Brunhes

Brunhes is a surname of French origin. Notable individuals with the name include Bernard Brunhes, a French geophysicist whose work in paleomagnetism helped establish the study of Earth's magnetic field reversals and their use in geological dating.

In geology and geomagnetism, Brunhes is associated with the Brunhes chron, the current interval of normal magnetic polarity in Earth’s field. This chron began at the Brunhes–Matuyama reversal, dated to about 0.781 million years ago, and extends to the present. The Brunhes chron is a key component of the geomagnetic polarity timescale and is used in magnetostratigraphy to date marine and continental sediments and to correlate geological records with the global isotope and climatic histories.

The Brunhes–Matuyama reversal, named for Bernard Brunhes and the Japanese geophysicist Matuyama, marks the boundary between the reversed Matuyama chron and the present Brunhes chron. The boundary is identified in lava flows, sediments, and other geological records around the world and provides a widely used time marker for correlating terrestrial and marine sequences.

Outside of geomagnetism, Brunhes may also be encountered as a surname in French-speaking regions. The term’s prominence in earth science stems from Bernard Brunhes’s contributions to paleomagnetism and the study of Earth’s magnetic history.