Blundy is most noted for advancing the understanding of how
magmas are generated in the Earth's
crust and
mantle and of the processes that occur in
volcanoes before they erupt. He undertook his PhD research at the
University of Cambridge under the supervision of Professor
Robert Stephen John Sparks on the granites of
Adamello-Presanella in the Italian
Alps. In a series of papers with the notable
Bernard Wood in the 1990s, Blundy popularized a theory of elastic strain originally developed by Onuma to describe the uptake of
trace elements into the crystal lattices of
igneous minerals. The theory was based on high temperature and pressure experiments on molten rocks, and is now widely used to predict crystal-melt partition coefficients for use in modelling magmatic processes. Blundy subsequently collaborated with
Katharine Cashman at the
University of Oregon on
Mount St. Helens volcano in the
Cascade Range of northwestern USA. Blundy and Cashman demonstrated the importance of degassing in driving the crystallisation of volatile-bearing magmas, a process that can occur without any attendant cooling. In fact, because of the release of
latent heat of fusion, magmas that crystallise by decompression can actually get hotter in the process. ==Awards and honours==