Wikipedia:Today's featured article/December 17, 2015
Harry Glicken (1958–1991) was an American volcanologist who researched Mount St. Helens before and after its dramatic eruption in 1980. Despite a long-term interest in working for the U.S. Geological Survey, Glicken never received a permanent post there because employees found him eccentric. Conducting independent research sponsored by the National Science Foundation and other organizations, Glicken accrued expertise in the field of volcanic debris avalanches. He wrote several major publications on the topic, including his doctoral dissertation on Mount St. Helens. In 1991, while conducting avalanche research with volcanologists Katia and Maurice Krafft on Mount Unzen in Japan, Glicken was killed by a wayward pyroclastic flow. Glicken and David A. Johnston (who died at Mount St. Helens) remain the only American volcanologists known to have perished in volcanic eruptions. After Glicken's dissertation was published by his colleagues in 1996, the report was widely cited. His detailed and comprehensive work on flows at Mount St. Helens is considered the most complete in the field to date. (Full article...)