Chris Ballentine is a British geochemist. He is the chair ofgeochemistry and head of theDepartment of Earth Sciences at theUniversity of Oxford, in the United Kingdom. He uses properties of thenoble gases to understand the origin and evolution ofEarth's atmosphere andmantle.
Ballentine earned his PhD at theUniversity of Cambridge in 1992.[citation needed] He went on to hold research positions at thePaul Scherrer Institut, Switzerland, theUniversity of Michigan, andETH Zurich, Switzerland. From 2001 to 2013, he held positions at theUniversity of Manchester before joining the faculty at theUniversity of Oxford.[citation needed]
Ballentine has held the vice-president, president, and past president positions with theEuropean Association of Geochemistry. He is a member of the Board of Governors of theOxford Museum of Natural History and theAmerican Geophysical Union, as well as a former scientific steering committee member for theDeep Carbon Observatory. In 2008, he won theGeological Society of LondonBigsby Medal for significant contributions to geology.[1] The AGU chose Ballentine as a Fellow in 2013,[2] and in 2016, he won theENI award, given to researchers who make advanced scientific breakthroughs in the field of energy, for "New Frontiers of Hydrocarbons".[3]
Ballentine has shown that by measuringnoble gas isotopes, he can identify and quantify the processes controlling the origin, migration, and interaction of subsurface water, hydrocarbons, and fluids.[4]
He has applied noble gas tools and principles to understand how natural gas fields form inside Earth, the role of groundwater in forming hydrocarbon reservoirs, and the origins of different gases on the planet. Ballentine also has developed quantitative techniques to understand how carbon dioxide behaves in the subsurface, including its role in the crustal carbon cycle, and how carbon-rich fluids have supported subsurface life over geological timescales.[5]
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