Alexandra Navrotsky

Last updated
Alexandra Navrotsky
Flaming Alexandra Navrotsky 19 Sept 2012.jpg
Alexandra Navrotsky with Lee Penn performing the methane mamba chemical demonstration
Born (1943-06-20) June 20, 1943 (age 80)
Education Bronx High School of Science
Alma mater University of Chicago
Awards Member of the National Academy of Sciences
Scientific career
Institutions Arizona State University
Princeton University
University of California, Davis
Doctoral advisor Ole J. Kleppa
Other academic advisors Hermann Schmalzried
Doctoral students Patricia Dove
Nancy L. Ross [1]
Other notable students Paul F. McMillan
Rebecca Lange
Website www.alexandra-navrotsky.com

Alexandra Navrotsky (born 20 June 1943 in New York City) is a physical chemist in the field of nanogeoscience. [2] She is an elected member of the United States National Academy of Sciences (NAS) and the American Philosophical Society (APS). [3] She was a board member of the Earth Sciences and Resources division of the NAS from 1995 until 2000. [4] In 2005, she was awarded the Urey Medal, [5] by the European Association of Geochemistry. In 2006, she was awarded the Harry H. Hess Medal, by the American Geophysical Union. [6] She is currently the director of NEAT ORU (Nanomaterials in Environment, Agriculture, and Technology Organized Research Unit), a primary program in nanogeoscience. She is distinguished professor at University of California, Davis. [7]

Contents

Early life and education

She graduated from Bronx High School of Science in New York. She received B.S. (1963), M.S. (1964), and Ph.D. (1967) in physical chemistry from University of Chicago, where she studied with Ole J. Kleppa. [1]

Career and research

In 1967, she went to Germany at the Clausthal University of Technology for postdoctoral work with Hermann Schmalzried. She came back to the U.S. in 1968 and continued her postdoctoral work at Pennsylvania State University. Then she joined the chemistry faculty at Arizona State University, for approximately five consecutive years. Later on, she moved to the Department of Geological and Geophysical Sciences at Princeton University in 1985. She became the chair of that department from 1988 to 1991. In 1997, she moved to University of California at Davis and became an Interdisciplinary Professor of Ceramic, Earth, and Environmental Materials Chemistry. In 2001, she was chosen as the Edward Roessler Chair in Mathematical and Physical Sciences. From 2013 to 2017, she was interim dean of Mathematical and Physical Sciences in the College of Letters and Sciences, at University of California at Davis. She is currently a Regents Professor at Arizona State University and has directed the Navrotsky-Eyring Center for Materials of the Universe since 2019. Her specializations include: Solid-state chemistry, Ceramics, Physics and Chemistry of Minerals, Geochemistry.

Geochemistry

Since 1997, she has built a unique high temperature calorimetry facility. She has also designed and enhanced the instrumentation. Navrotsky introduced and applied the method for measuring the energetics of crystalline oxides of glasses, amorphous, nanophase material, porous materials of hydrous phases and carbonates also more recently nitrides and oxynitrides. Obtaining the thermo chemical data is used to understand the compatibility and reactivity of materials in technological and geological application. The energetics provides insight into chemical bonding, order-disorder reactions, and phase transitions. Navrotsky's calorimetry has also been used in providing thermo chemical data for a variety of perovskite-related phases which has major consequences for convection and evolution on a planetary scale. One of Navrotsky's works has shown that many zeolitic and mesoporous phases have energies only slightly higher than those of their stable dense polymorphs. The energy is associated with the presence or absence of strained bond angles not with the density.

Nanomaterials

Her research is mainly focused on the structure and the stability of both natural and synthetic nanomaterials along with their dependence of temperature and pressure. She is also looking into the application of nanomaterials in geochemical pollutant transport in the air as it relates to the global climate change.

Nanoparticles are everywhere. You eat them, drink them, breathe them, pay to have them, and pay even more to get rid of them.

— Alexandra Navrotsky, 2010, [8]

Awards and honors

Publications

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Mineralogical Society of America</span> American scientific member organization

The Mineralogical Society of America (MSA) is a scientific membership organization. MSA was founded in 1919 for the advancement of mineralogy, crystallography, geochemistry, and petrology, and promotion of their uses in other sciences, industry, and the arts. It encourages fundamental research about natural materials; supports the teaching of mineralogical concepts and procedures to students of mineralogy and related arts and sciences; and attempts to raise the scientific literacy of society with respect to issues involving mineralogy. The Society encourages the general preservation of mineral collections, displays, mineral localities, type minerals and scientific data. MSA represents the United States with regard to the science of mineralogy in any international context. The Society was incorporated in 1937 and approved as a nonprofit organization in 1959.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Geochemical Society</span>

The Geochemical Society is a nonprofit scientific organization founded to encourage the application of chemistry to solve problems involving geology and cosmology. The society promotes understanding of geochemistry through the annual Goldschmidt Conference, publication of a peer-reviewed journal and electronic newsletter, awards programs recognizing significant accomplishments in the field, and student development programs. The society's offices are located on the campus of the Carnegie Institution for Science in Washington, DC.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">George R. Rossman</span> American mineralogist and professor (born 1944)

George R. Rossman is an American mineralogist and the Professor of Mineralogy at the California Institute of Technology.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Donald J. DePaolo</span> American geochemist

Donald James DePaolo is an American professor of geochemistry in the department of earth and planetary science at the University of California, Berkeley and associate laboratory director for energy and environmental sciences at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.

Bernard (Bernie) Wood is a British geologist, and professor of mineralogy and senior research fellow at the University of Oxford. He specializes in the thermodynamics of geological systems, using experimental techniques. He is a prominent figure in the field of experimental petrology, having received multiple awards throughout his career and taught at several universities worldwide.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Alexander Halliday</span> British geochemist and academic (born 1952)

Sir Alexander Norman Halliday is a British geochemist and academic who is the Founding Dean of the Columbia Climate School, and Director of the Earth Institute at Columbia University. He joined the Earth Institute in April 2018, after spending more than a decade at the Department of Earth Sciences at the University of Oxford, during which time he was dean of science and engineering. He is also a professor of Earth and Environmental Sciences at Columbia University.

Georges Calas is professor of mineralogy (Emeritus) at Sorbonne Université and an honorary Senior Member of University Institute of France.

Suzanne Yvette O'Reilly is an Australian professor of geology noted for her pioneering contributions to mapping the deep Earth with an interdisciplinary approach. In 2007, the Royal Society of New South Wales awarded her the Clarke Medal for outstanding contributions to Australian geology. She has over 350 peer-reviewed publications with over 40,000 citations, and has supervised more than 40 PhD students to graduation.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Rodney C. Ewing</span> American mineralogist and materials scientist

Rodney Charles Ewing is an American mineralogist and materials scientist whose research is focused on the properties of nuclear materials.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Janne Blichert-Toft</span> Danish geochemist

Janne Blichert-Toft is a geochemist, specializing in the use of isotopes with applications in understanding planetary mantle-crust evolution, as well as the chemical composition of matter in the universe. To further this research, Blichert-Toft has developed techniques for high-precision Isotope-ratio mass spectrometry measurements.

Susan L. Brantley is an American geologist and geochemist who is the Dr. Hubert Barnes and Dr. Mary Barnes Professor at Pennsylvania State University. Her research dominantly studies interactions between fluids and minerals at low temperatures, biological reactions in water-rich fluids within soils, and the geochemical processes that convert rock into soil. However, among many other topics, she has also published work on carbon dioxide emissions from volcanoes, and the environmental impact of shale gas extraction and nuclear waste disposal. During her career, Brantley has published over 200 research papers and book chapters, has been awarded academic prizes and fellowships by many of the world's leading geoscience societies, and has been described as "one of the leading aqueous geochemists of her generation."

Michael F. Hochella, Jr. is an American geoscientist and currently a university distinguished professor (Emeritus) at Virginia Tech and a laboratory fellow at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory. He is a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, Royal Society of Chemistry, Geochemical Society, European Association of Geochemistry, Mineralogical Society of America, International Association of GeoChemistry, Geological Society of America and American Geophysical Union. His interests are nanogeoscience, minerals, biogeochemistry and geochemistry. Currently among greater than 22,500 citations, his highest cited first-author paper is Nanominerals, mineral nanoparticles, and earth systems at over 940 citations, and published in the journal Science in 2008, and his highest cited co-authored paper is Nanotechnology in the real world: Redeveloping the nanomaterial consumer products inventory at over 1,995 citations, and published in the Beilstein Journal of Nanotechnology in 2015, according to Google Scholar. He is a former President of both the Geochemical Society and the Mineralogical Society of America. He is also the Founder and former Director of NanoEarth, a node of the National Nanotechnology Coordinated Infrastructure (NNCI), an NSF-funded network of 16 centers spread throughout the United States serving as user facilities for cutting edge nanotechnology research. NanoEarth is part of Virginia Tech's Institute for Critical Technology and Applied Science (ICTAS), and headquartered in Blacksburg, Virginia. Hochella has won many honors, medals, and awards for both research and teaching, including the Dana Medal of the Mineralogical Society of America, the Clair C. Patterson Medal of the Geochemical Society, the Geochemistry Division Medal of the American Chemical Society, and the Virginia Outstanding Faculty Award, the highest honor for faculty in the Commonwealth of Virginia.

Edward Bruce Watson is an American geochemist at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, New York.

Hans Peter Eugster was a Swiss-American geochemist, mineralogist, and petrologist.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Albrecht Hofmann</span> German geochemist (born 1939)

Albrecht (Al) Werner Hofmann, ForMemRS, is emeritus professor at the Max Planck Institute for Chemistry and an adjunct professor at Columbia University. He is best known for his contributions to the field of geochemistry.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Roberta Rudnick</span> American geologist

Roberta L. Rudnick is an American earth scientist and professor of geology at the University of California, Santa Barbara. She was elected a member of the National Academy of Sciences in 2010 and was awarded the Dana Medal by the Mineralogical Society of America. Rudnick is a world expert in the continental crust and lithosphere.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Patricia Dove</span> American geochemist and crystal growth researcher

Patricia Martin Dove is an American geochemist. She is a university distinguished professor and the C.P. Miles Professor of Science at Virginia Tech with appointments in the department of geosciences and department of chemistry. Her research focuses on the kinetics and thermodynamics of mineral reactions with aqueous solutions in biogeochemical systems. Much of her work is on crystal nucleation and growth during biomineralization and biomaterial synthesis. She was elected a member of the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) in 2012 and currently serves as chair of Class I, Physical and Mathematical Sciences.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Catherine McCammon</span> American geologist

Catherine Ann McCammon is a Canadian geoscientist who is employed by the University of Bayreuth. Her research focuses on surface and mantle processes, as well as the physics and chemistry of minerals. She is a Fellow of the European Association of Geochemistry and American Geophysical Union. In 2013, she was awarded the European Geosciences Union Robert Wilhelm Bunsen medal. She is the editor of the journal Physics and Chemistry of Minerals.

Elburt Franklin Osborn was an American geochemist and educator. He served as the 13th director of the U.S. Bureau of Mines.

Charles Thompson Prewitt was an American mineralogist and solid state chemist known for his work on structural chemistry of minerals and high-pressure chemistry.

References

  1. 1 2 3 Ross, Nancy L. (2010). "Presentation of the 2009 Roebling Medal of the Mineralogical Society of America to Alexandra Navrotsky" (PDF). American Mineralogist. 95 (4): 659–660. Bibcode:2010AmMin..95..659R. doi:10.2138/am.2010.560 . Retrieved 29 September 2017.
  2. ↑ Gates, Alexander E. (2003). "Navrotsky, Alexandra (1943–)". A to Z of earth scientists. New York: Facts on File. ISBN   9781438109190.
  3. ↑ "APS Member History". search.amphilsoc.org. Retrieved 2021-04-02.
  4. ↑ "Former Board Members - Board on Earth Sciences and Resources". Archived from the original on 2007-11-26. Retrieved 2010-02-11.
  5. ↑ ""Urey Medal to Navrotsky ", Society News: European Association of Geochemistry" (PDF). Elements.geoscienceworld.org. Retrieved 9 April 2018.
  6. ↑ "Alexandra Navrotsky | University of California-davis | ResearchCrossroads Profile". Archived from the original on 2012-03-01. Retrieved 2010-02-12.
  7. ↑ "Alexandra Navrotsky - UC Davis Chemical Engineering and Materials Science". Archived from the original on 2011-10-08. Retrieved 2010-02-12.
  8. ↑ "Nanoparticle scientist speaks on new discoveries". Science Daily. Knoxville, Tennessee. June 16, 2010. Retrieved February 16, 2018.
  9. ↑ "Honorary doctorates -" (in Swedish). Uppsala University. Retrieved 29 September 2017.
  10. ↑ Navrotsky, Alexandra (2010). "Acceptance of the Roebling Medal for 2009 of the Mineralogical Society of America" (PDF). American Mineralogist. 96 (4): 661. Bibcode:2010AmMin..95..661N. doi:10.2138/am.2010.561 . Retrieved 29 September 2017.
  11. ↑ "Research | Materials of the Universe at ASU". Materials of the Universe. Retrieved 2023-04-18.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.