News

I am sad to report that our friend and colleague Klaus Keil passed away peacefully Friday night at home after a long battle with cancer. He was Emeritus Professor, former Director of the Hawai`i Institute of Geophysics and Planetology, and former Interim Dean of the School of Ocean and Earth Science and Technology. Klaus was an outstanding scientist, spectacular mentor, educator, and leader, dedicated family man, and enthusiastic tennis player. His academic and science leadership skills glittered at the University of Hawai`i since 1990 and at the Institute of Meteoritics at the University of New Mexico from 1968 to 1990. He was 87 years old. Klaus was a pioneer in the use of the electron microprobe in meteoritics and in petrology and mineralogy in general. In the early 1960s, he worked with colleagues at NASA Ames Research Center, Ray Fitzgerald and Kurt Heinrich, to make the first energy dispersive X-ray spectrometer for use in microanalysis. This device was the first to focus on terrestrial and extraterrestrial geological materials, and the first to use a solid-state lithium-drifted Si detector. Over his long and illustrious career, Klaus studied practically every type of meteorite and lunar sample, addressing big problems in planetary science, from chondrule formation to pyroclastic eruptions on the Moon and achondritic bodies, from asteroid disruption to the composition of the Martian surface. More…

An eminent pioneer of noble gas geochemistry, Peter Signer, emeritus professor at ETH (Switzerland) died on Friday, Dec. 10, 2021. After a long illness, he peacefully fell asleep at the age of 92. Following his dissertation at the University of Bern on a mass spectrometric study of the 176Lu decay constant with Friedrich Houtermans and a seven-year stay with Alfred O. Nier at the University of Minnesota, Peter Signer was appointed professor for Geo- and Cosmochronology at ETH Zurich in 1965. He founded the Laboratory for Noble Gas Mass Spectrometry, which he led until his retirement in 1994 and which is now headed by Henner Busemann in the third generation. More…

It is with great sadness that we announce that Sandra Pizzarello passed away on October 24, 2021. She greatly enhanced the research field of molecular, isotopic, and chiral analysis of organic compounds in carbonaceous chondrite meteorites since the 1970s. During her active research career, she produced an impressive number of achievements in her studies on the origin and chemical evolution of organic compounds in the early Solar System and the origin of homochirality in living systems. Sandra was born in Venice, Italy, in 1933. She obtained a doctoral degree in Biological Sciences at Universitá degli Studi di Padova, Italy, in 1955. She was a research associate with Farmitalia Research Laboratories Neuropharmacology Dept. Milan, Italy from 1957-1960. She started her research at Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry, Arizona State University (ASU) in 1977. She was a research professor and an emeritus professor at ASU until she passed away. More…

Its with great sadness that we announce the sudden death of Ed Scott on October 7. Edward Robert Dalton Scott was born on 22 March 1947 in Heswall, England, and died suddenly on 7 October 2021 in San Rafael, California at the age of 74. He is survived by his wife Anneliese Sullivan Scott, his two daughters, Victoria and Rosemarie, and grandchildren Theo, Octavia, and Fiona. Ed was a superb scientist with deep curiosity about the Solar System and its origin, coupled with disarming modesty, a positive personality, a subtle sense of humor, and exceptional kindness. He will be missed. More…

Stuart Ross Taylor, Leonard Medalist (1998) and former president of the Meteoritical Society (1989-1990) passed away at his home in Canberra, Australia, this month. Ross was a geochemist who made seminal contributions to our understanding of the origin and evolution of Earth’s continental crust, and the composition and origin of the Moon, meteorites, tektites, and the solar system. Born in Ashburton, New Zealand in 1925, he received a BSc and MSc Hons from the University of New Zealand followed by a PhD in 1954 at the University of Indiana, USA, where he studied under fellow Kiwi Brian Mason. Taylor was Mason’s only PhD student and Mason himself was the last PhD student of Victor Moritz Goldschmidt. Following his PhD, Ross became a tenured lecturer at Oxford University where he worked with Louis Ahrens and built an emission spectroscopy laboratory. More…

Günter W. Lugmair passed away on March 31 after a short illness. A Fellow of the Meteoritical Society since 1980 when he also served as an organizer of the Annual Meeting in La Jolla, and winner of the society’s Leonard Medal, Günter’s mastery of the mass spectrometer pushed the precision of isotopic measurements to new levels. He pioneered the applications of new radiometric systems and measurements of nucleosynthetic anomalies to fundamentally advance our understanding of the processes operating in the early Solar System. More…

James J. Papike passed away on Dec. 21, 2020, at the age of 83. He was emeritus director of the Institute of Meteoritics, University of New Mexico and Fellow of the Meteoritical Society. He was active in and had been an officer or councilor in the Mineralogical Society of America (president), the American Geophysical Union, the Geochemical Society (president), the Society of Economic Geologists, the National Academy of Sciences, the Universities Space Research Association, and numerous other professional organizations. More…

H. Jay Melosh (Purdue University) passed away on September 11, 2020, after a five-decade career in impact geophysics. Jay received the Barringer Medal (1999) and was a Fellow of the Meteoritical Society. More…

John Taylor Wasson, Emeritus Professor in UCLA’s Department of Earth, Planetary, and Space Sciences, passed away peacefully at his long-time home in Los Angeles on September 8, 2020, at the age of 86. He had suffered a stroke in January, but had courageously battled back, improving in many ways, before his sudden passing. John was passionate about meteorites and what their properties reveal about the formation and early evolution of the Solar System. Over a research career spanning six decades, he left a rich legacy of contributions to meteoritics and planetary science. More…

Over 18 years at Northern Arizona University, Nadine ascended the academic ranks, becoming Department Chair of Astronomy and Planetary Science. She received numerous awards for teaching excellence. Doubling the size of the Department, she grew its curriculum into a Ph.D.-granting program. More…