News

The meteoritical community lost a remarkable scientist, mentor, colleague and friend with the passing of Edward J. Olsen on January 30, 2020 at his home in Madison, Wisconsin. Ed is survived by his wife of 38 years, Lorain Olsen, his daughters Andrea Southwood and Ericka Olsen and his grandson Jacob Taggart. More…

Ahmed El Goresy died at his home in Heidelberg on October 3, 2019, at the age of 85. Ahmed El Goresy was a highly regarded mineralogist with a worldwide reputation. His research focused on minerals and mineral assemblages of extraterrestrial samples. With his major tool, reflected light microscopy, he studied meteorite samples from asteroids, Moon, and Mars, and lunar rocks and terrestrial impactites. More…

Prof. Laurel Wilkening, a meteoriticist, university administrator, and advocate for planetary science and for women’s issues, passed away on June 4, 2019, in Tucson, Arizona, at the age of 74. Born in Richland, Washington, on Nov. 23, 1944, she grew up in Socorro, New Mexico, and got her Bachelor’s degree in Chemistry from Reed College. More…

Prof. Keizo Yanai, a founder of Antarctic meteorite research, passed away on December 17, 2018, at the age of 77, in Morioka City, Iwate Prefecture, Japan, after several years of declining health. Keizo served many years as a curator at the National Institute of Polar Research (NIPR) of Japan where he collected and allocated thousands of Antarctic meteorites for our community. He was born on July 25, 1941, in Furudono, Fukushima, Japan. He received his B.S. from Akita University and his Ph.D. degree in petrology (Mesozoic igneous rocks) from Tohoku University. More…

Simon J. Lock, currently a postdoc at the California Institute of Technology, is awarded the 2019 Pellas-Ryder Award for his paper titled “The Origin of the Moon within a Terrestrial Synestia” published in the Journal of Geophysical Research Planets in 2018. Simon Lock was a Ph.D student at the Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences, Harvard University, working with Sarah T. Stewart (now at UC Davis), when the paper was submitted. More…

The McKay Award for the 81st Annual Meeting in Moscow is given to Timothy Gregory (University of Bristol) for the presentation " Using refractory forsterite grains to test models of 26Al/27Al heterogeniety". More…

Sponsored by the publisher of Meteoritics and Planetary Science, five Wiley Awards are given for outstanding oral presentations by students at the Annual Meeting. More…

Emily Worsham, currently a postdoc at the University of Muenster, is awarded the 2018 Pellas-Ryder award for her paper titled "Characterizing cosmochemical materials with genetic affinities to the Earth: Genetic and chronological diversity within the IAB iron meteorite complex," published in the Earth and Planetary Science Letters in 2017. More…

Friedrich Begemann passed away on May 11, at the age of 90. Friedrich (‘Fred’) was the director of the Isotope Cosmology Department at the Max-Planck-Institut für Chemie (MPI-C) in Mainz (Germany) from 1978 until his retirement in 1995 and the 1995 recipient of the Meteoritical Society’s Leonard Medal. More…

Dr. Christine Floss died unexpectedly at her home in St. Louis on April 19, 2018, at age 56. She is deeply missed by her family, friends, and colleagues. Christine was a research professor in the Department of Physics and McDonnell Center for Space Sciences at Washington University in St. Louis. Christine was a long-time member and a fellow of the Meteoritical Society. She was an expert in the trace-element and isotopic analysis of planetary materials, meteorites, and presolar grains, studying the origin and evolution of the Solar System. She was a gifted and dedicated scientist and mentor, and an extraordinary colleague, collaborator, and friend to many in the cosmochemistry and planetary science community. More…