recently become a documentary director working with the filmmaker Werner Herzog.

Clive Oppenheimer (United Kingdom, 1964) is a vulcanologist and lecturer in the Department of Geography at Cambridge University. He is a specialist in magmatic and volcanic processes, as well as in their monitorisation and impact on humans throughout history. He has travelled around the world while carrying out his research and has spent thirteen seasons in the Antarctic working in the Mount Erebus Observatory. He has published several books, notable among them Eruptions That Shook the World (Cambridge University Press, 2011), which combines a didactic spirit with scientific rigour. His research and capacity for popularising the subject caught the attention of the German director Werner Herzog, who included him in the film Encounters at the End of the World. Since then, they have worked together on two more documentaries, Fireball and Into the Inferno. His devotion to the study of volcanoes and meteorites and singular educational approach to the subject have made him one of the world’s most outstanding, high-profile vulcanologists.

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