This award is for paleomagnetic studies aimed at determining the timing and rate of the motion of the Hawaiian and other hotspots relative to the paleomagnetic axis, and the implications of such motion for true polar wander, using methods recently developed to determine accurate paleomagnetic poles with exceptionally narrow age resolution (e.e.+1 m.y.). The approach, based on the analysis of the shapes of marine magnetic anomalies recording ancient seafloor spreading, allows one to overcome the difficulties of determining paleomagnetic poles in the presence of systematic errors like those that plagued pioneering studies of magnetic anomaly data.
