Welcome to Polar Podcasts, where you’ll hear stories from geologists who’ve spent their careers, their lives, exploring and studying the remarkable and remote geology of Greenland. Why did they become fascinated with Greenland? What were the problems and the discoveries that drove them? And what was it like working in these remote places, where few people venture, even now? 

Kent Brooks – emeritus Professor at the Geological Museum in Copenhagen – first travelled to east Greenland in 1965 – the beginning of what was to be an adventurous, more than fifty-year career focused on understanding the geology of magmatic rocks of east Greenland.

On one of Kent’s earliest expeditions, he was involved in the discovery of a crashed American naval aircraft and he relates his involvement in the decades long saga of the recovery of the airmen who perished on board.

Much of Kent’s research has focused on the textbook geology of the Skaergaard Intrusion – a layered gabbro intrusion, research into which has been fundamental in understanding the way in which magmas form and differentiate in the Earth, also becoming involved in exploration that led to the earliest drilling of the Intrusion and the discovery of gold. Kent has also published extensively on the nature of rifting in east Greenland and of the Earth’s mantle beneath Greenland.

Polar Podcasts goes to air on August 4. Tune in and subscribe to hear Kent Brooks and other career Greenland geologists talk about their experiences working in Greenland over the decades.