Submitted by Kevin McKeegan, recipient of the 2022 Leonard Medal
Thank you, Marc, for the many kind words; I could echo every one of them back at you!
Madam President, Councilors, members of the Society, Colleagues & Friends--- I thank you
sincerely for this wonderful honor, one which I deeply cherish. The Meteoritical Society has
been my intellectual home ever since I attended my first conference, 40 years ago in St. Louis.
Professor Chaussidon’s warm citation has elicited many happy memories, most satisfying
because they recall shared experiences with many interesting, talented, and generous people –
a number of whom are here today, in person or on-line, and others who I wish could be here
today, including those who have gone before.
Thinking back over that 4-decades journey, the main feeling that lasts, long after the
frustrations at ion probes broken-yet-again have faded, is one of excitement – the joy of trying
to reveal Nature’s secrets, working with clever and like-minded people. Virtually none of us
pursue science to “become famous” or win awards, and I certainly never imagined that one day
I would be standing on such a stage accepting a Leonard Medal. The truly great honor, which
does not require a medal, is the respect of one’s peers. I am gratified to have earned some
measure of that because, in fact, I respect and admire so many excellent scientists in our
society, many of whom deserve, but may never be as lucky as I, to be recognized with
hardware. (And I see by the nodding of heads, that many of you agree!).
I’m happy that there are young people here; thank you for coming. When I was young, I
would go to such award ceremonies and marvel that many awardees would express humility at
being chosen for a medal. I wondered why they would feel humble at a time when they might
rightfully take great pride in their accomplishment. I now have the perspective to understand,
for there are two reasons that I am very much humbled by this award. The first is the sheer
astonishment that my name is now linked with prior recipients of the Leonard Medal, some of
whom were mentors, and many of whom are among my scientific heroes, including people in
this audience today. The second is the awkward feeling for being singled out for what I know
for a fact was the work of many.
Before getting to those who contributed directly or indirectly to the research that is
recognized by this Leonard medal, I must first acknowledge those who helped prepare me for a
life in science, even if that’s not what they thought they were doing at the time. First and
foremost, I want to publicly thank my parents, Daniel McKeegan and Patricia McCarthy, for
their love and support. The children of immigrants, they achieved a diploma from a parochial
high school in an Irish ghetto of New York, when I’m fairly sure that none of their forebears had
opportunity to advance beyond basic literacy. Perhaps because of this, they recognized the
importance of education and always encouraged me, even when my studies didn’t seem
particularly directed toward any practical end.
Born in the same month as NASA, I was always interested in space. Thanks to James
McDonnell’s endowment, I came to Washington University as a Roger Chaffee Astronaut
Fellow, thinking I might study cosmic rays (for the young people in the audience, Chaffee,
White, and Grissom died in the Apollo 1 fire). But Bob Walker’s enthusiasm swayed me to
instead focus on studying so-called “Brownlee particles” with the powerful new instrument that
would be coming next year along with the return from Vienna of local legend, Ernst Zinner. The
last sentence dropped the names of 3 future Leonard Medalists, which of course, is not a
coincidence and it’s to my ever-lasting good fortune to have been influenced at an early stage
by these great scientists. The 4th floor of Compton Hall was a wonderful place to be an apprentice scientist, and if you don’t believe me, you can ask my office mates and still friends
Marc Caffee, Scott Sandford, Tim Swindle and Al Fahey; also Tom Bernatowicz who was across
the hall. We all benefited enormously from frequent extended visits to the MAC Center by
distinguished cosmochemists such as Jitendra Goswami, Don Burnett, Paul Pellas, and many
others. I had so much fun doing a PhD, and especially learning from Ernst, that I almost didn’t
want to leave - but the birth of my son convinced me that it was time to get a real job.
I’m guessing most of you know all the names I’ve mentioned so far but perhaps not the
next ones: Rick Ryerson, an excellent experimental geochemist, but not a meteorite researcher,
whom I met on my first day as a postdoc at Lawrence Livermore. In Rick’s lab, he and I diffused
18O into various CAI minerals, which I then sputtered out, impressing even Jerry Wasserburg.
Rick also introduced me to his buddy, Mark Harrison, who was fixing to bring the first large-format
ion microprobe to North America. I went to work for Mark at UCLA as the lab manager,
one of the best decisions I ever made. Mark always treated me as an equal partner and was
keenly interested that CAMECA 1270 ion probe be developed for cosmochemistry as well as
zircon geochronology.
At UCLA, I’ve had the great luck to work with, and learn from, many talented postdocs
and students. The danger with naming names is that you might forget some, but I feel
compelled to mention and thank Ming-Chang Liu, Carolyn Crow, Junko Isa, Christopher Snead,
Kaitlyn McCain, Melanie Barboni, Laurie Leshin, Nozomi Matsuda, Bob Steele, Haolan Tang,
Emilie Dunham, and the French connection: Cecile Engrand, Jerome Aleon, and Johanna Marin-
Carbonne. The MegaSIMS was a concept machine that took the brilliance of Chris Coath to turn
into reality. To make it workable required the dedicated efforts of George Jarzebinski, Peter
Mao, Tak Kunihiro, and Antti Kallio. The solar wind analyses were only possible thanks to the
exacting work of Veronika Heber. Of course, there would have been no solar ions to analyze
without the efforts of Don Burnett, Amy Jurewicz, Roger Wiens, and indeed, the entire Genesis
team.
Thanks to the Dons - Burnett and Brownlee - for making me an offer I couldn’t refuse by
including me in their wonderful missions, the first sample returns in my professional career. I
also want to thank the people who took the time and effort to nominate me for this award and
you, the members of this excellent society, for sharing your passion and insights, and becoming
my scientific family. Thanks also to the family of ion probe scientists who have always been so
generous with their knowledge, especially Marc Chaussidon, Andy Davis, Ian Hutcheon, and
Trevor Ireland. I’ll even give honorary mention in this group to Sasha Krot, since I’m sure that
at one time or another he’s had all the ion probes in the world working for him.
For everything else important in life, I thank my chosen family – my wife Grace, the
mother of 3 excellent young people of whom we are very proud: Danny, Megan, and Kathleen.
Thank you, Grace, for marrying a perpetual student with esoteric interests and uncertain job
prospects and for your support in all life’s strange decisions – like moving to LA 30 years ago.
Finally, there is a group that I think doesn’t get enough praise. I have been very
privileged in my career to have literally held in my hands (wearing gloves, of course) samples
from asteroids and comets, early Earth and Mars, as well as the Moon and the Sun. This is
nothing short of astounding. And I personally collected none of these! So, to the meteorite
hunters, the geologists and explorers, the U2 pilots and Apollo astronauts, and the spacecraft
engineers, the clean-room scientists, and museum curators around the world --- thank you. Without your passion and expertise, and the support of taxpayers, our science would not be
possible.